Justification for retro-tech computers

Let's say I want to have a science fiction world, in which computers are crappy.

Where they're slow, huge (often building-sized), and need frequent phyical maintenance but in spite of this will still break down at least once in a rare while? Where data transfer is slow (equivalent to 80s modem speeds) and data storage media are bulky, more like tape wheels than like CD-ROMS let alone USB flash drives.

I've already decided that this is the world I want.

What parameters can I change to achieve such a world? What laws of physics do I need to tweak, so that the outcome will be retro-tech computers?

Don't tweak any laws of physics. The consequences of even tiny changes would likely be cataclysmic (changing certain constants in a tiny way, like several thousand decimal points to the right of the integer part could already make the existence of matter as we understand it impossible), and if you play around with that in your work some smartass is bound to come along and call you out on it :P.

Instead consider the history of computers. If semiconductor technology had been developed a lot later, valve-based computers would have remained the standard, and there's a limit to how far you can take those. Computer technology would have hit a stone wall at some point until somebody came along and invented the transistor. It'd also take quite some time until those new-fangled transistors could be miniaturized to the point where something resembling a modern computer could be built.

Just sit on that single invention for a bit, and you'll have the world you want.

Reality is for those who lack imagination.

My first idea would just be to scale up quantum noise. One of the obvious physical limits for computation is when your component gets small enough that it can't tell the difference between a legitimate signal and a random fluctuation of vacuum energy. Make the fluctuations big and strong enough, and the minimal scale that you could build reliable computer parts under such conditions would end up pretty large.

In the real world, doing this would probably make human life impossible and have other bizarre effects on the functioning of the physical world, but if you're not going for hard sci-fi it might pass. Otherwise, maybe strong fluctuating magnetic fields (caused by some irregularity in the Earth's core) or cosmic radiation could have a similar effect without screwing so much with quantum physics (although these could be shielded against with some sort of protection device, and the effect diminishes with either altitude or depth, respectively).

This aside, note that the difference between magnetic tapes, hard drive platters and flash memory is more than just raw transfer speed, it's also the kind of speed involved. Magnetic tapes have O(N) access time, hard drives and CD drives have roughly O(N^0.5) access time, and I believe flash memory (like system RAM) has O(1) access time. In other words, magnetic tapes don't just read slow to begin with, they also scale really badly.

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Another option is the Galactica Reboot route. Computers need to be huge, slow and clunky because the efficient ones are vulnerable to the resident major threat. Post-singularity A.I.s like the TITANs of Eclipse Phase are often used to justify such a step back in technology.

Reality is for those who lack imagination.

I can't use anything that relies on a single culture not figuring something out due to a blind spot (or due to Butlerian-style memetic engineering), because it's a multi-cultural galaxy. If any one culture ever stops "thinking in the wrong track" it'll come to dominate its corner of the galaxy. So it has to be a world-wide effect.

The quantum thing might work. Or indeed, as the other guy suggests, some kind of virus/hacking thing.

IIRC, electro magnetic pulse from nuclear bomb kills computers with transistors, but is harmless to computers with valves.

If I am wrong, invent a bomb that don't hurt valves.

What if there were no hypothetical questions? There are 10 kinds of people: those who understand Binary and those who don't.

Yeah, an EMP would affect modern devices but not radios, T Vs or computers dependent on analog tech like punch cards and vacuum tubes.

A couple other ideas-

Alternatively: an alternate universe when World War II never happened would probably result in no digital age or a severe delay.

Another idea: Battlestar Galactica had retro-tech because they were fighting the Robot War and had to scale back their automated, computerized tech to something more primitive in order to be less vulnerable to Cylon computer infiltration. The creator specifically stated the computers on board Galactica are basically old Amigas without the processing power of a modern computer, just enough to plot jump coordinates. The prequel series Caprica showed that 58 years before the Fall, right before the first Cylon War, the Colonials had much more advanced technology. The tech on the Battlestar Pegasus (a more modern warship than Galactica) suggests that in the decades since the last conflict with the Cylons, the Colonials became more comfortable reintroducing advanced tech on their Battlestars.

One more related idea- I just wrote a section of my novel where a traitor's use of a Sub-Quantum Interference Beacon to signal a raiding party screws up all "Quantum Level Technology" on the ship like the FTL Drive and the FTL Computer as well as several other systems.

edited 16th Oct '13 4:54:35 AM by fulltimeD

I doubt it. Businesses had been experimenting with the advantages of information technology since long before then, and had come up with a number of insane steampunk devices for doing math in accounting (IBM was founded in 1911 to build these sorts of machines). Also, with the advent of consumer TV (broadcasts had actually started before World War 2 broke out), electronics technology was poised to leap ahead before long anyway. I'd be surprised if the delay were as much as 20 years.

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Indeed, without the war computers are likely to come along quicker than OTL Because:

• There is no interruption in the production of entertainment equipment.
• Sciences without immediate use aren't sidelined.
• Without the devastation, there's more money for non-military stuff.

Without post-war austerity, it's quite possible to to see colour T Vs coming about in the late 40s (John Logie Baird displayed one OTL in 1944, and it had 600 lines, compared to the 405 for a Marconi monochrome) rather than the late 60s.

Normally, yes. In the 1930s, though, there was still this thing going on called the 'Great Depression' which made matters more complicated.

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By the late 30s, most countries were recovering well. As you noted yourself, despite the depression, TV was being developed.

^^^, etc.

Shows what I know for focusing on the military and ENIAC so much and not civilian computing

But what, say, Steve Jobs and all those guys never succeeded with personal computing? What if computers were still dominated by room-sized mainframes. I could see that happening easily in an alternate history. No matter the cause, we miss the Digital Age as a Point of Divergence from "our" reality.

I like the idea of a resource depleted American "Technocracy" still fighting the Cold War today (the USSR never dissolved), a society dominated by underground bunkers and room-sized computers that allot citizen's thermal engergy credits. Most humans live underground, there's been four world wars by 2013, and much of the US and the USSR are wastelands devoid of all but the hardiest life. It's a setting I've always wanted to use.

edited 17th Oct '13 5:28:46 AM by fulltimeD

I repeat, I can't use tech path coincidences, because in a multi-cultural galaxy, it isn't the least bit reasonable to assume that the same tech path coincidence happens to every single culture, with no exception. And if just one culture, out of the many, doesn't end up coincidentally going down the semi-blind path that leads to retro-tech, it will achieve computing equivalent to what we have today, and eventually what we'll have in the coming decades and centuries, and thus it'll come to dominate a large fraction of the galaxy. And its methods will spread to other cultures, and eventually will prevail everywhere in the galaxy.

That's why I need a universal justification.

Either a physics change, or some kind of massive hacking invulnerability, e.g. positing a universe in which hacking is a bit easier than in ours and in which computer security is a bit harder than in ours.

Question, Peter: Do you have to make them "impossible to ever arise"? Or just "Not yet, and not within the time span my work covers."?

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Change the chemical structure of silicon to make it less conductive? Gold too, maybe?

Hm, that's going to screw with a lot more things than just computers.

^ Yeah, but it's the only semi-plausible explanation I can think of besides an EMP and subsequent electromagnetic interference rendering digital tech unusable.

Altered gold maybe subject to decay. Perhaps we'd back our money with diamonds or other precious stones instead of precious metals.

OP did say he needed a universal explanation, not some change in the timeline that affects only Earth (at least that's what I gathered from his posts). IE something like "Earth's metallurgy isn't as sophisticated in this setting vs. in our universe wouldn't work for his setting.

Altered, less conductive or non-conductive metals = less conductive power = less processing power = larger computers required to do the work of a simple laptop from our own world

Without changing the laws of physics entirely to create a totally alien, possibly lethal environment out of the universe, this is the best way I can think of. Less conductive metals might mean universally slower progress in electronics, however.

If you want to go ahead and change the laws of physics, try this: magnetism is a much stronger force than gravity, in OUR universe; but maybe there's another universe, a parallel universe, where gravity is stronger than magnetism, and metals that are conductive in our universe might be minimally or non-conductive in a "reversed" universe... but if I had to guess, planets and life probably wouldn't develop or evolve in this kind of universe.

I don't know what natural force could cause that, though. Gold is formed by supernovas and altering the chemistry or lifespans of stars is... well, let's just say that's beyond my area of expertise.

edited 18th Oct '13 7:22:22 AM by fulltimeD

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edited 18th Oct '13 6:19:58 AM by fulltimeD

The galaxy has had interstellar travel for a hundred thousand years, possibly more, by both humans and other species, some human-like, others fairly exotic, many of these having invented FTL separately. Every so often, galactic civilization collapses and an Asimov-style "interregnum", a dark age of barbarism, occurs, after which the planets recover at various speeds, the first several ones to re-achieve FTL flying out to conquer or otherwise dominate the surrounding systems.

"Hasn't happened yet" thus isn't really something I can use, sorry. In fact the complete and utter impossibility of stable modern-equivalent computing may be the cause, or one of the causes, of these re-occuring collapses.

I can't do a radical physics change, like making one force 100 times stronger than it is in our world, and another force a thousand times weaker than it is. That would have all sorts of massive consequences. I doubt the chemical elements would even be recognizable, for instance.

I'm thinking something like saying that electricity moves much more slowly through copper and silicon and all other conductors and semiconductors, thus making computers much slower. But even if I say the same about photons moving through optical fibres, I cannot say that about the speed of light in vacuum (i.e. say that that's 10 or 20 times slower than in our universe), and so for sufficiently high tech levels it becomes possible to make "photonic" computer chips where the photons spend as much time as possible travelling through vacuum channels, so that they can travel at the speed of light.

Or something to do with overheating problems, making compact electronics impossible...

Justifying something with a change in physics can often be worse then simply not justifying it at all. When you change the physics and show people how, you just show why it doesn't work.

edited 19th Oct '13 3:03:58 AM by m8e

Yeah, but once you eliminate a change in physics, the only way you're left with is "no-one ever thought of it", which is a pile of...well you get the idea.

better make it a fantasy setting then

or you could have some kind of universal reason for gold, silicon, and other conductive metals being deposited elsewhere than in the Earth's crust during the formation of the solar system which is similarly replicated in the formation of other life-bearing solar systems, but I don't know what would cause that except for ancient, sufficiently advanced phlebotinum

edited 19th Oct '13 3:54:48 AM by fulltimeD

or maybe the digital age is long past and computers have swelled up to room size again because we're now starting to use more advanced non-digital computing tech like biocomputing or quantum computing.

But why would we do that, if it didn't give an advantage?

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