There are some important technologies that I think need to have their implications thought through if I am going to use them in the SFnal setting I've been pondering. Often a writer it seems through san idea out there and then explores it a little without thinking about the knock-on effects of that tech. Some writers admit they did this: Larry Niven about his Known Space books, frex.
However, that's not really what got me thinking this way. It was actually SHWI that started me pondering knock-ons and effects. Spinning out an idea for historical What-ifs might be fun, but you can't have Saladin lose in the wars with the Crusader kingdoms and expect that there will still be a Winston Churchill, WW2, and the subsequent Cold War. The earlier and more radical the change, the more profound the following effects.
This definitely doesn't just apply to historical events. This also applies to the introduction of technologies. In computing, esp in supercomputing, we talk about disruptive technologies. These are ones that appear out of left field and radically change the way our industry is run. Let's take the PC revolution and teh associated developments there. During the 1980s, PCs started pouring out of the labs and into the home at an ever increasing rate. It hita critical mass, oh say about the late 1980s. Computer technology started being driven more by the PC folk than the supercomputing crowd there. This launched in the early 1990s the so-called 'Attack of the Killer Micros' where first Massively Parallel Processors and then clusters of computers ravaged the traditional supercomputing technologies, sidelining them based on price/performance ratios. This killed numerous HPC companies. There is really one dedicated supercomputing company left in the USA. The others are branches of much larger companies like IBM, HP, and SGI. That was a knock-on effect. No one would have thought that those PCs would almost kill off a very innovative industry when they started out.
That's a pretty good example of what I mean. SFnal authors often toss out tech w/o thinking about it that much. If you're to do that, I think, then you ought to think about what that means. Not just scribble a note and move on. If I want a world where widespread MHD fusion usage, cheap automated manufacturing, brain-to-machine direct interfaces, and interstellar travel are present, I better have the knock-ons - or at least plausible ones - ironed out when I set fingers to keys.
That, however, is just my thoughts on the matter.
This also wasn't what I planned to write about too actually. Nichevo.
However, that's not really what got me thinking this way. It was actually SHWI that started me pondering knock-ons and effects. Spinning out an idea for historical What-ifs might be fun, but you can't have Saladin lose in the wars with the Crusader kingdoms and expect that there will still be a Winston Churchill, WW2, and the subsequent Cold War. The earlier and more radical the change, the more profound the following effects.
This definitely doesn't just apply to historical events. This also applies to the introduction of technologies. In computing, esp in supercomputing, we talk about disruptive technologies. These are ones that appear out of left field and radically change the way our industry is run. Let's take the PC revolution and teh associated developments there. During the 1980s, PCs started pouring out of the labs and into the home at an ever increasing rate. It hita critical mass, oh say about the late 1980s. Computer technology started being driven more by the PC folk than the supercomputing crowd there. This launched in the early 1990s the so-called 'Attack of the Killer Micros' where first Massively Parallel Processors and then clusters of computers ravaged the traditional supercomputing technologies, sidelining them based on price/performance ratios. This killed numerous HPC companies. There is really one dedicated supercomputing company left in the USA. The others are branches of much larger companies like IBM, HP, and SGI. That was a knock-on effect. No one would have thought that those PCs would almost kill off a very innovative industry when they started out.
That's a pretty good example of what I mean. SFnal authors often toss out tech w/o thinking about it that much. If you're to do that, I think, then you ought to think about what that means. Not just scribble a note and move on. If I want a world where widespread MHD fusion usage, cheap automated manufacturing, brain-to-machine direct interfaces, and interstellar travel are present, I better have the knock-ons - or at least plausible ones - ironed out when I set fingers to keys.
That, however, is just my thoughts on the matter.
This also wasn't what I planned to write about too actually. Nichevo.
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