TL9: what does microtech mean?

[Tom Mazanec]

Basic Set p 511 says that TL9 starts next year. It is called the Microtech Age. I know what nanotech means...K. Eric Drexler laid that out fairly well. But what about microtech? The age is described as having real time virtuality...is this like VR parks? It has artificial intelligence, of which there is quite a buzz now. And it seems all the TL9 items in Ultratech have prototypes in the real world.
What is microtech? We have had microscopic components of technology for decades, pretty much the whole of TL8.
Thoughts?

[Astromancer]

It's the scale between. It's also early uses of nanotechnology. Right now they are prototyping artificial enzymes. These aren't the nanomachines that Drexler spoke of, the nano assemblers aren't here yet, but they are useful devices a couple of orders of magnitude smaller than we've used before on this planet.

Microtech also includes things like tiny (smaller than the diameter of a human hair) sensors geared to detect one molecule or closely related set of molecules. These sensors save industry billions.

Nanotubes and buckyballs fall in this area as well.

[Eric Funk]

Originally Posted by Tom Mazanec

Basic Set p 511 says that TL9 starts next year.

What is microtech?
Thoughts?

I suggest reading the whole page of Ultra-tech (4e) p. 6 "TL9- The Microtach age". : P
Summing: printed computers, micro sensors, smart materials, space elvators, free nuclear fusion, cybernetics, ubiquitous non-ai robots, biotech bio-mod revolution.

It is then fleshed out for different genres across pp.8-11...

Oh, re-reading the OP question I will point to the "Progression start dates" table on UT8. "2025" is a "Fast" progression for TL9 which notes the predictions were established in 1980. Because of our timeline's choices we are not on track for a mature TL9 at 2025, perhaps "medium" at 2030(!) but more pessimistic at "Retarded" timeline 2050. : P

With this, see "Variations within a TL" B511

(Hopefiully I improved on silence)

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by Eric Funk

"2025" is a "Fast" progression for TL9 which notes the predictions were established in 1980. Because of our timeline's choices we are not on track for a mature TL9 at 2025, perhaps "medium" at 2030(!) but more pessimistic at "Retarded" timeline 2050. : P

Honestly, it's probably more that our actual TL 9 looks a lot different from what UT predicted - which is hardly surprising, predicting the future is a difficult thing to do! A lot of things it predicted have been harder to achieve than expected (fusion's a big one here, as is actual AI), and there's also been an issue of many of the technologies not having a lot of apparent demand, at least not enough to justify much R&D on them (caseless ammo, gyrocs, etc). I've seen some fairly convincing arguments that we're already in our world's version of TL 9, at least the early bits, which I'd call something like the "Connected Age" - near-ubiquitous communications (via near-ubiquitous internet connectivity) has resulted in major social and technological changes, and modern "AI" - which seems very different from UT's AI - has also been making some major waves. Social media has also been a big deal - I'd argue mostly for the negative (increased anxiety/stress, proliferation of echo chambers, etc) - and I don't think UT really predicted anything quite like it (there are some parallels to the forums, BBS's, chatrooms, etc that we see the commentators participating in in the little blurbs giving flavor to various bits, but social media's a rather different beast, I believe).

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by Varyon

I've seen some fairly convincing arguments that we're already in our world's version of TL 9, at least the early bits, which I'd call something like the "Connected Age" - near-ubiquitous communications (via near-ubiquitous internet connectivity) has resulted in major social and technological changes

Yup. Also, high-end mobile devices are catching up to the high-end desktop computers of ten years ago. They have similar levels of RAM, storage and computing power. Their smaller sizes mean their user interfaces have to work a bit differently, but since there's lots of money to be made, that's happening. They're getting the application software too, gradually.

Originally Posted by Varyon

and modern "AI" - which seems very different from UT's AI - has also been making some major waves.

This is floating on a huge amount of hype. That's happening because the Software-as-a-Service companies have mostly saturated their markets, and need new things to sell to keep the investors agreeing to management's bonuses.

Large Language Model "AI" is not completely useless. but it's much less generally useful than it's being painted.

Originally Posted by Varyon

Social media has also been a big deal - I'd argue mostly for the negative (increased anxiety/stress, proliferation of echo chambers, etc) - and I don't think UT really predicted anything quite like it

No, it didn't. The negative consequences are largely a result of the funding model.

Really large social networks benefit from economic "network effects" in that they're likely to have someone who's interested in the same stuff as you. But they're also too large for anyone to find the stuff they're interested in easily. So, some kind of tag- or keyword-matching algorithm is required to feed people stuff they might be interested in. Then "likes" and recommendations let people curate their feeds.

There are two separate sets of actors gaming the system:

• The operators of the network make their money from advertising. So they want to maximise the time people spend using the system. It turns out that the best way to do that with humans is to feed them some upsetting content; if everything is too nice and they're relaxed, they may take their eyeballs elsewhere. Outrage keeps them scrolling. So the feed algorithms are tuned to do that, spreading anxiety.
• Other parties who want to use the network for influence set up lots of accounts, who make posts on their topic, with a certain amount of disguising chaff. Those "like" each others' posts, making them look more credible.

These forums don't have those problems, because they're fairly small, allowing people to actually know each other, and read everything they're interested in without burning up lots of time. They also don't have any kind of "liking" or scoring system, forcing posts to stand on their own merits. The zero tolerance policy on spam and sock-puppets helps too.