TL 9 microchips?

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by Tom Mazanec

Could the microprocessors of the upcoming 2 nm node be considered TL 9?

This will only become clear in retrospect. It's a serious mistake for RPGs to try to predict technological progress. Classic Traveller attempted to do this, and there's a Murphy's Rules cartoon from 1981, pointing out that some then-current computers exceeded the capabilities of Traveller ones.

[RyanW]

Originally Posted by johndallman

This will only become clear in retrospect. It's a serious mistake for RPGs to try to predict technological progress. Classic Traveller attempted to do this, and there's a Murphy's Rules cartoon from 1981, pointing out that some then-current computers exceeded the capabilities of Traveller ones.

Don't forget Gibson's "three megabytes of hot ram"

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by johndallman

This will only become clear in retrospect. It's a serious mistake for RPGs to try to predict technological progress. Classic Traveller attempted to do this, and there's a Murphy's Rules cartoon from 1981, pointing out that some then-current computers exceeded the capabilities of Traveller ones.

If you're going to write science fiction set in the future, though, you probably have to predict technological progress—and accept the risk of getting it wrong.

[Johnny1A.2]

Originally Posted by whswhs

If you're going to write science fiction set in the future, though, you probably have to predict technological progress—and accept the risk of getting it wrong.

In either direction. For a while data storage and processing speeds in computers outraced all expectations, to the point that it started to define what people meant by 'technological progress' (just as improvements in air travel and rocketry did in the early 20C). But the Tyranny of the S curve always wins in the end.

The trick in SF is not to predict how it works but what it does.

Originally Posted by Opellulo

As the Wikipedia page clearly explains those 2nm microchips are just another iteration of the same MOSFET technology that's rocking around since the '60. If the question is about reaching TL9 electronics capabilities (and the discussion about "what is TL9?" is in itself another can of worms) then I think a more likely candidate would be quantum computing.

This^^^. It's not revolutionary new tech, it's an extreme refinement of old tech, the last gasps of Moore's Law. Granted, past a certain point a difference of degree can become a difference in kind, compare a Saturn V to a V-2, both basically the same thing, but extremely refined (and over a very short period, the V-2 was only 25 years before the S5). But in both cases it was a familiar tech being taken to extremes.

In SF, there's a tendency to 'read the present forward', whether the present means rocketry or information tech. For a while, SF was dominated by info tech, the obsession was 'when will we upload ourselves', or cyberpunk, or whatever iteration of Vinge's Singularity was in vogue. Stories that didn't assume a Singularity often felt the need to explain why.

But times change, and yesterday's tomorrow ages quickly, as one SF writer observed. Rocketry climbed the S curve quickly from the 1930s to the 1960s...and stalled. A story written in 1930 predicting human travel to the Moon in 2000 would have been undercut when in happened in 1969. A chastened SF 2writer writing in 1970 about permanent manned bases on Mars and Mercury by 2000...well, we haven't even been back to the Moon yet after over half a century. Cyberpunk is already deeply dated, and transhumanism is looking like following that path.

[Pursuivant]

Originally Posted by whswhs

If you're going to write science fiction set in the future, though, you probably have to predict technological progress—and accept the risk of getting it wrong.

But if you're clever, you just specify what a gadget can do and handwave exactly how it does it, using extrapolation of existing scientific principles. If you're doing space opera you can replace the extrapolation with dramatically plausible technobabble.

Giving actual numbers for a gadget, other than basic weights and dimensions, makes it very likely that your predictions will be comically incorrect in just a few decades (but with an infinitesimal chance that you're right and make way more off of patents or stocks than you're ever going to earn from your writing).

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Pursuivant

But if you're clever, you just specify what a gadget can do and handwave exactly how it does it, using extrapolation of existing scientific principles. If you're doing space opera you can replace the extrapolation with dramatically plausible technobabble.

Giving actual numbers for a gadget, other than basic weights and dimensions, makes it very likely that your predictions will be comically incorrect in just a few decades (but with an infinitesimal chance that you're right and make way more off of patents or stocks than you're ever going to earn from your writing).

On the other hand, simple narrative descriptions will often imply actual numbers. See for example Heinlein's Starman Jones, where astrogation problems are entered into a computer by looking up the decimal numbers in a table of decimal to binary conversions and manually entering the binary numbers!

[Rupert]

Originally Posted by whswhs

On the other hand, simple narrative descriptions will often imply actual numbers. See for example Heinlein's Starman Jones, where astrogation problems are entered into a computer by looking up the decimal numbers in a table of decimal to binary conversions and manually entering the binary numbers!

That was in a setting with strict trade guilds though, so I wonder how much of that was strictly necessary vs a powerful guild protecting its monopoly and its members jobs.

[sir_pudding]

Originally Posted by whswhs

On the other hand, simple narrative descriptions will often imply actual numbers. See for example Heinlein's Starman Jones, where astrogation problems are entered into a computer by looking up the decimal numbers in a table of decimal to binary conversions and manually entering the binary numbers!

Of course in real life from 2004-2008 ot thereabouts I did mortar FDC by putting a pencil dot on a rotatable piece of lucite, rotated the lucite until it was aligned with the direction of fire, read the deflection off a vernier scal (designed in the late 1800s) printed on the board and then looked up the charge and elevation in a big book of tables. In 2008 we got handheld ballistic mortar computers, and were still required to check the results by plotting board. I then often was expected to give the fire command by talking into a unpowered bakelite handset last manufactured probably about the time you, Bill, were born which then would transmit by conductance on.a copper wire by the same technology children used to use soup cans and string for. So while Bob, Navy man that he was, was certainly far off about the specifics, he was relating something essential about the military institutional mindset.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

Of course in real life from 2004-2008 ot thereabouts I did mortar FDC by putting a pencil dot on a rotatable piece of lucite, rotated the lucite until it was aligned with the direction of fire, read the deflection off a vernier scal (designed in the late 1800s) printed on the board and then looked up the charge and elevation in a big book of tables. In 2008 we got handheld ballistic mortar computers, and were still required to check the results by plotting board. I then often was expected to give the fire command by talking into a unpowered bakelite handset last manufactured probably about the time you, Bill, were born which then would transmit by conductance on.a copper wire by the same technology children used to used to use soup cans and string for. So while Bob, Navy man that he was, was certainly far off about the specifics, he was relating something essential about the military institutional mindset.

Well, yes, but the Asgard was a passenger liner, and not military at all.

[Rupert]

Originally Posted by johndallman

This will only become clear in retrospect. It's a serious mistake for RPGs to try to predict technological progress. Classic Traveller attempted to do this, and there's a Murphy's Rules cartoon from 1981, pointing out that some then-current computers exceeded the capabilities of Traveller ones.

Traveller didn't give sizes in real world terms, though. I understand that the authors knew that the model they used was obsolescent even when written, but felt it made for interesting game choices (do we run the improved aim software, or the improved dodge software?) Later supplements and edition went for a more abstract approach.

OTOH, in 2300AD some of those same authors did make the mistake of listing the storage size of the hand computers and their data chips (200MB, as I recall).

One thing that I remember is a comment by a guy who worked on oil rig IT. He said that he laughed at Traveller's huge computers until he saw the size of the controlling electronics on rigs. Being made to take abuse and bad weather and to control heavy machinery they themselves were very heavy and there were many boxes over the whole rig.