Worldbuilding 201: Creating Advanced Technology
Greetings and syndactylic! Eh, I like having my digits separated, but you do you! Today's topic is advanced technology, and more precisely, how to create them so they are not stupid. Anne Winchell did one on magic systems, so it is only fair that I, who love space operas, do the same for technology.
Technological definition
It is a technical definition; the best kind of definition!
Technology is any item or object that has been designed by a sophont to perform specific tasks for the sophont or to help the sophont perform said task.
What’s a sophont, you ask? Aw, no compliment for me in your question? How rude! Anyway, a sophont is any kind of creature that has human level intelligence, sapience, and awareness. I think we might need to do a post on it… ANNE! (Anne: Added to the list! Good thing we have technology to help keep track of these!)
Technology is a broad term because, well, it is a broad concept. It goes from a stick used to stab an animal to death (called a spear) to microchips. What it does not include are abilities that are innate to a sophont, which for humans include running, eating, carrying in the arms, and more. So, depending on your magic system, a sophont might require technology to help! If you have the ability to breathe fire, that is an innate ability, which might require training but isn’t technology, but if you need a wand to say abra kafunctabra, the wand is a piece of technology.
Novum and technology
In our post on genres, Anne and I discuss a lot of things, and when it comes to science fiction, I discuss the concept of novum. Novum is the concept of something that is believably plausible in the world. It doesn’t have to be possible or plausible, only believably plausible. So, it is a concept that is culturally and temporarily dependent.
Now, why does novum matter when it comes to technology? Because in science fiction, good technology is based on novum. It doesn't need to be physically possible, but it has to feel like it is possible in some manner. If it feels like it is entirely impossible to do and has no chance of happening, it doesn’t have the feeling of being technology. It feels like it is magic; magic in a metal casing.
And that is generally the opposite of what you want. You want a technology to feel like it is technology, not magic. Though if you mix them, you get magitechnology, which I will get back to. Technology in its “pure” form has to have that element of believability, which is one reason why technologies often need some kind of framing. The framing is what makes the technology become a novum and not magic in a metal casing.
One example is Faster than light travel, which is, as far as science has deduced today for you feeble hoomons, entirely impossible. Though that is only for anything moving in normal space! So, by saying you have a device that contracts space and expands space–a warp drive–you have framed the technology in such a way that it becomes plausible. Or it goes into hyperspace where distances are weird; there can be any number of ways to frame the technology in how it does the job it is meant to do, but it is made so that the consumer of your media goes “Seems reasonable enough.”
Usage over function
Anne has gone through this somewhat in her post on exposition, but I will reiterate it here and expand on it slightly. While framing of technology is important–and here the framing is literally a half arsed explanation on “How it works”–that is by far not the most important thing when it comes to fictional technology. It is only important to the point where a consumer will go “Seems reasonable enough,” and after that, the importance of how it functions is close to 0. It has done its job, and now, something else has to.
What ultimately always matters with technology is how, when, and why it is used. The usage of the technology is what is the most important. You can think of it yourself, when you use your smartphone, keyboard, mouse, computers, calculator, literally anything. How many of those things do you actually understand? And I really mean understand. We all know that there is some magic called electricity running through it that does more wizardry and our thingy works, but do we know even the most surface level of the nuts and bolts?
Well, I like to, but I am checks the thesaurus once again unique as a unicorn in disguise. But the vast majority of people and consumers do not. Unless you’re an engineer whose job is to fix things, most people don’t. There is a reason why “plug’n’play” was popular, and why a lot of people have the mentality that “It should work out of the package.” They are not dumb–all right, maybe a lot are–but they are human, and humans generally don’t want to deal with the nitty gritty of anything unless they have to.
They want a phone that works out of the box and can do apps, accept their finger on the screen, and take photos. If it requires extensive configurations and changes that aren't holding their hand along the way, frustration happens faster than a lightning bolt on meth. So when designing any kind of technology, put a lot of focus on how people interact with it and how they get it to do the job they want to happen. This is why UI designs and much else are so important. Fortunately, you don’t have to be that detailed, unless you want to.
Another reason why you want to focus on interaction over function is that if the way that a character interacts with any kind of technology is just… weird, people will start focusing on that. It reminds me of that South Park episode with the IT, not I-T, IT, capital letters pronoun. It was a vehicle that used both the mouth and anus to steer the thing. Sure it was meant as a joke to take the piss out of airlines and security at airports, but it does illustrate the whole “Why would anyone design it like that?” quite well.
Magitechnology
I said I would bring this up, so I will do it now. Hopefully not long (I am not Lady Verbosa! I am Lordy Succinct). Anyway, magic is fantasy, and tech is (most often) scifi. But they don’t have to be different! Well, they kind of are, but if you shift the way you look at magic slightly, it can become something you can technologify!
Magitechnology generally occurs in worlds and genres where magic is not seen as a mystical thing that is very difficult to grasp and you have to use your gut and whatever pair of gonads you happen to have to utilize. Here, magic is a concrete thing; you might have mana as its own thing and whatnot, but it is a measurable thing. It is quantifiable, and it is controllable through means other than a human body. Albeit it would be cool if it needed a human body so you have some body horror biotech magitechnology going on, maybe it is convicts that are turned into this?
I am getting beside the point with a cool idea here. The point is that magic is treated as another part that science can be investigated. It follows different rules than “normal science,” but it is following rules. Which makes it a very hard type of science most often. So, with this understanding of how magic interacts with other parts of the universe, the people of the world are able to build machines and technological pieces that use magic; hence, magitechnology.
It is the magic in a metal casing explained above, except they are honest about it and say “Yeah, that could not work in any sensible way, so magic done did it.” And let’s be honest, electricity is magic in a metal casing box with some plastic thrown in for good measure.
Advanced technology
So, we have technology, but what truly makes it advanced? I bet this is as unsurprising as the sun rising, but it is all about perspective. Advanced technology is all about from whose perspective. For ages, the most advanced piece of technology you humans had was sticks with a sharp piece of rock tied to them. And it was good enough!
Today, you consider that rather primitive in terms of technology. Back when iron smelting was being figured out, that was top dawg shit, and bronze was for losers! Except when civilisations ran out of iron or fuel, then you were in deep shite. World War I artillery would completely decimate in the Napoleonic era, and modern artillery would make armies in WW2 into nothing more than burgers. So what is advanced is strongly dependent on time and civilisation.
So, I would say, as a general rule of thumb, the following definitions for words of technology apply:
Advanced: If the technology can do more than a society can currently do with their technology, it is advanced. In addition, the people of the world must have seen this technology successfully demonstrated somehow.
Cutting Edge: If it is just barely within the range of what you are capable of, it is cutting edge.
Developmental: If it is just barely outside the range of what you are capable of, then it is developmental. Technology needs the development stage before it can become usable.
Theoretical: There is no demonstration of the technology working, but math and more says it should be possible, maybe.
Top of the line: The best kind of technology that can be produced en masse.
Military Grade: Can be produced consistently but is so expensive in production that it is not done en masse yet.
Pathway of technology
The question is, how does technology arise? A common depiction for a lot of fiction is that there is this one brilliant genius who comes up with the idea for a gadgetmatron, and that is how the technology came to be. And quite frankly, that is how even history tends to be viewed as well. It is, however, entirely WRONG!
Technological development is a complicated mess of an endeavor. The most unlikely of developments can contribute to the development of other technologies. Someone deciding that their comb isn’t good enough so he comes up with a new method to make the comb teeth in a new way can end up contributing 150 years later to the development of nuclear weapons, along with 9 dozen other inventions and discoveries that seem to have nothing to do with nuclear technologies, and it all comes together into a glorious whole of death and destruction.
So when thinking of technologies, don’t think of it as stages where a civilisation progresses from stage 1 to stage 2 to stage 3, and so on until stage omega. It is more like an upside down bush where many paths grow together into a new invention and technology. You can, however, roughly, group technologies together by what prominent materials are used. Stone, Bronze, Iron, Steel, Silicon, what will come next? Who knows! Maybe it is a material you’ve made up. But it is a method that kinda-ish works.
And on top of that, while it might be one man or woman who thinks to put things together, there are hundreds who came before who had to put their parts together for the last one to put those together. Which kind of brings me to the next point.
Omulther of inventions
What’s an omulther, you say? It is a Raixhen term for a specific kind of “mother.” I won’t go into details; you get the joke. There are a few things you need for technological development, so let’s go through what they are.
Necessity
Necessity is said to be the Omulther of all inventions, but it is not quite true. It is true that unless people feel a necessity for something, they are not going to invent it. I love to code, and unless I feel I have a reason to make a code, I won’t do it. Though one has to remember that the “Because I can” mentality is a viable reason for people. Sometimes, all it takes to spark an invention is someone saying “You can’t do that,” and next thing you know, they could and did do it.
Freedom of time
My highly intelligent inventionous reader, if you had to spend 12 hours a day working just to get enough food to feed your family, would you have any time to invent a bloody device to make your job easier? Every hour you spend trying to make prototypes and failures is an hour you could have made food that you need to survive. Sure, you might be able to spare one of your children, they are probably going to die anyway because we have yet to figure out what antibiotics are, but you still want you and your partner to survive, and you have no time to waste!
Diversity of ideas
One of the most crucial things in any technological development is the access to new ideas. In my post on communication, I talk about this somewhat. More communication brings in more ideas, and more ideas means you can have new ideas. We have all experienced when you hear some new piece of information, hear an idea, and then it hits you like a train on an asteroid: a new idea that you hadn’t had before! And you would never have had if it hadn’t been for this new thing that came in. More ideas, a diverse set of ideas and embrace of ideas, facilitate technological development. Time and time again in human history, any time a society starts becoming hostile to new ideas, they stagnate, and technology starts regressing. And equally, any time they embrace new ideas and let them flow freely, progress starts accelerating.
Cooperation
The last and final one I already mentioned, but deserves to be restated: cooperation between people increases technological development. That is because it facilitates the diversity of ideas and, as the saying goes, two watermelons are bigger than one, or something, I don’t know, I’m not a human. Despite the trope, the Nazis of the German Reich are a perfect counter example. The trope says they were very advanced, and, to an itty bitty degree, it is true. But you know what severely stunted their technological progress? Well, telling Jewish people to leave did deplete them of ideas, but the other is that they had different arms and branches competing for resources and funding. This makes people NOT cooperate, which means if both groups (or more) have different ideas that together would solve all of their issues, they can never join them together. If one group does it, they are rewarded; your group is punished.
Designing technologies
So, now it comes to designing your own technology; how do you go about it? Well, first of all, ask yourself this: what is it you want the technology to do? This comes back to my rules of worldbuilding, #8 to be precise: Know the central reason why you want that cog. This is important because it will inform everything about how the technology has to be.
The next thing to think on is, does this use pre-existing technologies? Again, back to my rules, #5: Reusage is better than adding new cogs. Here, it means that you follow in the footsteps of real inventors; try to put already made up technologies together so that it looks like you are building upon those that came before. This helps give the illusion of actual technological progress. One person came up with something, and then others went, “oh I can use that here,” and now you have more uses for it.
The third part to think on is how people will interact with it. Do they press buttons? Swing it around like a magical wand? Is it voice command, etc.? But I would say one fact that a lot of worldbuilders do not think about is this… What is the technology made out of and what does it use in terms of materials? If you read my blogpost on struos, you’ll learn about making up your own materials! But having your technology use some new material can give it the properties you need, and more importantly, you can actually start doing interesting trade where resources become crucial and valuable, which will help in general with the politics of your world. ANNE! Do we have anything where we can shove in about Technology and Politics? If not, add it! (Anne: Consider it added!)
Summa Summarum
Technology is a complicated thing that is like a nested mass of yarn from hundreds of skeins that is difficult to untangle. You never know where technology will come from, and it can be very chaotic and sudden. Technological progress is neither certain nor linear. It can be very much stagnant for ages.
But if you think on the above guidelines, you can have technologically advanced societies, and even come up with your own technologies that do more than just do whatever purpose you imagine. They can facilitate trade, help shift the balance of power in your world, and even create more conflicts than it is meant to solve.
Now, if you excuse me, I am going to use this overly powerful technology called a transporter. Bye!
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Copyright ©️ 2024 Vivian Sayan. Original ideas belong to the respective authors. Generic concepts such as technology, struo, and magitechnology are copyrighted under Creative Commons with attribution, and any derivatives must also be Creative Commons. However, specific ideas such as omulther, Raixher, and all language or exact phrasing are individually copyrighted by the respective authors. Contact them for information on usage and questions if uncertain what falls under Creative Commons. We’re almost always happy to give permission. Please contact the authors through this website’s contact page.
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