Going back to my comparison of current earth countries, does that still map? In 2013 in Afghanistan the cellphone plans were cheaper and service was faster (generally) than my US cellphone plan of the time, but Afghanistan isn't really thought of as having a high tech level, in gaming terms. The same with Antarctica from a different direction, the various labs set up there have a high tech level and the population (insofar as it counts as population) are skilled in that they can maintain technical equipment, but there's no infrastructure to make cellphones all that useful, so far as I know.
Without thinking much about it, I would have guessed that Antarctica has a higher general tech level than Afghanistan, but only if you look at specific aspects of infrastructure.
There are attempts to make cellphones spanning their own infrastructure by using mimo antennae, wifi and bluetooth to relay messages and calls (and networking) from device to device.
This depends on the type of technology, I think. But generally supporting infrastructure will be a limitating factor. Repair and maintenance come to mind.
Mirco
-------- Ursprüngliche Nachricht --------
Von: Cian Witherspoon <xxxxxx@gmail.com>
Datum: 13.02.18 09:01 (GMT+01:00)
An: xxxxxx@simplelists.com
Betreff: Re: [TML] The meaning of world tech level
We've been looking at it all wrong:
TL is a measure of what technology the local infrastructure will support.
Think about it. Yeah, smartphones are great - but they were created to
take advantage of the capabilities of already existing infrastructure
- cell phone towers, wireless internet, data communication via cell
phone frequencies, the electrical grid... Without them, a smartphone
is a fancy paperweight.
Infrastructure is the limiting force on what technology can be
feasibly imported. The price markups are for obtaining the gear
required to create a limited scale form of the required infrastructure
(or paying for someone else having already set it up).
SO a noble wants to import a few dtons of smartphones onto a low tech
world - rewards for local rulers, perhaps. Each phone requires:
communication infrastructure - either satnet in a can, or ground
towers. Also requires the equipment needed to actually run the
network.
Data infrastructure - probably bundled into the above
power infrastructure - gotta charge it somehow
and then a server loaded with apps and probably a library.
Oh, and people to run it all.
Now that bill becomes a lot higher. Actually trying to create the
infrastructure? Even higher.
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