04-22-2018, 09:56 AM | #51 | ||
On Notice
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Sumter, SC
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Re: Tech Level Confusion
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A TL(5+3) Cheirometer would have the same problem as its TL(5+1) predecessor and was limited to the hands. TL8 biometrics by contrast covers far more then simply hand geometry: fingerprints, palm veins, face recognition, DNA, palm print, as well iris, voice, and retina recognition. |
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04-22-2018, 11:46 AM | #52 |
Night Watchman
Join Date: Oct 2010
Location: Cambridge, UK
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Re: Tech Level Confusion
I'd call that "unfounded" rather than "superscience." Both systems would work perfectly well for negative identification - demonstrations that Person A is not Person B. It's just that they aren't trustworthy for positive identification: demonstrations that B is the same person as A.
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04-22-2018, 01:54 PM | #53 |
Join Date: Dec 2007
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Re: Tech Level Confusion
Incredibly better batteries are one very sound way to diverge technology from what we actually had. If that technology had been distributed to the world, it would have significantly changed the design of automobile and aeroplane engines.
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04-22-2018, 06:43 PM | #54 | ||
On Notice
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Sumter, SC
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Re: Tech Level Confusion
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Then there is another issue: how long the batteries last under load. Yes, Nemo says he get his supply of sodium from a base that uses coal power but he seems to take months before that sodium needs replenishing. (The Design of Jules Verne’s Submarine Nautilus) Even our TL8 batteries are not able to supply voltage for weeks much less months at a time as Nemo's batteries can. Last edited by maximara; 04-22-2018 at 07:12 PM. |
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04-22-2018, 06:54 PM | #55 |
Join Date: Dec 2007
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Re: Tech Level Confusion
Of course they're large and heavy. They're propelling a big submarine. But if the technology to build batteries that can propel such a vessel for months at tremendous underwater speeds, there is no reason to expect that the technology to build batteries to propel a car or a plane for many hundreds of miles can not be developed. And it wouldn't require any refinement whatsoever to to use those sub batteries to propel a train cross country.
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04-22-2018, 08:24 PM | #56 | |
Join Date: Jun 2005
Location: Lawrence, KS
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Re: Tech Level Confusion
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On the other hand, (a) Verne was portraying the batteries as the invention of a solitary genius (in the same spirit as Shelley's portrayal of animation of dead tissue, or Wells's of antigravity). So they didn't figure into the TL in the first place. But also, (b) it does not appear that Verne had done any calculation of energy density or the like, or of power requirements for submarine propulsion. So he probably didn't realize how radical a boost in power storage and output was implied by his story.
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04-22-2018, 10:10 PM | #57 | |
Join Date: Dec 2007
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Re: Tech Level Confusion
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As for Verne, sure he didn't do any calculation of energy density...but neither did I. But Verne wasn't an idiot. He would have understood that battery technology that could propel a large object underwater for months at a top speed so high that "ramming speed" was an effective weapon against metal hulled vessels is also something that could be used to propel trains and horseless carriages for a long time at any speed that could be safe on a 19th century road or set of rails. He just didn't care because like almost any good techno-thriller author he destroys it once its narrative purpose is done so he doesn't have to explain how this obviously revolutionary development didn't revolutionize diddly. But you could do a "steampunk" reality which is divergent from both our history and from the Steam Boy kind of steampunk because it's almost all about electric motors. So we have electric cars, electric planes, magnetically levitating trains tazers, and for that matter Tesla "death rays"...much of it of course fueled by dirty, dirty coal burning electric power plants which are the only place you'll find actual steam engines outside of railway museums. And with battery technology that great long distance power lines and alternating current never catch on. Instead they just ship electricity in batteries. Call it "Arronax". It would be 5+1 to 5+2 but a different divergence from the steampunk stereotype. Which brings us back to the subject of the TL 8+2 realities and how they can be differently divergent from each other. At the start of Ultratech they actually give examples of "Technology Paths" which would produce divergent technologies if they were present in the same universe. If you have 4 spacefaring cultures each "TL 10", but one is Cyberpunk, one is High Biotech, one is Safe-Tech, and one is Psitech, then as far as each is concerned the others are TL8+2, but each a different TL8+2. |
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04-23-2018, 12:42 AM | #58 |
Join Date: Dec 2006
Location: Meifumado
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Re: Tech Level Confusion
Or maybe a catchy X-punk name: Batterypunk? Sodiumpunk? Vernepunk, perhaps, but that would be better for in-era, not further down the techpath.
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04-23-2018, 01:22 AM | #59 |
Join Date: Dec 2007
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Re: Tech Level Confusion
To clarify, "Arronax" is my thought for an Infinity designation for the reality, since the technological revolution happens when Professor Arronax comes back having learned the secret of how to make the batteries. A genre name like "electropunk" is only really necessary when there are multiple examples of the thing being referred to.
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04-23-2018, 02:23 AM | #60 |
Join Date: Feb 2005
Location: Berkeley, CA
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Re: Tech Level Confusion
I would note that a lot of "X+Y" TLs are superscience of one sort or another, because they tend to be "the future as imagined at TL X", and there's usually a reason that imagination was wrong. Sometimes it's because we found something better than anyone imagined, but often it's because the thing they imagined was impractical or impossible for reasons that were either unknown or ignored at TL X.
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