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"Technological advance is an inherently iterative process. One does not simply take sand from the beach and produce a Dataprobe. We use crude tools to fashion better tools, and then our better tools to fashion more precise tools, and so on. Each minor refinement is a step in the process, and all of the steps must be taken."
In Hollywood, people seem to believe that technology starts at fire and ends in people turning into energy; the interim would follow the exact same steps on every possible world. Often, this takes the form of people not from Earth creating exact replicas of Earth technology right down to the last detail — such as interface panels ripped right out of the Apollo missions on an alien space station. These copies are often similar enough that people who are from Earth often have no trouble at all using the device, or even interfacing their own hardware with it.
Similarly, seemingly distinct, diverse technologies will always develop at the same rate. An alien world with 'renaissance' era technology (ignoring for the moment that the renaissance spanned four centuries and giant changes in technology) in, say, firearms, will also posses lenses, ships, building materials and mathematical principles identical to those that Earth (read: Western Europe) possessed along with said firearms.
It's only rarely that a civilization will break off the path, and usually as a result of external forces providing them with something outside their capabilities (intentionally, accidentally or incidentally), such as a 1920s planet with fusion power, or a 1700s planet with radios. However, mastering this technology does not actually give them an understanding of related concepts, or even concepts which would be required to use this technology in the first place. (Thus averting Possession Implies Mastery)
Remember, don't think path, think tree, just as with the evolution of biological lifeforms. Except, in this case the distant descendants of unrelated branches can inspire and influence the future of others. For inspiring viewing, see the James Burke documentary series Connections, which shows the sometimes ludicrously unlikely places where inspiration and discovery come from, and the web-like connections between seemingly-unrelated inventions.
I, for one, can only look forward to the day that crystal-based technology paves the way for our conversion into energy.
See also: Enforced Technology Levels, Evolutionary Levels, In Spite of a Nail. Contrast Schizo Tech, Aliens Never Invented The Wheel, Sufficiently Advanced Bamboo Technology, Anachronism Stew and/or Fantasy Gun Control.
Has some actual reference in the real world Kardashev Scale ( how much total energy one get to play with, no matter how). The other wiki used to have a list. See Abusing the Kardashev Scale for Fun and Profit for some fun speculation.
Examples:
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Film
- The movie version of Harrison Bergeron created an elaborate setting where, while technology's capability was late-21st century, everything appeared to be set in the mid-'50s of the US, as people seemed to be "happiest" then, according to the Space Clothes wearing people who managed the conspiracy of the average.
Literature
- Parodied by The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, where a species with a lot of arms is specifically cited as being the only species to invent the underarm deodorant before the wheel.
- Likewise in Irregular Webcomic!, possibly as an homage to the former. When asked about the low population of elves, a PC replies, "Elven children breast feed for 30 years, teethe for 20 years, throw tantrums for about 100 years... and don't take to toilet training until they're about 200." "Yeah. Elves invented effective contraception before we could use fire."
- A Larry Niven short story takes a jab at this when the Kzinti encounter puny humans, who are still stuck with rockets when the Kzinti acquired the next step however long ago. It turns out that humans, having more experience with them, have much better rockets. Later they turn a Bussard Ram-Jet into a guided missile.
- Averted, at least at the primitive end of the scale, in The Ringworld Throne. Discussing whether or not a troublesome species of Ringworld hominid is sentient or non-sentient, it's mentioned that different borderline species have developed different skills: an aquatic variety can't use fire in its native habitat, but has developed flaked stone tools; a raw-meat-eating species doesn't need fire, but raises livestock; and so on.
- In the Icerigger trilogy of Alan Dean Foster, the residents of Tran-Ky-Ky are an Iron Age culture that never invented the wheel. That's because Tran-Ky-Ky is an Ice World, and the natives mount anything heavy that needs to be transported on ice skates.
- Jack Chalker's Well World series name-checks this trope. "[Each hex on the planet] is also maintained at a given technological level.... Anything beyond it just won't work, like Hain's pistol yesterday."
- This gets brought up in Vernor Vinge's A Fire Upon the Deep when the protagonists are trying to send aid by remotely uplifting an alien species on the planet they are traveling to. It is remarked that technological progress is much less like a ladder and more like a rock climbing wall, there are many possible routes to the same types of technology and they need to figure out what the aliens already have in order to figure out how to give them the secrets behind constructing shortwave radios and firearms.
- Discworld has been thumbing its nose at this trope ever since Moving Pictures. Notably, while the invention of film in that novel was a result of alchemists' being infected by the spirit of Holy Wood, it's also straight-up subverted when the resulting industry invents color movies before sound.
- Several different processes of color photography were invented during and even before mute movies era. They just didn't happen to be ones easily applicable to a long reel.
- Myth Adventures has vastly different dimensions, but also trade in both technology (dimension travelers posing as inventors) and ready goods. So there's obvious difference between "rustic" and "advanced" places, but whether any given world is stronger or weaker in magical, technological or combined areas depends on tastes of its denizens, local resources and chance. And it can be specialized, of course.
- Greg Egan's Incandescence gleefully avoids this. Mostly it concerns itself with physics concepts — when you're a pre-industrial civilization orbiting a black hole, physics is really important — but, for example, the aliens in question discover the Kerr metric for a rotating black hole (which we derived in 1963) slightly before they figure out universal gravitation (discovered by some guy named Isaac Newton in the late 17th century).
- Somehow, in Animorphs, the Andalites invented computers before books. They consider books to be more convenient. Apparently they have yet to invent a "Search" function.
- In Dragon's Egg, while the Cheela's technological evolution is loosely patterned after mankind's, some of it is necessarily influenced by their environment — mostly the huge gravity and magnetic field of the Cheela home world. So they invent the sleigh instead of the wheel because gravity makes axles impractical and in their "metal casting"*
using crystalline materials found on their star rather than actual metals the molds need to be oriented along the magnetic field.
- Even after their First Contact with humans, where they model their culture and technology after mankind's, there are some things they just have to do differently — such as developing Anti Gravity before space flight, because there's no other way to get off their world.
- in the E3 universe in Ian McDonald's Planesrunner the electric motor was invented before the steam engine and everything is powered by coal because there is no oil.
- Subverted in Dykstra's War by Jeffrey D. Kooistra. The Phinons have had space travel for eons, but they are a species with barely animal-level intelligence. They naturally live in the comet clouds between solar systems, and they evolved spacecraft-building as an instinctive behavior, like bees building a hive or beavers building a dam. Their ships' "design" is incredibly weird-looking and their "technology" extremely counter-intuitive, because it's not the product of engineering in the human sense.
Live Action TV
- Star Trek's Prime Directive prevents them from interfering with cultures "below the warp drive level".
- The novel Where Sea Meets Sky in the Captain's Table series has the Federation debating whether a species that has simply domesticated living star ships counts, since they have warp travel, but not based on technology.
- It is stated that the Ferengi, who have super-sensitive hearing and live on a planet of frequent rainstorms, invented soundproofing before they invented the steam engine.
- And then there's the Vulcans, who had very little metal and as a result skipped right to making a spacecraft to get some from off-world.
- Stargate SG-1 is pretty much built around this premise. Although the plot explains that aliens posing as gods are purposely shaping development across the galaxy, this usually constitutes keeping people from becoming advanced enough to be a threat, and cultures which have broken-off from alien control continue to advance 'as expected'.
- On Babylon 5 the step before "become energy" is "Organic Technology".
Tabletop RPG
- More or less justified in the Warhammer 40000 universe, where human civilizations in different parts of the galaxy pretty much had their technological progress railroaded by the use of Standard Template Construct systems. In the past ten thousand years or so, humans haven't really developed their technology at all, so they avert this trope by side-stepping it.
- Traveller's first edition originated (or at least popularized) the idea in RPGs.
- The d20 Future supplement of the d20Modern RPG gives technology based on "Progress Levels." Modern humans, depending on geography and infrastructure, go from about PL 4 to (late) PL 5. These, along with most of the supplement's flavor, were transposed directly from Alternity, which was previously published by the same publisher.
- The GURPS RPG has a similar system of tech levels. It's very helpful when calculating whether a certain piece of equipment is available for purchase (and what it costs). Crafty game masters are advised to assign different tech levels to various sections of society. Tech Level 5, for example, is the Industrial Revolution, while modern developed countries would be at TL8.
- The system also introduces the concept of divergent tech levels, with the notation "TL('x'+'y'). TL (5+1) is steampunk tech, for example.
- The 3E Ravenloft products use "Culture Levels", which combine technological progress with social changes in a sequence that's closely parallel to that of IRL European history. Unlike many fantasy settings, the Land of Mists is intended to capture the authentic flavor of Gothic fiction's classics, thus needs to at least somewhat emulate the real-world historical past.
- Tech levels are an integral part of the tabletop war game Starfire. Your tech level determines what systems you're allowed to install on a starship. At Tech Level I, you get ion drive engines, nuclear missiles, lasers, and basic deflector shields. By Tech Level X, you're sporting 3rd-generation shields and armor, heterodyne lasers, charged particle beams (and overload dampeners that can absorb the impact of such beams), tractor beams (and tractor-nullifying shear planes), narrowly-focused force beams that ignore shields and armor, and space fighters.
- Tomorrow's War has three tech levels, however they're meant to be relative to one another, depending on the scenario a given TL can mean anything from AK-147s to plasma rifles.
- Torg had levels not just for a universes allowed technology level but also for magic, social development and the influence deities could wield on the material world.
Video Games
Western Animation
- At first glance, Avatar The Last Airbender seems to play this straight. The nations use their bending powers to help create technology- for example, Fire Benders use their head to power the steam industry. There is a clear progression in technology; in the original series, we see a nation having their industrial revolution while the majority of people used more old fashioned methods, while by The Legend of Korra they've got things such as cars and motorcycles readily available. In the end, its subverted. Although there's a progression in technology, it seems rather chaotic. Lampshaded by the abridged series as follows.
Sokka: Let Me Get This Straight. You can invent tanks, jet skies, and a GIGANTIC freaking drill, but the concept of a hot air balloon eeellluuudddesss you?
- Played with in Ben 10. On one hand, most planets do follow a near-fixed path of technological discovery. On the other hand, said path is very unlike Earth's — universal translators are usually invented about at the same time as combustion engines, and radio transmissions rarely predate nuclear fusion. Some technologies on earth are far in advance of what we should be able to produce.
Real Life
- Almost averted by the Roman Egyptian philosopher Heron of Alexandria, who was messing around with steam expansion and pistons, but never quite put the two together. In fact, the Romans appear to have invented steam power at least three separate times. The problem is that steam couldn't hold a candle to slave labor economically, so they didn't do much with it.
- They also lacked the math needed to properly engineer them, the metallurgy to contain the pressure, coal to power the engines and the deep bore mines that could not be pumped out by human or animal power...to name a few other problems. A lot of this can be put down to the fact that while they had scientists, they never invented the scientific community to share and review ideas.
- The Incans had a system of roads that spanned their entire empire... but never invented the wheel. It Makes Sense in Context: the Incans lived in the steep Andes, so most of their roads involved steps up a mountain. Wheels would be inconvenient compared to walking or riding animals.
- They had wheels, but they were only used on toys.
- The main problem was that they lacked an animal strong enough to actually pull wheeled carts effectively.
- Writing in general is an aversion of this trope. Most societies (e.g. the Inca, above) with more than one city and a centralized government of any kind end up inventing a system for representing numbers and identifying objects, so that tax reports can be filed and the empire maintained; only very, very few times has anyone independently had the idea to take this to the next level and try to represent sentence structures, so that narrative structure could also be recorded. We know it happened at least twice, in Mesoamerica (Olmec pictograms) and Mesopotamia (Sumerian cuneiform). All other known writing systems could have gotten the idea from one of these two; the most likely candidate to have been a third independent invention is Chinese oracle bone script, but it's possible that the idea, if not the format, was carried to China by traders.
- All alphabetic scripts descend from the Phoenician writing system.
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