[TML] Strange societys

[Jerry W Barrington]

On 3/3/08 9:37 PM, "Timothy Little" <tim at little-possums.net> wrote:

> On Mon, Mar 03, 2008 at 05:46:56PM -0500, Jerry W Barrington wrote:
>> If it's truly low tech, it can't dictate beyond it's own asteroid.
>> That makes high pop just about impossible.
> 
> A large asteroid could fit *tons* of people.  If an asteroid with
> average diameter about 100 km was hollowed out into a fully
> three-dimensional habitat, and you required 50,000 m^3 per person,
> then it could house all of Earth's population.

Well, you certainly wouldn't have to worry about *heating* the place...

> Presumably the system was developed with high tech that is no longer
> replicable, but some critical systems may still be (barely)
> maintainable - possibly needing regular imports of parts.
>
>>  Actually, it can reasonably be argued that size of governable
>> population is directly related to tech.  You *need* comm tech over
>> broad area, or food tech to cram them into small area.
> 
> You need to be able to maintain such systems, yes - but you don't
> necessarily have to do it in isolation, and you may rely on regular
> imports.  It certainly doesn't mean you have the capability to improve
> or expand such systems yourself.

And that implies a larger population of high tech people nearby.  How could
anybody expect such a situation to last more than a few years.  People are
people, even 1000's of years in the future.  *Somebody* will come in and
take over.  Possibly to "liberate" the locals, more likely to be a *high*
tech dictator.

> For example, I think even extensive use of fusion power wouldn't
> necessarily imply that the system has minimum TL 9.  If the general
> population have electric lighting and general life support, but no
> computers or appliances and few machines, I'd say that their tech
> level couldn't be considered higher than about 5.