Things TLs 7-9 would be interesting to see WITHOUT

[Joseph Paul]

Originally Posted by Nymdok

No GUI's: .... Tactile interfaces use the Keller-Sullivan model of spelling into the palm using a special glove.

Nymdok

And the glove spells back to you. Then one day someone puts the glove where it shouldn't go and "feelie porn" is born.

[NorphTehDwarf]

Monothiesm.

[capnq]

Originally Posted by Mailanka

That was my idea. The aliens figured out, hey, these rocks are a bit on the warm side. If you bring them together, they get warmer. I bet if you brought alot of them together and dunked them in some water, you'd get even better steam power than you get with coal.

Or something like that.

Natural nuclear reactors were hypothesized in 1956, and an example was found in 1972.

[daryen]

Originally Posted by NorphTehDwarf

Monothiesm.

Religion is fertile ground for wild permutations.

Rather than just eliminating Monotheism, go whole hog and and eliminate gods (particularly anthropomorphic gods). Religion never got past generalized "spirit" type of religions.

Or, go entirely opposite. One major trend of advancing technology (not just the use, but the process of developing it) is secularization. Assume (for whatever reason) that secularization does not happen. The "sacred" remains extremely powerful. They know God is there and still influences the world, even with modern technology.

Push it, even, and have God directly interact with the world such that it is obvious. There are no unbelievers, as the evidence is unassailable. (Whether God is really God, or whether God is a sham, or whether God is a time traveller/space alien/transendental/whatever is completely left up to the setting creator.)

Or, completely eliminate religion. For whatever reason, during the development of the species, religion never occurred. If it is here, it exists. If it isn't, it doesn't exist. Maybe in primitive times they had no need to explain the unexplainable. They didn't know why the seasons changed; they just knew they did. Later they figured out why, but it didn't cause problems because they had no wrong explanations as tradition that competed for belief. They don't worry about what happens after death; they only focus on their life while they have it.

[NorphTehDwarf]

But what would the Beatles be more popular than then?

[shadowjack]

Originally Posted by NorphTehDwarf

But what would the Beatles be more popular than then?

Sliced bread.

[shadowjack]

Originally Posted by Nymdok

Wow. I never thoguht of it that way, but your right. Withotu freight containers, ships would just be big floating free market bazaars with people walking onto and off of the boats to transact buisness because loading and unloading the boat would be such a pain.

Neat. I like the idea.

Nymdok

Alternatively, a situation akin to that before standardization of railroad gauges. Each shipping company uses its own containers; to shift to a different shipping line, you need to change containers. This worked with rail since, often, the rail company owned its tracks and trains; you couldn't simply move stock across. For ocean and river shipping, we'd need the shipping companies to have a similar monopoly over seaports; at specified ports, only Outer Eastern British Cambodian Company cargo vessels can land, etc.

[capnq]

Originally Posted by daryen

Push it, even, and have God directly interact with the world such that it is obvious. There are no unbelievers, as the evidence is unassailable. (Whether God is really God, or whether God is a sham, or whether God is a time traveller/space alien/transendental/whatever is completely left up to the setting creator.)

Unbelievers might admit God's existence, but not consider God worthy of worship.

That's how I justified my True Neutral gnome thief's agnosticism in my college D&D group. None of the campaign's demonstrably extant gods ever smote him, though.

[Kale]

We just met the Gods in our group's fantasy campaign. Our mage was an atheist. Boy was that awkward. @:-)

[Andygal]

I've got a good one. No mass media. News would be disiminated purely by word of mouth, by individuals. (if the Internet existed, the blogosphere would be most people's main source of news from outside their immediate area.)
think it would work?