Technology

This page serves as an easy explanation of the technology of the universe.

Overview
In comparison to the Old World, technology is effectively all over the place. Innovation continued into the 2070s, so many advancements seen in the out-of-character modern era are present along with advancements beyond. Smartphones, the internet, and other instances of high-technology existed, but time has passed and the costs of reintroducing these things are out of the question - along with the knowledge to make them being lost to time.

In its place, cheaper, easier-made, and more reliable tech from earlier periods has been resurrected. The knowledge to produce many of these things continues to exist because - alternatively to our present world - many elements of earlier culture persisted until the collapse of the Old World, with old styles and technologies being modified instead of redesigned. Considering the many trade embargoes and depressions/recessions that plagued the old world, less costly, more reliable, and generally less 'dependent' technologies became popular as the world came closer to crash.

Weapons
Many early 20th century designs for firearms were recycled and retained throughout the remainder of Old World history, especially as the styles became popular into the latter 21st century. For instance, the Thompson submachine gun was improved upon in cost-effectiveness and general efficiency over the years. Later models eventually settled on the steady, if high rate of fire introduced with the M1921, but retained various other improvements that made it a popular police riot weapon - a status retained by the present day. Militarily, however, the use of more advanced weaponry saw a greater calling. These too, however, mostly saw the same recycling of old weapons introduced by companies such as ArmaLite or FN Herstal.

New concepts for ballistic weapons were introduced, however, as were coil, laser, and EMP devices. Plasma devices also saw substantial research, but were never considered stable enough to be introduced.

Armor
The most common forms of ballistic armor - kevlar, ceramic, steel - remained and have remained in use...

Computers
The passing of the Age of Information was amongst the deepest of culture shocks to the west when the Old World died. The interconnected, small world of the 21st century brought on an entirely new form of life for people. Drop-in house calls became unacceptable, deep friendships could be formed with people who had never been in a room with you; movies, music, news - these things were all readily available. So when it passed, the only generation who still remembered what it was like to live without the internet were people of advanced age.

Suffice it to say, the old iteration of the internet is long gone and most devices of computing hardware are no longer functional. The new age has seen the return of the internet on a small scale, with some older satellites remaining accessible, and a few particularly famous launches of new satellites in Union. Computer equipment is often made according to expense and complexity. Most Columbia-manufactured computers are simple, cheap, and somewhat bulky. There are, however, much pricier options that can effectively reproduce late-stage Old World equipment.

Robotics and A.I.
The onset of the 2030s was a revolutionary period for how robotics and artificial intelligence factored into public life. AI became generally more intelligent, but few systems became sufficiently advanced enough to operate independently and, in a sense of the word, intelligently. Most systems that did have advanced capabilities were mainframe administrators that would operate high-priority facilities and their robots, computing operators that could research vast amounts of data and formulate projections for governments and corporations, or highly expensive "human" androids who could perform activities befitted to an independent, humanoid form with the proficiency of an advanced AI.

Robots, in general, became much more common in daily life. Maintenence robots, protocol robots, military robots, factory, janitorial, hospital - as corporations got bigger and the people became smaller, trillions of dollars were invested in what the super-rich hoped would be a more cost-effective alternative to employing human beings. Defense contractors were no strangers to the industry, either, and so private funds were not alone to build the industry.

Today, the majority of Old World robotics and AI have gone the way of most other devices of the era. But many robots in more civilized areas continue to be restored and jury-rigged, and there are just a few manufacturers of new - albeit expensive and simplistic - robots in the New World. One is in Edmonton, which houses a few balkanized companies who have been competing in the robotics market since their original company broke up some 50 years ago.

Vehicles
When the world descended into a Second Dark Age, mass production and complex manufacturing eventually came to a halt. But people continued to exist, and although society regressed, they still needed transport.

An early, unsustainable solution was to fix and pass down the cars that people had, but as centuries passed, this became unreliable, and so very few cars from the Old World remain in use today throughout areas with access to new cars. Another solution was to use horse and buggy, which was reliable and would naturally return with the times. This method of transport became common and remains in wide use. It is preferred in rough terrain, by those unable to afford a car, and by those from regions or cultures unfamiliar with automotive vehicles.

As nations modernized and the Dark Age came to a close, one of the first technological advancements to return had been the automobile, but they did not return as they were. These new companies found that the manufacturing process for late 20th and 21st-century vehicles were far beyond their economical, pragmatic capabilities to reproduce.

Amongst the examples of advancements in finer technology was the fact that headlights no longer needed to be made in the round shape of a parabolic reflector. The less advanced, economical manufacturers of the New Age could not reasonably expend the resources needed to make late-period Old World headlights, and so they reverted to the antiquated designs of the first years of the automobile. This, along with the culture shift towards pre-World War II aesthetics and ideas in the last years of the United States and the fact that cars such as the Ford Model A or the Cadillac V-16 were popular as kit cars and were easy to make introduced the current-day designs for automobiles.

Technologically, however, some newer advancements are retained and the "cars of future past" are far more reliable than their bygone counterparts. Leaded fuel and carburetors, for instance, are no longer in use.

Medicine
While all known advancements in medicine were retained from the Old World and were usually preserved in even the most anti-intellectual of environs, not all of it remains useful due to the mutation of certain pathogens and the fact that many treatments/methods are no longer pragmatically feasible in the New World due to regression. Many cultures continue to rely on superstitions and tribal medicine, and a hint of this lingers in even the Union today. Still, the advanced civilizations which have emerged over the past centuries have resumed medical research into the uncharted problems that continue to grow and plague the people of today.

Media
Reliable forms of post-collapse media were amongst the ironic final attempts by corporations to make money on dying empires. A popular idea was to recycle old, but independently-operating tech that would survive power grid failures. An example of antiquated tech that would reemerge with modern tweaks was the wind-up LP record player. Whereas old gramophones made to play shellac were rough on the records and had the era's sound quality, the new wind-ups were as gentle and any other player and had a modern quality of sound. They became popular when - as had been predicted by the marketing eggheads of the Old World - many parts of the world were without power for long periods of time and there was no internet. Physical media and self-generating players reemerged in general, and although original examples remain scarce, screens and speakers have never completely disappeared from society.

Although radios, records, movies, and - more recently - satellite television have returned, only radios are actually widespread. Missing except in rare cases, however, are Old World advancements such as computer streaming and holographic computing. The console and computer video game are present in civilized areas and have a small, quaint, but fair and healthy industry. Drive-in theatres and moviehouses remain the most popular method of seeing screen entertainment and newsreels, due to most people not owning a home set.

Other
Spagelo wrote lore.