Homeline electronics

[TGLS]

Homeline’s space program is static, devoted to mining Earth-grazing asteroids rather than terraforming Mars or settling orbital space.

Just one thing that popped out at me before addressing the question: if Homeline can just hop over to another Earth and plunder that world's mineral wealth, why are they bothering with space mining? Space mining remains dubious in our world because of the costs of shipping everything around, and with Homeline having what amounts to teleportation to a remote mining site, I don't know why anyone would bother there.

Originally Posted by warellis

Homeline is probably(?) more advanced in computing, as shown by the palmtop mentioned here

The palmtop is comparable to a TL9 Personal Computer with Genius (UT22) or a TL10 Personal Computer with an 1000th of the storage. The price is too low though.

However, due to both the period when Infinite Worlds was first written, and due to Homeline's own stagnating scientific achievements (why innovate when you can steal), is it possible some, or many, of the current personal electronics and interconnectivity we take for granted may not have really happened in Homeline by the 2020s, due to its particular focus on stealing other worlds' tech?

I think that might be one of a few causes rather than the sole cause. The root cause still looks like interworld travel. I think the main causes are probably a mix of:
1) Interworld spin-offs siphoning off capital that would have gone to internet companies in OTL. (Van Zandt revealed his technology to the world in '98, right before the early internet boom)
2) The internet doesn't really work for the colonies. There's no cross-time radio, and so any of the colony worlds are effectively dead-zones. Streaming services wouldn't be able to serve the small but affluent class of interworld colonists.
3) Technology theft. I think there are 2 reasons why Homeline has trouble stealing internet tech:
3a) Many of the advanced worlds don't have the internet the same way as OTL. Shikaku-Mon is a hyper-paranoid world where spying is apparently a world sport. Caliph is at war. Steel's internet was literally blown up. All echoes terminate in the 90s. None t have internet like our world.
3b) The server-side applications that are typical on OTL's internet are resistant to Homeline's brand of technological theft. White Star can't go to Facebook/Netflix/etc. and ask to license it's technology.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by warellis

Do you think Homeline's TL8 tech may thus be a little weird to real life eyes?

.

One thing that might make it weird is that a big chunk of that text you quoted appears to have ben lifted from a 3e publication and using 3e TL scale (even though I'm sure you found it in a 4e book). This is shown not only by the 1998 comparison date but the laser rifles at TL8 as well as other things.

It would take some significant effort to redo things so that Homeline mentions were pure 4e. A little of this was done in Infinte Worlds. Originally in 3e both Homeline and Centrum used sonic stunners all over the place. In IW Homeline uses bulky electrolasers and Centrum has ^ neural stunners.

[patchwork]

Nobody ever wants to examine Homeline politics in detail because it challenges a lot of the assumptions of the framework, and anyway people play the game in order to have fun on the variant worldlines. But it has always seemed to me that conditions on Homeline are actually wildly uneven.

The decision to structure Infinity like a for-profit corporation (despite it being unclear who the 'shareholders' are) Pretty much dictates who benefits from it and has access to it and who doesn't; if you were rich in the 1990s you are unfathomably rich now, and if you weren't....well. The USA and Western Europe are top of the heap, Japan, Russia and China are good enough to stay in the game as second-tier players, while the Middle East collapsed when the whole world started sourcing oil outtime and Africa and Latin America weren't rich enough to get a Projector built on their soil or compete in the export market with outtime. Were I to run a Homeline-centered campaign, I'd bet the scientific tradition, dead in Europe and North America, is still alive in Latin America, and could surprise Infinity in a possibly nasty way.

[warellis]

Originally Posted by TGLS

The palmtop is comparable to a TL9 Personal Computer with Genius (UT22) or a TL10 Personal Computer with an 1000th of the storage. The price is too low though.

It's kind of interesting what you say here considering what High Tech: Electricity and Electronics says:

From High-Tech to Ultra-Tech
Under the alternative rules for the Complexity of TL8 computers, an advanced-VLSI computer is the equivalent of a TL9 computer in GURPS Ultra-Tech. Ultratech computers might well be even more advanced. What can such a computer do?

One way to approach this is to assess the complexity of tasks such as scientific modeling more realistically. For example, in 2007, a Swiss research institute used an IBM Blue Gene/L supercomputer to simulate one cortical column of a rat brain at the molecular level. This was a fast advanced-VLSI macroframe (see Processing Power, pp. 36-37), giving it Complexity 9. A human brain has one million cortical columns, each about six times as complex as a rat’s; the Complexity of a molecular-level human-brain simulation would be at least 16!

Whether computers continue to progress after TL8 is uncertain. It’s commonly believed that Moore’s Law (see Miniaturization, p. 6) is reaching its limits; advanced VLSI might be the best possible. Proposed new methods, such as three-dimensional integrated circuits, use of carbon nanotubes instead of silicon, or a change from electronics to photonics, might enable further improvement. Or a superscience form of computation might be discovered and change everything.

It seems TL8 supercomputers can sort of reach TL9 in GURPS?

Originally Posted by TGLS

I think that might be one of a few causes rather than the sole cause. The root cause still looks like interworld travel. I think the main causes are probably a mix of:
1) Interworld spin-offs siphoning off capital that would have gone to internet companies in OTL. (Van Zandt revealed his technology to the world in '98, right before the early internet boom)
2) The internet doesn't really work for the colonies. There's no cross-time radio, and so any of the colony worlds are effectively dead-zones. Streaming services wouldn't be able to serve the small but affluent class of interworld colonists.
3) Technology theft. I think there are 2 reasons why Homeline has trouble stealing internet tech:
3a) Many of the advanced worlds don't have the internet the same way as OTL. Shikaku-Mon is a hyper-paranoid world where spying is apparently a world sport. Caliph is at war. Steel's internet was literally blown up. All echoes terminate in the 90s. None t have internet like our world.
3b) The server-side applications that are typical on OTL's internet are resistant to Homeline's brand of technological theft. White Star can't go to Facebook/Netflix/etc. and ask to license it's technology.

Hmm do you think then Homeline's smartphone equivalents may have less functionality, in some ways, than ours do?

Like its Internet or colony Internets, are less connectable to such tech?

And in retrospect, regarding Shikaku-Mon, a TL8 society with smartphones, video recording & streaming, and civilian drones might be considered equally as nosy regarding apying.

[ericthered]

Originally Posted by TGLS

Just one thing that popped out at me before addressing the question: if Homeline can just hop over to another Earth and plunder that world's mineral wealth, why are they bothering with space mining? Space mining remains dubious in our world because of the costs of shipping everything around, and with Homeline having what amounts to teleportation to a remote mining site, I don't know why anyone would bother there.

On the other hand, they have fantastic reasons to muck around in space: parachronic satellites are very useful for imaging and communication, once you've confirmed that the timeline can't pick them up. The does keep you pretty close to earth though.

[warellis]

Originally Posted by ericthered

On the other hand, they have fantastic reasons to muck around in space: parachronic satellites are very useful for imaging and communication, once you've confirmed that the timeline can't pick them up. The does keep you pretty close to earth though.

So they can do cross-time communications, but I guess they don't have enough bandwidth for streaming?

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by warellis

So they can do cross-time communications, but I guess they don't have enough bandwidth for streaming?

There's mention of one cross-time visual communications method but I think it's cutting edge and not-reliable. Almost all communications travel by conveyor with mini-conveyor drones being available for field work.

[warellis]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

There's mention of one cross-time visual communications method but I think it's cutting edge and not-reliable. Almost all communications travel by conveyor with mini-conveyor drones being available for field work.

So communications, possibly more due to parachronics than anything else, has to be more like recording a message and sending it via drone back to Homeline?

What about Centrum, any mention of what their parachronic communications are like, or personal electronics are like? Seems like they don't have an Internet really:

Centrum is basically TL8, with a few TL9 devices. Not valuing rapid technological progress, it has been at TL8 for almost a century, and its machines bear the marks of decades of slow improvement: they are reliable and rugged rather than flashy and “cutting-edge.” Standardized power cells are used for all equipment that doesn’t connect to the electricity grid. Computers are very common, but usually limited-program; there are lots of special-purpose networks, but no Internet.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by warellis

So communications, possibly more due to parachronics than anything else, has to be more like recording a message and sending it via drone back to Homeline?

What about Centrum, any mention of what their parachronic communications are like, or what their computers & personal electronics are like?

I'd think that routine communications just got delivered to the next regular conveyor. So it's more like sending snail mail though in high traffic timelines it might rise to the point of emulating the snail mail in Victorian London where you could send off a letter in the first post of the day and get your reply in the last. They picked up and delivered mail 6 to 8 times a day in Victorian London.

Centrum's "regular" parachronics are more advanced and polished than Homeline's but they may not do as much experimental work. They have btter bionics and some borrowed superscience like those neural stunners but in general they may be behind Homeline tech-wise. They use fission rather than fusion. They may gnerally do less tech pirating than Homeline. At leas tthey didn't before they encountered Homeline and msotly jsut exploited "empty" worldlines..

Their authoritarian meritocracy probably does not lend itself to great freedom in personal electronics. They might be almost Soviet-like in handing out personal goods as standard items at a given status rather than having any sort of free market for anything.

[warellis]

I thought Centrum was exploiting other worldlines mostly for migrant workers essentially, without any option of letting them become citizens (though their kids could become citizens)?

Honestly Centrum is kind of weird for being as expansionist as it is regarding taking over other worldlines.