Relating tech levels for non-tech/history people

[Lofgeornost]

We still have tribal societies in the world today, and their state is more of a function of isolation than anything else. You can also see tribal societies where folks live in villages out in the middle of the cuds but have cell phones.

I did a sci-fi setting where I mostly threw out the concept of tech level. There are some specific examples of isolation, which are there specifically as a mcguffin, but otherwise it's assumed that if a technology is on the market it will get pretty much everywhere fairly quickly. You can see something a bit like it in Star Wars, where the technology just sits in the ambient environment.

Yeah. Another issue is that some elements of technology really don't change much after a certain point. A spoon from Cicero's time looks a little different than one made today, but does precisely the same thing, in the same way. So are our eating utensils at an earlier tech level, or did the Romans have 21st-century spoon tech?

I suppose large and persistent differences in tech level would fit with one spin on the Star Trek setting--the p.c.s are part of an organization that visits or does surveillance on planets without 'warp drive' (or maybe just spacecraft) but does not share more advanced tech with them.

 

[Nobby-W]

[ . . . ]

I suppose large and persistent differences in tech level would fit with one spin on the Star Trek setting--the p.c.s are part of an organization that visits or does surveillance on planets without 'warp drive' (or maybe just spacecraft) but does not share more advanced tech with them.

Certainly, this is a case where this sort of thing matters and it would be relevant to the setting. In other settings it might not matter so much, and that's before getting into the debate about what extent it makes sense to view technology as a linear progression - for example, in Project Hail Mary where the aliens had really advanced materials tech but had never invented computers.

 

[xanther]

Yeah. Another issue is that some elements of technology really don't change much after a certain point. A spoon from Cicero's time looks a little different than one made today, but does precisely the same thing, in the same way. So are our eating utensils at an earlier tech level, or did the Romans have 21st-century spoon tech?
....

I believe the general idea is some things level out at a certain tech level and then after that it gets improved materials, ease in manufacture and thus decreased cost. For spoons...maybe you go from a shell that can break and need to find, to clay, or carved wood, to metal (less absorbent) that are hand made and then at higher tech levels they are stamped out at a 100 per minute.

I never did it for spoons, but do it for automobiles and other things important in-game where TL is when first possible, and at the beginning they are few only the rich and powerful have, then they become common and then at some TL they become obsolete and collectors items (not spoons though).

I'd say a higher TL polity could completely destroy local industry of a lower TL polity, just imagine if we used our current TL to make cars for the market in 1930? Even not using more advanced materials, our designs would likely be more reliable and cheaper to produce with our higher TL machinery. If the difference in TL is just "slight" the higher TL polity might just dump it's old tech on the lower TL polity where it is new tech.

What do lower TL polities have to offer a TL trader? There are the classics like resources and labor, which in my view may be greatly diminished (who needs metal from a world when you can mine asteroid, and labor may not know the basics to make or operate anything useful and likely less efficient than machines). I'd say what low TL worlds have that high TL worlds may want is unique biologics and art. It may be labor if the locals can be trained, but beware filling your army from such worlds, just look at what happened to the Jotoki when they used Kzin as mercenaries.