How would you do a TL 4 (+4) Earth?

[AlexanderHowl]

I was just curious how people would do a TL 4(+4) Earth without superscience and without alternate physics? What point of technology divergence would you choose and what would the technology that comes from that divergence look like? I like the idea of a biological TL 4(+4) Earth, triggered by the Columbian Exchange, with the Earth of 2020 possessing organic technology rather than digital technology.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

I was just curious how people would do a TL 4(+4) Earth without superscience and without alternate physics? What point of technology divergence would you choose and what would the technology that comes from that divergence look like?

Well, the fact that it's TL 4+4 puts the divergence point between 1450 and 1730, but without superscience or alternate physics, it's not likely to look that different.

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

I like the idea of a biological TL 4(+4) Earth, triggered by the Columbian Exchange, with the Earth of 2020 possessing organic technology rather than digital technology.

If we assume that different plants and animals were found in the Americas than were actually historically found, that would make some difference, but the basic problem with that scheme is that you can't do advanced biotech without computers.

[AlexanderHowl]

Well, that really depends, you can do a lot through selective breeding, and you do not need computers to do selective breeding. In addition, you can have computers that are radically different than our computers if you develop biological, chemical, fluidic, mechanical, or optical computers. You just need a change to cause the development of different technologies (perhaps an emphasis on biology rather than physics during the 1600s would have led Issac Newton to formulate a theory of evolution rather than a theory of gravity).

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

Well, that really depends, you can do a lot through selective breeding, and you do not need computers to do selective breeding.

You need computers to do genome mapping, and without that you're talking about trial and error.

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

In addition, you can have computers that are radically different than our computers if you develop biological, chemical, fluidic, mechanical, or optical computers.

Even assuming they look different under the hood, it doesn't matter; all Turing machines are equivalent.

[AlexanderHowl]

Not all Turing machines are created equal. For example, a fluidics computer can do computation through changes in volume and/or weight, allowing it much higher levels of computational density at a low TL than a digital computer, though at the cost of speed. Optical computers can do computation based on amplitude modulation, frequency modulation, polarity modulation, and pulse modulation, which makes them potentially hundreds to thousands of times faster than binary computers, though no one has bothered to invest the resources to explore its potential.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

Not all Turing machines are created equal. For example, a fluidics computer can do computation through changes in volume and/or weight, allowing it much higher levels of computational density at a low TL than a digital computer, though at the cost of speed.

Those abilities are essentially irrelevant (there are lots of calculation modes we could use that we don't because they're useless). The basic difference between fluidics and electronics is that the fluid in electronics is made of electrons. Fluidics can compete up through mid TL 7 but the tech is hard-limited.

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

Optical computers can do computation based on amplitude modulation, frequency modulation, polarity modulation, and pulse modulation, which makes them potentially hundreds to thousands of times faster than binary computers, though no one has bothered to invest the resources to explore its potential.

All of those methods are available to electronics, and in any case, it doesn't matter. If you aren't a chip maker, you don't care whether the calculation is done by ICs or trained gerbils, you just care that it gets done.

[whswhs]

I'm very inclined to say, "You can't get there from here." My impression is that at TL0 you have large numbers of different styles; by TL3 you're down to a handfull; and at TL7 things have narrowed pretty far. There may be enough wiggle room to allow a +1 without superscience; but by the time you get to +4 things have pretty well converged.

If I wanted to do TL(3+1), for example, I might look at the Mongols and imagine a technology built around pastoralism rather than agriculture; the Mongols were capable of being a serious threat to farming peoples. Maybe you could justify that at TL(4+1) with a more advanced horse nomad culture. But there are just limits on what you can do with that starting point.

Now, if you wanted to allow speculative physics, I could come up with some ideas, maybe.

[cptbutton]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

Well, that really depends, you can do a lot through selective breeding, and you do not need computers to do selective breeding. In addition, you can have computers that are radically different than our computers if you develop biological, chemical, fluidic, mechanical, or optical computers. You just need a change to cause the development of different technologies (perhaps an emphasis on biology rather than physics during the 1600s would have led Issac Newton to formulate a theory of evolution rather than a theory of gravity).

Some sort of intelligence amplification via hormones, drugs, surgery, etc for humans might help. So some children are turned into giant-brained biological genius, though at a great personal cost and with ethical issues.

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

I was just curious how people would do a TL 4(+4) Earth without superscience and without alternate physics? What point of technology divergence would you choose and what would the technology that comes from that divergence look like? I like the idea of a biological TL 4(+4) Earth, triggered by the Columbian Exchange, with the Earth of 2020 possessing organic technology rather than digital technology.

There are two ways to diverge technology. The first is to give them something that wasn't possible and the other is to deny them something that was possible and assume they somehow worked around it. So since the defining breakthrough of TL 5 was the steam engine...let's take away fossil fuels. They still have steam power but now it's solar boilers. Which means they have something suitable for a factory, but not for a train much less a car. So they invent electrical generation and batteries, discover the photoelectric effect early.

They never discover the internal combustion engine and they never discover plastics. Cross country trains run on electricity they somehow get through the rails. They invent a kind of battery we never thought of and use it to power spindly lightweight horseless carriages that are slower than what we had because even though it's better than the batteries we really had, it's not as good as an ICE engine. They never invent the airplane so like any good alternate reality it's airships with electric motors.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

There are two ways to diverge technology. The first is to give them something that wasn't possible and the other is to deny them something that was possible and assume they somehow worked around it. So since the defining breakthrough of TL 5 was the steam engine...let's take away fossil fuels. They still have steam power but now it's solar boilers and hydro dams.

Well, early steam engines used wood, which presumably still exists, though it's very limited. For the most part fossil fuels can be replaced by biofuels, just at considerably higher cost, which in turn means you favor alternate techs, though inventing some form of internal combustion is still very likely.