Weird Science!

[athelind]

As I mentioned a few weeks back, I'm running a space game using d20 Modern. I have some questions for the computer geeks in the audience, especially those versed in the historical development of computer technology. foofers, I'm particularly interested in your insights.

I'm taking advantage of the game's premise -- 21st-century Terrans cast loose in the Galaxy -- to play around with a a fun science-fantasy idea I've had cooking on the back burner for years now.

The Galactics, by and large, have all of the classic Pulp Sci-Fi technologies: antigravity, blasters, force fields, and, of course, FTL travel. They generate and store staggering amounts of energy with ease, and harness it in ways we don't even consider possible. SETI is quiet because the Galactics communicate between the stars via "hyperwaves" that we don't even suspect exist.

That's because, somewhere in the early 21st Century, Terrestrial science and technology took a wrong turn. Maybe it was a miscalculation in the complex mathematics of relativity and quantum mechanics. Maybe it was just a misinterpretation of what those formulas meant. Maybe we just missed something. Whatever the cause, somehow, we missed out on an essential technological development, something as fundamental to a spacefaring society as the wheel is to a planetary one.

However... this fundamental, universal, high-energy technology (call it "Teslonics", for lack of a better name) does not play well with the transistor and its descendants. Imagine if, everytime someone started a car, it set off an electromagnetic pulse. In Galactic science, semiconductors and solid-state circuitry are technological dead-ends, amusing curiosities at best -- certainly, nothing capable of doing real, useful work or channel any reasonable amount of power.

And because we Missed The Boat, we've spent the last six decades developing that peculiar little quirk of contaminated sand into a technology that few if any Galactics even suspect is possible. We can manipulate minute currents and voltages with a precision and subtlty that only a few long-departed races ever achieved -- and we use this impossible finesse to make toys, games, and fantasy movies.

My question is this:
Without transistors and integrated circuits, how far would computer technology have developed?
What directions might it have taken? What kind of information storage is involved (memory banks!)? Are vaccuum tubes the most likely alternative? Would the technology favor analog systems over digital?

My own impressions are that information technology would be much less ubiquitous, and thus much more primitive. Computers would would still occupy whole rooms, if not entire buildings (in the grand Pulp SF fashion); interfaces would still be arcane, still the province of the White-Coated Priesthood. I'd like to have a better feel for just what the implications might be, however.

(Since this is in many ways Pulp SF, there are robots -- but "positronic" robot brains aren't digital computers. They're analog devices that mimic the function of a biological brain -- perhaps a little too closely. You don't "program" a Galactic robot -- you train them and "tune" them. They're a little faster than organic brains, but their real advantages are a lack of physical fatigue and the ability to "tune" them to be the equivalent of a human savant, entirely focused on a single task. That doesn't quite cover the same ground as a lower-middle-class suburban home filled with dozens of devices that can perform millions or billions of mathematical operations every second. For the purposes of this discussion, we can safely disregard their existance.)

hinoki, you know the drill. Peek past the cut, and you'll find out why they say that "cheetahs never prosper."

Comments

[araquan.livejournal.com]

My own thoughts:

Then again, maybe the tube could have been developed much farther. I've got some antique tubes that are barely bigger than a small flashlight bulb. I've wondered how small they might have been made if the transistor had somehow never been invented. You can, for hobby purposes, get some insanely tiny light bulbs... Smaller than a grain of sushi rice. You could still have some interesting home electronics based on tubes of that size- say, you could still have a reasonably modern-looking TV, for example, and even some equivalent of video/audio tape technology in the home. Digital clocks would be possible, but probably not wristwatches... But unless microtubes were developed (built from bubbles in blocks of glass?), as you suggest, computers would still be quite large and expensive. More room-sized than building-sized, but still not a consumer item by any means. It'd be like the '60s all over again.

The case-modders would have a field day with a tube computer though- the components themselves would glow...

Then again, I've always wondered what a Turing-complete fluid logic system would be like. Probably slow, noisy, expensive, and bigger than a tube system...

[r-caton.livejournal.com]

At least we'd not require external sources of heating in the computer room.
And imagine the size of the rectification plant with all those mercury rectifiers....

[athelind.livejournal.com]

Innnnteresting -- GURPS LENSMAN brought up miniature vacuum tubes; I thought they were just making them up for a plot convenience, or because they genuinely couldn't conceive of a high-tech society without ANY electronics. Now I know better.

Thanks for the Fluidic Logic link. That's gonna get filed under two categories:
a) Exotic Alien Technology Outside The Mainstream. What else are the Vapormen of Effluvium IV going to use, after all?

b) Needing The Tools To BUild The Tools -- we can use our silicon-based high-processing infotech to extraoplate its own principles into more exotic media, but trying to build an advanced technology out of it from first principles, without the informatic principles behind it, might be more difficult (without the inherent advantages of being a Vaporman of Effluvia, that is).

and yes, a goodly chunk of that decision is because I want Earth's infotech to be uncommon, if not unique -- We Know Something They Don't Know.

[araquan.livejournal.com]

Well, as hafoc says, tubes definitely existed down to peanut size in the real world- that's about how big my smaller pieces are. You might have to apply a photo etching process to build internals for rice-sized tubes, but in theory it would be possible to build them... The transistor just came along and took out the whole technology before they went down to that size. Then again, tubes that size would almost have to be single function, and as hafoc pointed out again, many tubes had multiple sets of elements inside- some of the larger ones I have practically look like a forest of stiff wires under glass. There would come a point where you might have to balance multiple microtubes vs. a larger multifunction tube.

Of course, one also has to remember that early transistors were pretty large- even the ones intended for more portable electronics often came in metal 'can' enclosures that were around 1cm in diameter and nearly as tall- not that much smaller than the peanut tubes. But certainly more durable and cooler.

It also occurs to me that you could have microwave ovens in homes with a tube-based technology- since the magnetron is itself a tube and existed in our world before transistors. All you'd need to control it would be timers and mechanisms to cycle the magnetron on and off depending on the power setting, both of which are simple enough to be doable even with peanut tubes. Or just use a mechanical system like my family's 1973 Kenmore unit does. But if you go the tube route, you could use these for the display... }:>

[athelind.livejournal.com]

According to Wikipedia, they're building vacuum tube integrated circuits now -- primarily as simple microwave emitters, from what I can tell.


I may use those as the key component of Maser Pistols...

[araquan.livejournal.com]

*grin* Well, there you go. I just wonder how long it would take to reach that point without, as you say, transistorized computer tech to analyze the materials. But it's probably doable even without given enough time.

[athelind.livejournal.com]

Yep. The Tech To Build The Tech.

One of my "outs" is that, if any race DOES develop the equivalent of our data-processing tech, be it silicon or vacuum-tube or whatever... they hit the Technological Singularity within a century or two, and simply vanish from mortal ken.

Which is why this is such an important plot point.

[athelind.livejournal.com]

Hee hee hee.

Maybe Galactic Society has NOTICED this -- every time a civilization starts working on Superfast Calculating Machine Technology, they vanish in a century or so, leaving nothing but haunted ruins behind.

They just don't know WHY.

So this is Proscribed Technology...

[kreggan.livejournal.com]

The problem of doing current-day computers in vacuum tubes, and thus taking up large chunks of real-estate (by transistor-on-silicon standards) is that you run into even worse problems with the speed of light. In today's chips it's tough to get a signal across to the other side of the silicon by the time your clock ticks - That's only going to be much worse if rather than travelling an inch or so, your signal has to travel over the other side of the room.
Consequently, you'd have to have much lower clock speeds - a few MHz at the most, I'd guess. That means you'd want to do much more in a clock cycle, ideally by building optimized sub-units for the calculations you want to do most often.

On the other hand, with the mention of magnetrons, would someone have managed to implement something along the lines of photonics more rapidly if they'd had all these tube around emitting lots of light and heat, while they're busy building tubes to emit RF? :>

Light speed?

[athelind.livejournal.com]

Ooh, thank you! I remember an Asimov tale -- one of the Foundation Trilogy? -- where they build a computer with some kind of statistical-anticipation relays to try to circumvent the lightspeed lag.

And, of course, according to one tech manual, Star Trek drops its mammoth computer cores into self-contained warp fields for the same reason.

[araquan.livejournal.com]

Never figured they'd try to build a Pentium Tube (as opposed to Pentium II) computer... };> I was figuring on something with equivalent power to older systems we're familiar with but with substantial parallelization- in a world where most computers would be owned by large corporate or public (universities, government, etc.) entities. So, basically, like a classic mainframe, with users served on a time-sharing basis. Enough still to solve major problems of physics and mathematics, but not such that every average joe can have a speed demon box on their desk. Whether the system's parallelization came from different optimized units, multiple identical units, or an application of both would depend on the design paradigm(s) employed by the builders of the systems- but that's certainly something they'd have to consider.

[caisifhon.livejournal.com]

One notes that the analog signal has other advantages, clock-cycle limitations mean far less. One can accomplish multiple calculations in the same 'cycle' so to speak, due to the nature of an analogue signal, one can theoretically, if the circuitry is in place, do infinite calculations.

It also operates on the set of 'real' numbers (the digital having to break them down into sets and chunks, and only operating on parts of that set, and limited in size and application) So there really si no particular limit to the speed involved, only how fast one can input the information.

And really, photonics would have the capability of being the ultimate analog computer. You can not only have multiple intensities of light, but also multiple types of light, if one sets up the interference patterns correctly (i.e. intensity and wavelength)

At that point it becomes a problem of input/output (really the most difficult aspect of the computing systems as they were created) To 'program' them one set myriad settings within the circuits, mostly manually, via toggles and variable capacitance. Given the state of even the early 1900s and knowledge of current mechanical technology for the purpose, I think it could be largely set up as a modified 'bytecoding' system, though more analog in both input and purpose.

But that's just my .02 cents.

[hafoc.livejournal.com]

The 1950s-60s "peanut" tubes were pretty subtle. Didn't burn out much because, at least in some cases, they could operate on currents low enough that their filaments didn't even glow.

And those old boys could do a lot with just a few tubes. It is possible to build a tube that does multiple functions, yes, but in large part this is because designers back then HAD to be miserly with their electronic piecesparts. There is no logical reason for a radio to have thousands of transistors when perfectly good radios could be made with six to ten. In the same way that computer programmers can get by with inefficient code because of the raw power of new computers, electronics designers in general can get by with inefficient design because transistors-ICs are so cheap and plentiful.

You might want to look at Russian tech. Back as recently as the 80s, I think it was, they were still using tube radios and radar sets in their MiG interceptors. These electronics were pretty good, and because they were based on tubes, they were far more resistant to EMP than Western designs.

Second point, I think EMP would cause problems with more than electronics. I believe that even electricity would have trouble with it- less so than electronics, because the parts are more heavy-duty, but with EMPs going off all the time you'd have trouble.

Third point, I think it would be fairly easy to build Faraday cages around your transistorized equipment and thus protect it from EMP. I'm arm-waving here because I don't know for sure, but in any case it would be possible to harden against EMP somewhat. This would be another tech humans would know that might catch the galactics by surprise-- since their tech would never have required them to develop such shielding.

Teslonics!

[athelind.livejournal.com]

"An EMP every time someone starts a car" was just a for-instance. I'm figuring Galactic Tech can do all the wonderful things that Urban Legends insist that Nikola Tesla could do -- broadcast power, and all that (I'm thinking of having the quirky, psi-based Universal Translator Bands coin the phrase "Teslonics" to describe G-Tech).

It's an incredibly noisy environment, by the standards of today -- fire up a high-power Tesla coil next to your computer or even your stereo and see how well it holds up. Their power systems aren't vulnerable to EMP, because, well, they ARE EMP, kind of.

That said -- are vacuum tubes REALLY proof against EMP and similar noise, or just highly resistant?

And yes, the Faraday Cage solution is already on my list. The Galactics are certainly aware of the properties of Faraday Cages; using them so sheild solid-state circuits never occurred to them, because, again, the transistor effect was never more than a fragile curiosity.

[caisifhon.livejournal.com]

Mid 1920s. Telegraphs were going off all over the US, without operators due to solar flares. Interesting stuff. The transmission lines became antennae, picking up and converting the power from the magnetic to the electrical, which is the nature of EMP damage. Tubes are more resistant to overvoltage, but ionization can cause odd effects within the matrix. Further, the frequency/signal can cause odd effects on crystalline growth within the circuit paths themselves, it was found that several early 'bugs' within the computers were caused by crystalline growth between plates/circuit paths, stimulated by the involved frequency/power levels. Again fascinating stuff.

[hafoc.livejournal.com]

As for hinoki and "Cheetahs never prosper," maybe that's because they're always trying to get into Trouble.

I suspect tubes are about as EMP proof as light bulbs, since light bulbs are what they are, basically. As with lightning protection, "nothing's going to protect you from a direct hit," but as a practical matter you can shield against a near miss.

In my opinion it's fairly likely that SETI is deaf because The Aliens are using some technology we can't yet imagine. I may post on that in my own LJ, although I have been trying to limit LJ to my so-called creative endevors.

[bfdragon.livejournal.com]

I find it hard to think that if the transistor hadn’t come around, that some other little way of finding things that might fulfill the same function. I think you might be on more the right track with analog computing, though this would be even -more- susceptible to interference or EMP. Computers came about as really a solution looking for a problem, and if the solution started out unworkable because of some existing technology, it might have just been dropped.

Indecently, as tube era binary memory goes, we used magnetic core memory for a long time, even up to the days when you or I had computers at home for special applications.. specifically, it's resilience to EMP.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetic_core_memory

[araquan.livejournal.com]

Yeah- for a while I didn't know exactly why core dumps were called that when I first started using Unix... But after a while I was clued in. Actually got to fiddle with a bit of antique core once... Interesting stuff.

[iridium-wolf.livejournal.com]

Mechanical computers had many false starts in our history, the census tabulating machine, Babbages' Difference Engine, the early French automated textile machines that used punch cards and helped coin the word sabotage....

Why not have them in galactic history proliferate even further? Instead of going from mechanical to electric to optical, just skip from mechanical to optical storage?

I can just imagine consulting the great and powerful clicky clacky computer for a hyperspace jump....

There was a book where they managed to get an AI out of a Babbage=based machine, there was a werebear in it, twas interesting. :)

[caisifhon.livejournal.com]

Perhaps using crystalline resonance, as a light-based transistor, or mayhaps as a light-based analog system using stimulated brilloun scattering, or phase-conjugate mirrors and holography. (not all that complex of a system, recognizes patterns (even missing parts of patterns). Thus a simple recognition system. (transmits the full holographic image if the objects are similar) Using a gallium arsenide crystal, along every individual degree of the surface, one can also record a seperate hologram, along any given plane. A fairly substantial amount of patterns can be thus recorded.

Also, when using n-displacement of the crystalline bonds in quartz, under electron bombardment, (generally under very *high* voltage) causes scalar degradation of photon transmission. (i.e. it becomes opaque to varying degrees) Using the right harmonics, perhaps it would be possible to cause single-frequency opacity?

(yes, I read obscure 'hard science' and research books)

All Mimsy Were The Vannevar

[athelind.livejournal.com]

From normanrafferty, put here for future perusal:

http://www.virtualtravelog.net/entries/2004/02/vannevar_bush_and_the_limits_of_prescience.html

[foofers.livejournal.com]

Hey, sorry I haven't had time to respond. Been insanely, INSANELY busy. Have others covered the issue sufficiently?

If you haven't been, get yourself to Visible Storage at the Computer History Museum. There's a point where the tour turns to the right, just after the SAGE air defense computer. The use of vacuum tubes as logic elements abruptly ends right there as the world jumps into transistors. But look to the left, at the display of core memory, which though also from the vacuum tube era continued to be developed even into the 1980's (largely a matter of cost-per-bit economics vs. semiconductor memory)...the latest toroids were small enough that they can be sifted through a salt shaker. If not for the transistor and IC's shortly thereafter, "valve" technology may well have proceeded along such lines. Wee. There's issues of reliability with tubes though...SAGE operated in a state of near-constant parts-swappage with a fleet of people maintaining it...picture a tennis court filled four feet deep with vacuum tubes.

Also of possible interest there: the German Z3 computer, which was based on mechanical relays rather than vacuum tubes. And right as you go in the exhibit, as they're showing off primitive calculating devices and abacii, to the left are several special-purpose machines (punched card, film strip and metal timing chain, IIRC) that despite their physical simplicity can calculate prime numbers (though nothing else - these are purpose-built machines) with surprising efficiency.

And in the far corner, and never brought up during the tour for some reason, is a featureless black cube about five feet on a side...a Connection Machine CM-1. This contained 65,536 single-bit processors all running in parallel. A "vacuum tube Pentium" would probably never happen due to speed-of-light issues and whatnot that others have already mentioned...but ganging up a whole lot of much dumber processors is one way of dealing with bigger issues, though not all problems are really applicable to this sort of hardware.

[wy.livejournal.com]

There's always optronics as well. Optical computing is pretty much a reality. Nano-mechanical computing is also a possibility. Or organic based analog networks.