Retro-Future Tech Rationale

[Baron]

I just went looking for a file I thought I had saved, but I can't find it. Maybe someone here can help. It was a rationale and explanation for having future tech that's actually more primitive than what we have in Real Life. Among other things it discussed those massive computers from Traveller, and why their programs were so simple.

Can anyone help me track this down again? Thanks.

[Baron]

Hmm. I might've been thinking of Paul Elliott's Hostile setting from Zozer. Specifically the Retrotech section of his Hostile Technical Manual. Dunno.

[rhialto]

That does sound like Hostile, though Paul has lots of CT freebies. And there's the 1970s_2d6_Retro_Rules, which has the retro art, but not specifically rules.

[Red Baron]

Cosmic rays (or jump space maybe) corrupt micro chips, so everything has to be programmed using legacy mechanical relays. Computers / electronics in space have to be simple and inconveniently large, but planetside computers can be more advanced.

[howandwhy99]

Unlike 30 years ago, we use GUI software to code a lot of programs now. Redundant components are selected from libraries and coding is often in "real language" aka written words, to some degree.

1,000 years in the future, artificial intelligences program and construct our desires from our interlinked imagination. The programming, the manufacturing and robotics, even oversight are handled outside our day-to-day perception.

High tech interfaces with a simplicity of use to construct complex designs are as likely in the future as they are now.

I think a sci-fi game could be fine with rough categories of interfaces and the abilities of the technologies available. I don't think "Equipment" goes away. Lunchboxes don't substitute for spaceships so to speak. And an "Everything/Anything" machine should still be limited. But is defining the limitations of these resources which keep it a game. [I.e. No "I Win" button]