Hmm... I might see another issue: you presumably already have small, high-speed computers: the central nervous systems of your humans, at least, and likely at least some of your aliens. You've indicated that you want to prevent "photonic" computers from arising, and it seems to me that biological computers are a similar issue.
However, it occurs to me that producing either photonic or biological computers would likely be very difficult without another form of reasonably-complex computer as a stepping-stone; while this could be done with slow, large computers, if small, high-speed computers are out for some reason then it may simply be that no species has yet produced a computer of sufficient complexity for the task that hasn't broken down due to fault, accident or the like before a photonic or biological computer came to be conceptualised and designed with its aid.
As to preventing transistor-based computers, I rather like the "hack" idea. Perhaps there's some omnipresent, external, malevolent entity that generally has little access to your main universe, but which can "reach in" via transistors. Any species that successfully builds more than a few connected transistors thus essentially makes a gateway for this entity, and the more complex the set of transistors the more power it wields through them.
edited 19th Oct '13 5:37:43 PM by ArsThaumaturgis
My Games & Writing
The hack idea is more along the lines of electronic warfare being a very valuable strategic and tactical option.
Even if hack offence is just slightly easier than in our universe, if combined with hack defence being slightly harder, the end result might be a universe in which computers are more trouble than they're worth, because any military (or pirate or terrorist or guerilla) force will include hacker squads, constantly probing the enemy for vulnerabilities.
One of the best, or at least one of the least bad, forms of electronic defence, might also be to use only very simple software and hardware, because means you and your defence team can understand it more fully, grasp all the potential interactions.
I realise that; I was just suggesting an alternative idea along similar lines.
Unless you mean that you've settled on standard hacking as the cause of your retro-tech computers, of course, in which case fair enough.
My Games & Writing
Raven Wilder
Do you really need to give a reason why the computers are so old-fashioned? Most Retro Universes don't bother doing so; they just present us with the world they've created and trust us to crank up our Willing Suspension of Disbelief and follow along.
Besides, if avanced/miniature computers are impossible in your world because the laws of physics are slightly different, why would any of the characters ever comment on it? To them, the laws of physics are what they've always been, so unless your characters are theoretical physicists or sci-fi authors, a discussion about how a hypothetical change in physical laws would allow for miniaturized computers is unlikely to come up in conversation.
"It takes an idiot to do cool things, that's why it's cool" - Haruhara Haruko
Deputy Director, Space-Time Gradient LV-114
maybe have both but with the digital computers super-vulnerable to hacking? That was the justification Battle Star Galactica used: our enemies are computers, let's downsize the tech so we're not vulnerable. So the military stopped using (then later reintroduced, after the war) advanced computing on Battlestars. But civilians generally had access to modern computers.
Slightly similar presence: I wrote a 20 Minutes into the Future novel once where the Resistance agreed to stick to old-school computer technology, passing data sticks instead of using the internet, to avoid notice by the authorities. This was in a near future with very advanced computer tech.
Deputy Director, Space-Time Gradient LV-114
Another possibility: If your setting has AI and the AI wields enough guns and troops, then maybe the AI were offended by "computers made in their image" and went on a crusade to destroy all computers that weren't of their "race"
Maybe computers inevitably become self-aware and go skynet; those civilizations that allowed computer science to grow beyond a certain point all got wiped out by their creations, or just barely survived and learned the lesson not to let computers get too powerful.
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.
Which does not preclude pocket calculators and laptops.
Deputy Director, Space-Time Gradient LV-114
FTL screws with digital system? I used that once.
Many good points! Maybe especially the one about the author needing to have a grasp of how the world physics are altered so that he can avoid contradicting himself. And the previous point about characters not being realistically inclined to "notice" that they world they have lived in for their entire lives has different physics from the reader's world.
FTL travel screwing up computers is a possibility, but that seems to me to make colonization almost impossible, and certainly makes it difficult for military ships to travel. One possibility is that the more primtive a computer is, the less downtime it suffers due to FTL scrambling, e.g. an analog/mechanical computer is unaffected, an electro-mechanical one is down for 1d2 hours, a vacuum tube-based one is down for 1d2 days, an individaul-transistor one for 1d2 weeks, a silicon chip one for 1d2 months, and a photonic computer for 1d2 years.
One thing I might want is to have a non-proportional scaling of computers, so that a computer 10 times larger and heavier is not 10 times faster, but more like 20 or 25 times faster.
That way, a tiny man-portable computer is pretty feeble, but if you have a room-sized one, it'll be pretty powerful. If combined, somehow, with severely gimped data transfer, as in no limited digital radio, and data lines that are not much faster than modems, and data storage being based on slow-ass tapes.
That might amount to something...
And/or computers could work fairly well if non-programmable, meaning everything is built into the hardware, via some kind of non-trivial-to-erase chips, EPRO Ms or EEPRO Ms or whatever they're called. So most computers would be quite function-specific, rather than general-purpose.
The only "report" on what others authors or worldbuilders have done, was the one from the guy in whose universe FTL scrambled computers.
I'd like to hear more examples of that. Surely I can't be the first author who've tried to justify retro-tech computers. And is there a trope for it? And by "it" I mean deliberate and thoughtful retro-tech, not mindless imitation of the Star Wars movie trilogy.
Deputy Director, Space-Time Gradient LV-114
For the FTL screwing with digital systems that I used in a couple short stories, there were portals within the solar system that allowed ships to travel through Krasnikov Tubes which were like crude versions of artificial wormholes and require gates to generate the portal. Obviously to place a portal light years away from Earth would take decades or centuries for a sublight ship to transport it there or arrive to construct one, so using them to travel interstellar distances isn't practical. Other species have more advanced FTL. Anyway, the "K-Tubes" lead to strategic points in the Solar System, so humans are still limited to the Solar System, but can use crude FTL within it. Unfortunately, the K-Tubes mess with electronics especially digital systems which have to be powered down during flight.
I invented a kind of ship called an Analog Carrier or more popularly a "Clockwork Carrier" a big military ship with entirely analog systems including auto-gyros for spinning the crew module for gravitation and huge room sized computers. This ship carries dozens of smaller sublight attack vessels (They are NOT Space Fighters) completely powered down during the trip through the K-Tube. Once the carrier emerges on the other side, the attack ships (which are basically big rockets with a cockpit and a ton of weapons) power up their systems including flight computers and Zerg Rush the enemy like flying cavalry. Either they retreat, or they are victorious. Victory usually means the attack ships expending all their fuel, so the Carrier then goes and picks them up with grapplers. The ships are transported back to their launch ports and powered down for the return through the K-Tube. Then the Carrier goes back through the Portal.
That's my story though. No copying ;)
I've used variations on this where a natural wormhole generates radiation that requires a ship to go in unpowered, and also requires the pilot to be sedated. On the other side, the ship automatically powers up and the computer injects the pilot with stimulants that jolt him or her awake. The pilot has to wear a spacesuit because when the ship depowers that includes the life support systems and the computer that controls them.
By the way, I LOVE making FTL inconvenient, dangerous or both. In one story I wrote, FTL involves exchanging starship-sized probes for actual ships. It's called a Swap Drive and it's basically FTL teleportation. It takes years or decades or centuries to get the probe to its destination, but once it's there, it can swap with a spaceship. BUT the spaceship has to be almost identical in mass to the other object, which is why the probes are so huge (they start out small and are programmed to mine asteroids for added mass along the way). Swapping a big ship for a small shuttle or a scout craft wouldn't work, so Earth basically uses only one ship type, to keep things easy, and builds it with a lot of modular capability so they can equip them for different kinds of missions. It's taken awhile, but humans finally reach the stars. Once the Probes teleport back to Earth via the Swap, they're sent out again in a new direction.
edited 22nd Oct '13 5:02:04 AM by fulltimeD
