> From: Bruce Johnson <johnson@Pharmacy.Arizona.EDU>

>
>
>On Apr 9, 2014, at 12:45 PM, Jeffrey Schwartz <schwartz.jeffrey@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>That said, it’s really hard for us primitive screwheads to comprehend what a computer or ground car or starship would be like with 10,000 years of development behind it at a higher TL than ours is currently.
>
>We don’t have any real cultural referent for something like that. 10K years ago we were chipping rocks for tools. We didn’t even have the wheel at that point. We hardly have *any* significant, widely used technology that’s that old.
>

sure we do,
'fire' and 'spear'.
lure and trap are still there too.

and we use it exactly in the same way for exactly the same purpose.
to heat things and kill animals from a long way away.

ok, so the fire is now encased in steel and powered by electricity, but it is still heat.

and the spear is now a rifle, which still sends a projectile to the target at range.

so that is 6 TLs of developing the same idea. not new ideas, the very same.
Which i would expect from TL 7 (current) to 13 (standard traveller).

It is this development of the same idea that makes me disagree that designs will last hundreds or thousands of years.
There will be tweaks. Someone will say they want a fast, nimble, low crew, tailorable ship for operating in the atmospheres of gas giants and planets (Littoral combat). they get a duck.