Things TLs 7-9 would be interesting to see WITHOUT

[thulben]

Originally Posted by Mailanka

Here's one I've been considering for an alien race: the presence of nuclear power, but not nuclear weapons. I'm not sure how plausible that is, though. Any thoughts?

If you're willing to consider "alternative physics", perhaps the nuclear reaction produces the same amount of energy, but over a much longer time. The difference between something that explodes and something that burns is merely the rate of the reaction. I don't, however, know what implications such alternative physics has...

[thulben]

Originally Posted by Molokh

Umm, not necessarily all these things at the same time.

Well, there was a time when a typical user didn't always have Windows (back in the 3.1 days), and most couldn't afford a Mac.

Yep...and that time didn't see the kind of market penetration that we have today. The thing of it is that the "typical" user (if there is such a thing) back in those days was interested in the computer because either s/he was good a seeing the potential for it to be a game changer or was just interested in it from a hobbyist's perspective. So to say that the typical user did things a certain way is slightly misleading since the typical user didn't represent the typical person. Today, it does.

[sjard]

Pre GUI I don't think there was a typical user. Everyone had their own personal preferences as to which dos commands to use for example. Or how to set up their machines or system files.

For example, I was one of only a handful of people locally who seemed to even know about the dir/p command when everyone else seemed to just stick with either dir or dir/w.

One guy I knew had hugely complex autoexec.bat files to work around the 640k barrier. It involved about 80 lines of code telling the machine to load, run, and then unload the various TSR programs.

My preferred method was to add more than 640k of onboard memory to the motherboard (most boards before the 486dx2 had half a dozen chip slots for this).

The number of people using computers jumped dramatically when programs like Xtree showed up. That program used a GUI directory tree that is very similar to what is still used today.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Molokh

Well, there was a time when a typical user didn't always have Windows (back in the 3.1 days), and most couldn't afford a Mac.

Yes, and computers were not used by nearly so many people.

I vividly remember the class where I was introduced to word processing, on a DOS version of Word . . . I detested it so much that I swore never to use word processing again for the rest of my life. The only way to tell the program to do anything was to look on a scribbled list of F keys and what each one did, which had no mnemonic value at all. There was often no obvious on-screen indicator of what it had done or was doing. And when I ran into problems, the TA's advice was that I had to sit and fiddle around with the computer until I was familiar with how it worked . . . which was not welcome advice, first, because I was taking time out of my work week to use the computer lab and grudged every minute I spent there that wasn't actually getting my papers written (this was a writing class, not a computer class), and second, because fiddling around with a computer was as utterly unrewarding as any activity I could imagine.

Then I did some volunteer work where I was asked to use a Macintosh, and I've never looked back.

Obviously, there are people who like the arcane aspects of computer use: the memorized codes, the precise syntax, the logic puzzles, and so on. But that's a specialized mindset. And without GUI, computer use would be much more restricted to people who had that specialized mindset . . . to programmers, more than users.

Bill Stoddard

[Ragitsu]

Democracy.

[Tema69]

Originally Posted by Ragitsu

Democracy.

Good one. It doesn't necessarily involve fascism (that's already used quite a lot in sci-fi and alternate history fiction). It could be feudalism? How would a TL9 Feudal world be?
Or Greek-style democracy (only landowning free (male) citizens may vote)? That would be interesting, especially around TL6-7 IMHO.

[nick012000]

Originally Posted by Tema69

Good one. It doesn't necessarily involve fascism (that's already used quite a lot in sci-fi and alternate history fiction). It could be feudalism? How would a TL9 Feudal world be?

It'd wind up as a dictatorship, except instead of it being led by the Leader, it's led by the King, and instead of a cabal of followers heading various agencies, he's got various nobles doing the same thing.

[Tema69]

Originally Posted by nick012000

It'd wind up as a dictatorship, except instead of it being led by the Leader, it's led by the King, and instead of a cabal of followers heading various agencies, he's got various nobles doing the same thing.

Then perhaps assume a Reich-5 Japan-style Samurai/Feudalism fantasy, where all ruling parts have the ideology required to keep it a feudal society...

[Nymdok]

Originally Posted by Molokh

• No Superpowers (i.e. all countries are no larger than England, Poland, France etc.).
• No centralized cellphone systems (but radio relays are fully maintained by volunteers, linux-style).
• No intellectual property, but only in the world of software.
• No internet.
• No GUIs.

On superpowers - England was a superpower in its own right a hundred or so years back. I cant imagine a world without superpowers. It seems as if there would always be a power vaccuum. World powers polarize and focus the people of the world withtheir ideologies. Its not nessesarily a bad thing.

Switchboards run by voulenteers - Seeing the untapped potential for research, psychology,sociology, criminology, political science and marketing majors line up for their opportunity to hear first hand whats on the minds of the people of the world. Its not unlike the searh bars that report your webtraffic. People accept outright that anything you broadcast is by definition NOT private and are therefor NOT bothered by it, but they are a bit more careful about what they say.

No intellectual Property - Software is developed in sourceforge style and offered freely. Sadly it is largely second rate and poorly written. What does survive is largely goverenment sponsered but, like so many goverenment projects, is over written, poorly executed, over staffed, under productive and treated with suspicion.

No Internet - The internet never develops in its current form. Instead, BBS remain the dominate digital social interaction and at seperate times during the day each BBS will shut down to upload E-Mail to a cluster of BBS creating a digital Pony Express.

No GUI's: In a law suit against Microsoft and Macintosh that claims that Graphic User interfaces discriminate against the visually impaired, all computers shipped MUST have Graphic/Audio/Tactile interfaces installed. Audio interfaces require the use of voice recognition and require that the computer be able to differentaite commands from conversattion. To facilitate this, computers only respond to commands in Khoesian 'clicking' languages of africa. Tactile interfaces use the Keller-Sullivan model of spelling into the palm using a special glove.

Nymdok

[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.