Progress Levels in Fiction

[xanaphia]

This is an idea I had. It is based on the D20 Modern Progress Levels and Age of Empires.

In most fiction, the level of technology can be classified into sections of our own history. I have gotten several levels from our world and come up with some future ones.

Progress Levels:
1. Stone Age: hunter-gatherers, Aboriginals
Items: Stone tools, wood spears, fire, hide armour, wicker sheilds.
People live in tribes or small settlements.

2. Agricultural Age: Egyptians
Established farming. Slings. Chariots, wood houses. Copper items (copper is easy to forge).
People live in city-states and small empires. Roads between major cities are built. Small military forces are built for protection. Chariots dominate battles. Small ships are built. Bows are weak and ineffective

3. Bronze Age: Greeks
People can smelt bronze. They start giving their infantry metal swords and axes. Cavalry renders chariots obselete. Inter-nation trade becomes common, with horse and cart and merchant vessels becoming commonplace. Cities have walls built around them for protection. Bows are improved, becoming viable battlefield options.

[xanaphia]

4. Iron Age: Romans
More complicated metal is forged, and metal is now mined, because of the increased demand. Armour made from metal strapped to leather is available, as are longbows. More people have jobs not directly related to gathering food, allowing artisans, craftsmen, and professional soldiers to increase in quality. Long walls are built along strategic positions.

5. Medieval Age: Byzantines
Crossbows are invented. Heavy troops with crossbows act as support. Full plate is invented, making crossbows even more important, because of their armour penetration. Siege weapons are invented, as are castles. Large monarchies form.

6. Gunpowder Age: Chinese, Warhammer Fantasy
Gunpowder is invented. Ships cross the oceans, and worldwide trade is possible. Colonisation occurs frequently.

7. Industrial Age: Victorian England
Machines are invented. Steam powered trains are available. Guns make bows outdated. Armour becomes rather pointless. Large world-spanning empires are created.

8. Nuclear Age: USSR
Rocket travel and automobiles are invented. Machine guns are deadly, tanks are invented, and nuclear missiles can take out any target.

9. Information Age: Modern USA
Now. We have computers, television, and websites like GITP.


I want a long list of fiction books and real life civilisations and where they fit. Could you post them please? I shall add them to this list.

1. Stone Age: hunter-gatherers, Aboriginals

2. Agricultural Age: Egyptians

3. Bronze Age: Greeks, Narnia by C S Lewis,

4. Iron Age: Romans, LOTR good guys, Deltora Quest

5. Medieval Age: Byzantines, LOTR bad guys, Discworld, D&D, Eragon

6. Gunpowder Age: Chinese, Warhammer Fantasy

7. Industrial Age: Victorian England

8. Nuclear Age: USSR, Harry Turtledove's Worldwar series

9. Information Age: Modern USA

[Dervag]

What about the period of the late twentieth century, after the invention of smokeless powder, electricity, and the internal combustion engine, but before the invention of the jet engine, the transistor, and the nuclear bomb?

I'd say that deserves an 'era' all its own, and it's definitely well beyond the Victorian era technologically but significantly behind the 'Nuclear' era in most respects.

[Dhavaer]

I'd call that the 'Electric Age' and put it between Victorian and Nuclear.

[electromagnetic]

We're also past the information age and into the digital age. The information age was with analogue data, which was relatively slow and clumbsy compared to digital information.

On the surface the ages are similar, and the name 'information age' now covers both the analogue and digital age, which just confuses the matter. The difference is that analogue information was more readily available and the majority of people in the west had access to it, but the digital age pretty much everyone has access to high speed internet for relatively cheap.

It's now exclusively assumed that everyone is capable of gaining access to the internet, to the extent that if you can't it's highly abnormal. I don't know a single person without a computer and broadband internet, it just doesn't happen where I live. I get asked what my download speed is in regular conversation.

The key to the digital age is that the access to information is so pervasive that people have actually developed natural responses to it. We're tuned to talking online through MSN or ICQ or something and when we need to know something we google it or check wikipedia. It's that google is so common a term that it's now an actual word.

In another 10 years we're likely to see it again, where information becomes even more available to the point that we're living in it. They're already developing wireless routers with ranges of up to 5km for Mu-Fi. It's going to be hard to avoid the internet soon.

[Green Bean]

In another 10 years we're likely to see it again, where information becomes even more available to the point that we're living in it. They're already developing wireless routers with ranges of up to 5km for Mu-Fi. It's going to be hard to avoid the internet soon.

You can avoid the Internet? :smallbiggrin:

[electromagnetic]

You can avoid the Internet? :smallbiggrin:

When my phone company knocks out their routing server it's easy to avoid the internet :smalleek:

I do it when I take vacation, even though I can get online and I can use my phone I resist it. I switch from using Dark Room (http://they.misled.us/dark-room) for my writing to a good old fashioned non-electronic notebook... that's going to be a bitch to explain to my kids that there used to be notebooks of paper that you use ink to write in. By the time I have kids and they're in school I wouldn't be surprised if they're using e-paper notebooks that have spell checkers and handwriting correctors built in.

[Darken Rahl]

Sword of truth has stone age (mud people) all the way through medieval.

[xanaphia]

I didn't put an Electric Age in because it wasn't that far off nuclear age. Cheap, commonly available electricity is availible first in the nuclear age.

And Digital and Analouge age: That's getting a bit too fine tuned for me.

[Winterwind]

What, exactly, is the purpose of this classification? More ease at finding a potentially interesting work of fiction for someone harbouring a particular interest for some specific time period?

[Dervag]

I didn't put an Electric Age in because it wasn't that far off nuclear age. Cheap, commonly available electricity is availible first in the nuclear age.Depends on where you lived. Electricity was cheap, common, and quite reliable by World War Two in many parts of the industrialized world. Moreover, the spread of electricity didn't involve any new technology; there was no fundamental reason why it didn't happen sooner except that so many regions were too poor to make electrification profitable.

Moreover, there were huge differences between the way technology affected our lives in, say, the 1950s and in the 1920s. In the 1920s electrification really was rare, but there were considerable tracts where it existed. However, atomic bombs, military and civilian aviation as a major force in war and peace, and personal automobiles were all in the future in 1920, whereas by 1960 (still firmly in the 'Atomic Age') they were all-important in the developed world.

So folding the early twentieth century into the 'Atomic' age seems odd, especially since there was no 'atomic' technology to provide a signature name for the era. Similarly, folding it into the same 'Victorian' era as the 1850s, when steam engines were new and telegraphs were bleeding edge technology, seems unreasonable.


And Digital and Analouge age: That's getting a bit too fine tuned for me.It shouldn't be. It's entirely likely that the Analog Age of the 1980s and 1990s is going to be nothing like the true Digital Age of, say, the 2010s. In the 1990s computers were important, but they were not ubiquitous- you could live without computers in a way that will simply not be possible in the developed world in the near future. The differences will probably be at least as pronounced as those between the 'Iron' and 'Medieval' Ages (and I think the same goes for the differences between the 'Victorian', 'Electric', and 'Atomic' Ages).

[xanaphia]

Goodbye, origional purpose of thread!

Does anyone else notice the ever decreasing time between progress levels?

And the difference between Iron and Medieval is rather massive.

Iron Army: Lots of swordsmen, a few archers, some light cavalry.

Medieval Army: Mounted knights with lances and full plate, sheild walls with supporting pikemen, crossbowmen picking off targets.



I give in. New Progress Levels:

Progress Levels:
Stone Age: hunter-gatherers, Aboriginals
Agricultural Age: Egyptians
Bronze Age: Greeks
Iron Age: Romans
Medieval Age: Byzantines
Gunpowder Age: Chinese
Industrial Age: Victorian England
Electrical Age: WWII
Nuclear Age: USSR
Analouge Age: 1980s USA
Digital Age: Modern USA
Energy Age: 40k Imperial Guard
Gravity Age: The 40k Emperor before he died
Plasma Age: Tau
Antimatter Age: Eldar
Subatomic Age: Necrons

[xanaphia]

What, exactly, is the purpose of this classification? More ease at finding a potentially interesting work of fiction for someone harbouring a particular interest for some specific time period?

Because I can!!!

Also, Vs threads are somewha easier to navigate with this in mind (apart from magic ones, like Sauron vs Voldemort). And I think better when I can classify things by number.

[Dervag]

Does anyone else notice the ever decreasing time between progress levels?Technology changes faster than it used to.

People of the year 1000 BC would not have felt out of place in the world of the year 0. Technology advanced in many ways, but the essentials were similar. Likewise, people from the year 0 would not have felt out of place in the world of 1000 AD.

But even people from the year 1800 would feel out of place in the world of 2000 AD.

So if you define an 'era' as a period of time during which technology advanced enough that things were very different at the end of the era when compared to the beginning of the era, it stands to reason that the eras get shorter.


And the difference between Iron and Medieval is rather massive.

Iron Army: Lots of swordsmen, a few archers, some light cavalry.

Medieval Army: Mounted knights with lances and full plate, sheild walls with supporting pikemen, crossbowmen picking off targets.You're focusing too heavily on the armies. In most other areas, medieval Europeans (or their contemporaries in most of the rest of the world) still lived much as their ancestors had. Remember that in medieval Europe, ancient Rome was regarded as an era of lost advancement, and not without reason.

Even then, Alexander the Great used pikemen, and the Roman legions used shield walls. Crossbows were invented by the Iron Age Greeks and Chinese; and mounted knights were made possible by a single technological advancement (the stirrup), after which preexisting technologies practically demanded the adoption of the knight's panoply.

So even on the battlefield, Iron Agers wouldn't have any trouble coping with medieval advances in weaponry- a Roman legion would almost certainly handle with armored knights just as well as they handled with chariots or war elephants or any of a number of other novel 'cavalry' threats over the centuries. Granted that the medieval period did see some advances in weapons and tactics, but these advances were incremental rather than dramatic.

If you want to point out that the end of the medieval age (the High Middle Ages and Renaissance for Europe) was radically different from the end of the Iron Age, I'll agree with you. The cumulative effect of all the technologies that arose between, say, 0 and 1300 AD was substantial.


I give in. New Progress Levels:

Progress Levels:
Stone Age: hunter-gatherers, Aboriginals
Agricultural Age: Egyptians
Bronze Age: Greeks
Iron Age: Romans
Medieval Age: Byzantines
Gunpowder Age: Chinese
Industrial Age: Victorian England
Electrical Age: WWII
Nuclear Age: USSR
Analouge Age: 1980s USA
Digital Age: Modern USA
Energy Age: 40k Imperial Guard
Gravity Age: The 40k Emperor before he died
Plasma Age: Tau
Antimatter Age: Eldar
Subatomic Age: NecronsI could quibble with the historical stuff but I won't. However, I'd argue that the Digital Age is what we are getting into and not what we are already in. The 'Digital Age' is one of ubiquitous computing, computers spread out into everything to the point where it redefines what is possible for individuals and governments. We're beginning to see that with Google, online forums, E-mail, and government surveillance by data-mining.

By 2015 or 2020 we'll begin to know what the Digital Age is going to look like. In historical hindsight, it may well be that the 'Analog Age' should be folded into the 'Nuclear Age'- sure, computers existed in the 1980s, but they hadn't revolutionized our lives yet. They were still mostly used for specific applications in industry and science, and for record-keeping.

As for the future ages, they're kind of arbitrary because we don't know what technology we'll develop next or what its implications will be. It may be that the next 'age' may occur as advances in computer science and genetic engineering lead to some kind of Vingean 'singularity' in which human nature itself becomes unrecognizable, rather than merely another age of the same old monkeys playing with newer, shinier tools. It may be that we'll discover antigravity or faster-than-light travel, or it may be that those things really are physically impossible. It may be that we can build break-even fusion reactors or useful nanotechnology, or it may be... any number of things. It may even be (unlikely as this sounds to the historically inclined) that we are approaching the technological peak of the possible.

We're in no better position to guess what the future would look like than a Victorian Age Briton would be. And whatever guesses he would have made, they would look nothing like reality.

[Vespe Ratavo]

What about Steampunk? Have ye no room for Steampunk and other anachronistic delectable bits of history-bending metaphorical caramel? :smallannoyed: Where would they fit in?

On the subject of progress levels in general, I like GURPS. GURPS'es. Whatever. Look it up, because I can't find a very good source to copy and paste from at the moment and it's fairly late. *yawns*

[bosssmiley]

Near future layout is b0rked atm. It should go:

Present Day
Zombie Apocalypse
20 Minutes into the Future ("Blade Runner", "Total Recall", any other cyberpunk film ever)
The Robot War ("Terminator", "The Matrix")
The Bug War ("Aliens", "Starship Troopers", etc.)

Each of these is a distinct historical age with its own tech level; although they all seem to use retrolicious analogue interfaces. :smallconfused:

Curiously, it seems that anything that is 'futuristic' by the lights of these periods (be it the robot mainframe, Precursor tech, whatever...) still uses lasers, crystals and power glows (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main.PowerGlows) as a visual mark of its futuristicosity. :smallamused:

[electromagnetic]

Each of these is a distinct historical age with its own tech level; although they all seem to use retrolicious analogue interfaces. :smallconfused:

You've got to give credit that the Starship Troopers movie included a relatively accurate prediction of interactive TV, which came well after the analogue technology it was filmed on. I'd say someone paid attention to the tech confrences at the time of filming.

[Illiterate Scribe]

I would recommend Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash and Diamond Age for anyone interested in this sort of thing - it's coloured by his own ideas and hopes, sure, but he's got some quite interesting discursive pieces on the effect of tech, especially nanotech, on the way that society functions - Sir John Hackworth's discussion of the potential of weaponising the latter, and the methods through which one would control it, are fascinating.

[Dervag]

Stephenson's nanotech in The Diamond Age is unreasonably powerful. There are some major questions about how feasible it is to design functional nanotech that can operate outside of a controlled environment (such as a vat of chemicals in which the nanites catalyze a chemical reaction).

Nanotech devices will have trouble overcoming heat, trouble avoiding destruction at the hands of the biosphere (to an immune cell, a medical nanite is indistinguishable from a virus), and trouble being produced in sufficient numbers to assemble macroscale objects in human-scale timespans.

Controlling nanites is difficult; if you produce nanites the convert, say, sugar into alcohol (as yeast does), how do you teach them to quit making more alcohol before they kill themselves off (which yeast does, which is why fermentation can't give you 100 proof beer or wine)? If you want to manufacture some device or part that has to have standardized features (rocket nozzles that must be 1.375 meters across, microchips that must accept a certain type of input at a certain voltage, and so on), how do you teach your nanites the difference between a product that is 'not big enough, keep working', 'big enough, stop working', and 'too big, break it down and start over'?

Energy supply is a problem; microscale devices have very limited options for power supplies and they can't run power cables back to a central power plant.

Self-replicating nanotech has a weakness in that nanites will typically require materials not found on a large scale in the environment. To get around this requires us to accept performance constraints on the nanites. Even then, the nanotech requires a complicated internal structure to produce the parts it needs to duplicate itself. Arguably, if anyone ever managed to create such a thing, it would have many of the same strengths and weaknesses of existing carbon-based lifeforms (which are a form of self-replicating nanotech themselves, when you think about it).

So I'm not sure if nanotechnology is going to be the dominating technology of an Age; I suspect it's going to be the background technology of several Ages just as improving technologies of metal production were for several historical Ages.


What about Steampunk? Have ye no room for Steampunk and other anachronistic delectable bits of history-bending metaphorical caramel? :smallannoyed: Where would they fit in?Steampunk technology is mostly Victorian or Electric Age, with the 'punk' aspect being sociological rather than technical. Some of what you see in steampunk is physically impossible, but it fits into the matrix of Victorian/Electric Age technologies- nothing relies on transistor diodes or radioactive thermal generators or anything like that.