Cultural Consequences of Rapid Technological Uplift
 

What kind of cultural effects would you predict of a society being rapidly brought from low to ultra-tech? Specifically TL 4 to TL 10.

How would such a society differ from naturally evolving societies of similar technological level?

Re: Cultural Consequences of Rapid Technological Uplift
 

Going by comparable shifts in history, a disproportionate amount would go to the perks of power at first, like luxuries and military spending. Military technology usually gets taken more eagerly for the survival consequences of being behind in that are obvious. Whereas other aspects might pay more attention to cultural difficulties.

Re: Cultural Consequences of Rapid Technological Uplift
 

An uneven spread of technologies. They might end up with Lots of infrastructure and not much to use it with. Housing may still look TL4 even though they have TL 10 gagdets.

Socially you may have a literacy problem. the ability to read and write is not terribly widespread in TL4 (its not as atrocious as whats under it though). Fixing this will need to be a major part of your uplift. In the short term, pictographic instructions on items will be incredibly wide spread. Either that or only the literate can use the newest stuff.

Re: Cultural Consequences of Rapid Technological Uplift
 

So, a TL10 culture finds a TL4 culture and goes, "You can play with our toys"? I imagine it'd be some combination of the Three Fs. The uplifted culture tries to kill the TL10 culture (Fight), the uplifted culture tries to kill itself (Flight) or the uplifted culture tries to merge into the TL10 culture (****).

Assuming the TL4 culture is composed of humans, that is.

Re: Cultural Consequences of Rapid Technological Uplift
 

Advanced culture "eats" the less advanced one with remnants of the old one handing on in tradition and oldsters getting overly nostalgic about the "good old times".

Look at what's left of Native American and Australian Aborigine cultures. Even without racism and violence, the end result would still be the same just over maybe a longer period.

Re: Cultural Consequences of Rapid Technological Uplift
 

This of course assumes that the two cultures are mingling rather than one doing something like telling just a few people how to make the tech

Re: Cultural Consequences of Rapid Technological Uplift
 

There is simply no way to keep that kind of thing secret... especially when going up 6 TLs.

Re: Cultural Consequences of Rapid Technological Uplift
 

Not the event... the culture. Rather than thinking about societies where the higher tech culture moved in and OUTNUMBERED the natives, think about one where you are giving them technology without moving in.

The example is much meeker, but the modernization of Arab countries is closer. Yeah, you are only jumping a few tech levels, but they didn't do the inventing and they aren't being swarmed with the other people.

Re: Cultural Consequences of Rapid Technological Uplift
 

Yep. The parable of the tribes will mean that societies that focus less on military technology will have difficulty competing with those who focus more on military technology. Of course they might not be helped out as much in military technology.

Right. What sort of effects do you think uneven tech will have that persists after the tech evens out?

There is a middle ground between secretly developing a societies technology and engulfing their society within your own. Of course there will be substantial transfer from the society with greater technology but there is at least some difference between "Take this stuff and use it like we do!" and "Here's some stuff, now what are you going to do with it?"

Re: Cultural Consequences of Rapid Technological Uplift
 

That reminds me of a ST:TNG episode in which a diplomat decided to "uphold" the prime directive by giving both sides of a conflict equal tech and fire power.

Yeah, not nice planet after that.

What would Cardinal Richelieu, King Richard, etc. have done with nukes?