You take a lever and a pulley and a winch and a wedge,
You get a labyrinth of aqueducts and pyramid steps
Before the Jesus, Archimedes on that miracle tech
Year Zero, you could feel the future rearing its head
Put a shoe on a horse, shoot a man with a gun,
Steam power, bifocals, and mechanical funk,
Manipulate electricity, no, it cannot be done,
Yes it can, ain't a dam that can cancel the flood
You get a labyrinth of aqueducts and pyramid steps
Before the Jesus, Archimedes on that miracle tech
Year Zero, you could feel the future rearing its head
Put a shoe on a horse, shoot a man with a gun,
Steam power, bifocals, and mechanical funk,
Manipulate electricity, no, it cannot be done,
Yes it can, ain't a dam that can cancel the flood
— Aesop Rock, "Mindful Solutionism"
Tropes pertaining to technology, those who use it, and people's attitudes towards it.
Tropes
Subcategories:
- Activation Sequence: A machine or system is brought online via a lengthy process.
- The Aesthetics of Technology: The tendency to portray advanced tech using specific aesthetics that have changed over time.
- Aliens Never Invented the Wheel: An alien race lacks a technology that seems trivial to humans.
- The Alleged Computer: An extremely shoddy computer.
- Alternate Techline: An alternate timeline where technology developed along unusual or different lines.
- The Armorer: Provides necessary and/or high-tech gear for the hero, villain, or any type of team.
- Auto-Incorrect: A spellchecker, autocorrect, or speech-to-text program messes up user input.
- Automatic Door Malfunction: Automatic doors have a tendency to fail in fiction.
- Bamboo Technology: Surprisingly functional facsimiles of advanced technology cobbled out of naturally occurring junk.
- Biotech Is Better: Organic technology portrayed as more advanced or better than mechanical technology.
- Black Box: It's know what a device does, but not how it does it.
- Break Out the Museum Piece: Making use of obsolete technology when the current stuff isn't available.
- Cargo Cult: Worship of technological artifacts.
- Crapola Tech: Low-quality tech that just plain doesn't work.
- Cyber Green: Technology being associated by the color bright green, or a combination of black and bright green.
- Data Drive MacGuffin: Important information is stored in a storage device (CD, USB drive, etc.), and it's the center of the plot.
- Digital Horror: Modern digital technology used for horror.
- Disco Tech: Technology that heavily involves music.
- Enforced Technology Levels: Rules exist limiting what kind of tech people can have.
- E.T. Gave Us Wi-Fi: Technology is revealed to have been given to humans by aliens.
- Evil Luddite: A villain who opposes technology.
- Gadgeteer Genius: A character who is good at inventing gadgets and other devices.
- Gadgeteer's House: A house filled with time-saving devices invented by the owner.
- Giving Radio to the Romans: Giving modern technology to people in the past.
- Grease Monkey: A character who works with machines and usually gets filthy doing so.
- Haunted Technology: Machines with ghosts in.
- Higher-Tech Species: A race with access to technology far more advanced than other races, but still mostly comprehendible for them.
- Homemade Inventions: Gadgets built on a budget and out of whatever happens to be on hand.
- Hopeless with Tech: A character who just doesn't get technology or gadgets.
- Insufficiently Advanced Alien: Otherwise advanced aliens who lack some crucial technology.
- Internet Safety Aesop: Think before you post and never give away personal information.
- In Working Order: Alien technology can instantly and easily be used by humans.
- Just Think of the Potential!: A character encounters a new, esoteric technology and realizes all the potential applications (military, monetary, etc.) it could be put to.
- Lensman Arms Race: Warring factions developing increasingly high-tech and devastating weaponry.
- Living Program: A computer program that is sentient.
- Lost Technology: Tech that used to be widespread and effective, but which has since been lost to modern cultures.
- Low Culture, High Tech: A culture using technology far in advance of what its state of development would suggest, usually for war.
- Ludd Was Right: Modern technology is bad.
- Machine Empathy: A character can diagnose machines just by feeling or listening to them.
- Machine Worship: Religious worship of specific machines or of technology in general.
- Magic from Technology: Using technology to do things effectively indistinguishable from magic.
- Magic Versus Science: Scientists and wizards are portrayed as antagonistic toward each other.
- The Magic Versus Technology War: A conflict between a person or faction who uses technology and one who uses magic.
- Magitek: The combination of magic and technology.
- Merging Machine: A machine that merges different objects into a single combined thing.
- Mr. Fixit: Someone who can fix and/or improve any gadget brought to them.
- Nature Abhors a Vacuum Cleaner: Animals hate vacuum cleaners.
- Nature vs. Technology: The dichotomy between natural and artificial.
- New Media Are Evil: Arbitrarily-defined newer technology is seen as bad.
- New Technology Is Evil: New tech presented as inherently superfluous and socially and morally damaging.
- No Tech but High Tech: Only counting advanced technology as being technology.
- No Plans, No Prototype, No Backup: One-of-a-kind inventions in fiction tend to be impossible to recreate.
- Old Media Are Evil: Arbitrarily-defined "traditional" media is seen as untrustworthy
- Old Media Playing Catch-Up: Releasing outside the net takes longer.
- Operator Incompatibility: Technology difficult to operate because it was built for someone with different skills or body shapes.
- Organic Technology: Technology made from or out of organic life.
- Plug 'n' Play Technology: All technology is compatible and capable of being joined with all other technology.
- Pressure-Sensitive Interface: Pushing an interface's buttons harder makes it work better.
- Ragnarök Proofing: Machines and structures that remain is surprisingly good shape long after being abandoned to the elements.
- Reinventing the Wheel: In games, the upgrades you research don't carry over between campaign missions.
- Rock Beats Laser: Low-tech forces defeat high-tech forces.
- Rube Goldberg Device: An elaborate machine utilizing a chain reaction to achieve a simple goal.
- Schizo Tech: Anachronistic mixes of technology.
- Sufficiently Advanced Bamboo Technology: Supertech with stone to bronze age aesthetics.
- The Singularity: Increasingly rapid technological advances leading to increasingly alien or transcendent civilizations.
- Technologically Advanced Foe: The other guy's technology completely outclasses yours.
- Technologically Blind Elders: Old people don't know how to work new tech.
- Technological Pacifist: A character who thinks technology is great, except when used for warfare.
- Technology Erasure Event: A technology or several suddenly stop working.
- Technology Levels: Cultural advancement represented as an advance through a series of discrete levels.
- Technology Marches On: A work becomes dated as real-life technology progresses past what it depicts.
- Technology Porn: Extensive focus on complex and/or advanced machines for audience appeal.
- Technology Uplift: Giving a culture access to more complex technology than it currently has.
- Technopath: A person with power over machines.
- Technophobia: Someone who is afraid of technology and potential harm that can arise from its use.
- Techno Wizard: Someone who can do anything with computers.
- This Is My Boomstick: Showing modern technology to a less technic culture, usually in a threatening manner.
- Tim Taylor Technology: You can fix or improve anything by plugging more power into it.
- Video Call Fail: A video call that goes horrendously wrong, usually on the part of the user.
- Virtual Assistant Blunder: When your smart devices don't quite get what you're trying to ask them.
- Walking Techfix: Someone who's uncannily good at getting recalcitrant technology to work.
- Walking Techbane: Someone who's uncannily good at wrecking every gadget they touch.
- Wicked Toymaker: Someone who creates evil toys; often technological in nature.
- Wrench Wench: A female mechanic.
