Hyperdepression and technological regression

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth

...Yes, we've mostly if not entirely lost the art of swordmaking, what with the 200+ years since artisinal swords were a product in great demand. But we didn't lose it to societal collapse, we lost it to obsolescence.

Which is another reason "technology loss" doesn't make a lot of sense describing this sort of situation. If the reason it isn't produced anymore is because there is no demand, is that really loss, or just change? And does it make a difference if the reason there is no demand is not that people wouldn't like to have it but that nobody can afford to pay for it?

There is lots of stuff like that really - the Roman concrete one fits in nicely, and the ever popular we couldn't rebuild the Apollo program is a more modern example, but is that actually regression if nobody is trying? It's certainly not an actual TL loss, just a change in the market.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by malloyd

Which is another reason "technology loss" doesn't make a lot of sense describing this sort of situation. If the reason it isn't produced anymore is because there is no demand, is that really loss, or just change? And does it make a difference if the reason there is no demand is not that people wouldn't like to have it but that nobody can afford to pay for it?

There is lots of stuff like that really - the Roman concrete one fits in nicely, and the ever popular we couldn't rebuild the Apollo program is a more modern example, but is that actually regression if nobody is trying? It's certainly not an actual TL loss, just a change in the market.

One of the things I ran into in writing Future History is the Kondratiev/Schumpeter theory that periods of economic growth see a wave of new inventions being brought into production (which might sometimes amount to gaining a TL), but economic contractions squeeze out the older, obsolete, or less profitable technologies. That doesn't sound like going back a TL, but if anything more like losing some things from earlier TLs.

[Tom Mazanec]

BTW, could a pandemic like c1600 America smallpox or a war using our current nuke stockpile do a TL regression? Or are those too "mild"?

[PTTG]

Modern nuclear war would very likely result in localized TL loss and, depending on where and what was destroyed and the knock-on effects, possibly more general loss. Would be something like TL7+1, though, with a lot of scavenger tech making for big changes compared to both TL 7 and TL 8.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by PTTG

Modern nuclear war would very likely result in localized TL loss and, depending on where and what was destroyed

Localized death where the bombs hit is a certainty but where that is is important.

Targeting your enemy's nuclear and stategic convnetional weapons is logical and after that you could target transportation centers to induce logistical paralysis.

After that though you probably run out of sane reasons to drop bombs. Loonies with bombs is possible of course but what would happen probably isn't predictable.

Loss of military facilities wouldn't result in TL loss. Those were end users and not producers. Damage to the transportation network would likely be temporary barring utter catastrophe that would affect far more anyway.

Big airports were not built historically until TL7 but could have been built with lower TL equipment, TL6 at a minmum. Railroads (at least slow freight) are solidly tL5 and ports are at least that low.

So someone able to carry on at TL6-7 but not able to build back to TL8 except perhaps on a generational basis does not seem very likely to me.

[Willy]

A large scale nuclear war, even if fought "logical" and strictly hitting military targets and transportation key points will result in a large scale die off in the event and even more in the aftermath.

This die off will surely result in the wide loss of knowledge, because it are people who carry ther knowledge and produce the tech. I can´t imagine a university still going on on a even medium scale for decades thereafter.

Also you should keep in mind that many "modern" countrys are prone to a strategic theory which rates population as a primary target to prevent rebuilding and counterstrikes. MAD is about mass destruction and obliterating the other side not precisson strikes.

By the way swords and even lances were produced with modernized industrial techniques into WWI, in case of the lances even a breaking point was created so a stuck lance in a charge couldn´t dismount a rider. The military use of this stuff was trained even into WWII. The death of military cavalry was WWII not WWI.

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by malloyd

Which is another reason "technology loss" doesn't make a lot of sense describing this sort of situation. If the reason it isn't produced anymore is because there is no demand, is that really loss, or just change? And does it make a difference if the reason there is no demand is not that people wouldn't like to have it but that nobody can afford to pay for it?

There is lots of stuff like that really - the Roman concrete one fits in nicely, and the ever popular we couldn't rebuild the Apollo program is a more modern example, but is that actually regression if nobody is trying? It's certainly not an actual TL loss, just a change in the market.

In what way would it not be technology loss, once the technology is in fact lost?

It's not generally a TL regression but can easily be a regression in narrow tech sub fields (like heavy boost rocketry) or larger fields that have been entirely displaced by a replacement (mechanical calculation engines maybe?)

Obviously a hyperdepression could do this to modern technologies - if it goes long enough and people don't recognize what's happening and archive the knowledge rather than allowing it to rot. And if a 'nobody can buy modern technology' hyperdepression is an actual thing at all. Those seem like a lot of big ifs though.

[Willy]

Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth

Obviously a hyperdepression could do this to modern technologies - if it goes long enough and people don't recognize what's happening and archive the knowledge rather than allowing it to rot..

It may be a bit out of topic, but gouvernments DO take countermeasures for technological and environmental regression.

There are for the environmental part, national and international attemps to store seeds and genetic material, in case a species dies out, or is no longer used in the agricultural sector.

Countrys have sometimes vast storages of there cultural heritage protected for the future.

In the case of technology nearly every gouverment has hidden vaults to prevent the loss of key knowledge. Some of them go so far that they not only storage the tools necessary to read that material, but add the step by step from scratch blueprints to build that readers.

The problem is, for the security of all that, public knowledge of that places is very limited, add that they are most often in remote locations it´s hard to stumble over them by accident. The search for that vaults is a good campaign seed if you ask me.

Of course in a long term economic crisis that vaults can be early abandoned if gouvernment goals change to more short term decissions. rmember the collaps of the UDSSR even large military bases in remote locations were abandoned overnight leaving all the stuff there which was not quickly movable or worth the trouble. Often to a level were older planes and tanks lied there to rust away. In some eastgerman bases for example a whole bunch of T90 / 72 tank towers were found in fully workable condition with canons and all that.

[TGLS]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

After that though you probably run out of sane reasons to drop bombs. Loonies with bombs is possible of course but what would happen probably isn't predictable.

There's a twisted logic to the targeting of civilians, as it motivates your adversary to not put you in a position where you have no choice but to go ahead with nuclear war. Whether or not this means TL loss probably depends more on whether unaligned nations are targeted or if nuclear winter is valid.

[Johnny1A.2]

Originally Posted by ravenfish

The example of Roman concrete brings to mind the fact that, despite the fall of the Roman empire bringing a dramatic social and economic collapse, there was remarkably little outright technological regression, and, indeed, technological progress continued throughout the so-called "dark ages". Even in the hinterlands of Europe, metallurgy, shipbuilding, and (military and religious) architecture continued to advance, and technology such as the wind and water mill that had been present but underutilized was brought out and developed when the collapse of the slave-labor system increased the need for it.

This concept is a place where the GURPS (and other) 'level' system of assessing technology breaks down. In the aftermath of the fall of the Roman Empire (and with it Classical Civilization more generally), some technologies continued to advance, others went backwards as they fell out of general use.
Some remained theoretically available, in that the necessary knowledge was written down somewhere, but in practice unavailable.

A technology can be lost from lack of use, because if demand for it falls off long enough, nobody bothers to learn it or master it, and after a while the requisite knowledge is lost (either entirely or locally). But that's a specific thing.

Technologies can also be available in theory but unusable in practice if the political, economic, or religious foundation for their use collapses. With the Roman Empire's government also went much of the wide-spread trade network and the convenient forms of finance. If the Church had not remained to provide a large-scale social foundation, more might well have been lost than was.

To use a modern example, techno-dreamers sometimes like to imagine continent-wide or world-wide power grids enabling truly large-scale use of solar power, vast arrays of solar panels in deserts in the American Southwest and/or the Sahara sending their power to Europe and the U.S. Northeast or Canada, things like that.

These visions are quite plausible...in terms of technology. We know how to do it, we could build such systems...but politically and economically it's a non-starter in a world made up of potentially hostile, squabbling sovereign polities.

If someone unified the world, such systems might be built, and run for decades or centuries...and then if the world state collapsed back into separate sovereignties for whatever reason, the system would probably quickly break down, even though the tech itself had not been lost.

Likewise, in an ATE scenario where almost all the tech is retained, but large-scale social and economic organization is disrupted, anything relying on satellites might quickly become a memory. The tech would not be 'lost', but it would no longer be practical to launch and maintain elaborate orbital infrastructures for observation and communications even so.

So in a particular ATE scenario, some technologies might even be more advanced than what we have now, but weather forecasting and reconnaissance might be lowered to levels last seen in the 1950s or worse.

The 'tech level' abstraction isn't terribly useful for capturing that.