Effect of Super-Tech on Society?

[CrosshairCollie]

The 'most powerful man in the world' thread got me thinking about this. How much do you allow super-tech, or superpowers of any stripe, to influence society and societal development? For example ... have any of your super-scientists created revolutionary plant-food or irrigation techniques, bringing prosperity to third-world countries where traditional farming is impossible? A cabal of altruistic sorcerers casting a spell to end a drought or dust-bowl?

 

This got started because the question of where UNTIL's funding came from was brought up ... and it occured to me that 'cutting-edge' science might be able to improve the situation in many countries without necessarily inundating the world in robots and blasters. This is something that always bothered me about most fantasy worlds, where magic was known to exist, yet had no discernible effect on the development of society (something corrected in the new Eberron campaign setting).

[SleepyDrug]

Re: Effect of Super-Tech on Society?

 

It varies by the type of tech. I try to keep it subtle. And expensive. The ability to make affordable super-tech is (in my world) usually tied to individuals who enter the Superhuman World (and don't share tech secrets) such as Dr Destroyer, Mechanon, Defender

[zornwil]

Re: Effect of Super-Tech on Society?

 

It varies by the type of tech. I try to keep it subtle. And expensive. The ability to make affordable super-tech is (in my world) usually tied to individuals who enter the Superhuman World (and don't share tech secrets) such as Dr Destroyer' date=' Mechanon, Defender[/quote']

Mostly, I'm with this. However, the top governments do have some extraordinary capabilities, they're just used sparingly as they are expensive and (for now) experimental basically. Also, in some part due to the "mutant menace" along with communism and the new capabilities of the government via mutants, the US and similar governments have taken more control over some sectors of society, which I posited has counteracted the growth in technology among the general population as they try to control such developments - hampering sometimes both private industry's developments and moreover just making such things expensive. So in my world, whlie the Internet exists, lots of people aren't on it, and it's heavily, heavily government-monitored. This combo gives me a trade-off that keeps my world simiklar enough for my tastes in this campaign to the real world.

[tgrandjean]

Re: Effect of Super-Tech on Society?

 

Well, I don't have any sort of campaign running right now...

But in the Silver Age game in my head...

Poverty and starvation just don't exist. Disease is seldom exists in plague state and if it does, it's within the heroes power to find a cure.

Supertech, while not accessible to the common people, exists within most of the world's governments (as well as the aliens).

Realistic? No.

But it has a level of optimism and comic-book mentality that I enjoy.

If some village in Africa lacks water, either some villians have seized control over the hydroelectric dam, or a giant lens in space has been set up.

[AlHazred]

Re: Effect of Super-Tech on Society?

 

I think they did a reasonable job of addressing this in the new Champions Universe (where, for example, some items from the Gadgets and Gear book is available to the public at such reasonable numbers they could be expected to have it). In the old Strike Force universe, there was a villain called, er, uh, I think the Editor or something, who had the power to dilute people's ability to understand super-tech; thus, only those super-geniuses who built their suits could make more, and they were busy fighting crime.

 

This is something that always bothered me about most fantasy worlds' date=' where magic was known to exist, yet had no discernible effect on the development of society (something corrected in the new Eberron campaign setting).[/quote']

I really like this setting, a lot more than I've liked most other things that came out of WotC (except maybe Planescape, and that actually came out of TSR). I sense a Hero conversion post coming on...

[OddHat]

Re: Effect of Super-Tech on Society?

 

Mostly I don't, but that's because I have strict limits that I place on Supertech. Spend six months working for any military contractor in the US and then try to take Viper / Argent / Destroyer seriously. If you want to build a giant robot, it's not enough to have the plans for a working giant robot; you need the tools, the alloys, the infrastructure, the basic research, the tools to make the tools, the staff, the support staff, the funding, etc, etc. The Giant Robot Viper just used to rob a bank would cost more to build and maintain than it could possibly be used to steal, and hiding all of that activity from Law Enforcement would be impossible. Every step you take to make that kind of goofiness work in your game world ("They have huge factories hidden in the Artic Circle and staffed entirely by vo-tech drop outs!") just makes it harder to look at as anything but a pure genre convention, in which case you might as well hand wave it.

 

In some campaigns I've gone the Aberrant route ("Supertech did change the world; enjoy your AI piloted electric car"), but I mostly use the Wild Cards rule; Superech is a focus for the psionic powers of a gadgeteer. Take it away from the gadgeteer and it will break down in a few days at most.

[SleepyDrug]

Re: Effect of Super-Tech on Society?

 

Mostly I don't, but that's because I have strict limits that I place on Supertech. Spend six months working for any military contractor in the US and then try to take Viper / Argent / Destroyer seriously. If you want to build a giant robot, it's not enough to have the plans for a working giant robot; you need the tools, the alloys, the infrastructure, the basic research, the tools to make the tools, the staff, the support staff, the funding, etc, etc. The Giant Robot Viper just used to rob a bank would cost more to build and maintain than it could possibly be used to steal, and hiding all of that activity from Law Enforcement would be impossible. Every step you take to make that kind of goofiness work in your game world ("They have huge factories hidden in the Artic Circle and staffed entirely by vo-tech drop outs!") just makes it harder to look at as anything but a pure genre convention, in which case you might as well hand wave it.

Good Point. I've never liked the Viper as organized crime angle. In my world, Viper is a private terrorist army. They have vast cash reserves generated from their (original) and now current corporate sponsors and dummy corporations. They also are supported by various governments (some willing and some not quite so willing). But they do enough "crimes" to have forced organized crime to adapt. Thus the standard mobs and drug cartels are largely replaced by stepped up groups such as Cardshark (active in both DC and CU campaigns) and similiar crime groups that use mercenary super-villains to supplement their normal criminal agents. This is where GRAB and like groups come into play.

[Mutant for Hire]

Re: Effect of Super-Tech on Society?

 

The two opposite ends of the extreme for superhero genres are the Silver Age and the Iron Age. As I've explained in previous posts, I see superhero titles as points on a sphere, with one pole being the pure Silver Age and pure Iron Age at the other end.

 

The Silver Age is really a modern fairy tale, a modern myth. There are internal rules of consistancy that are totally unrealistic but make sense within the logic of the story itself. There are certain rules and conventions that everyone plays by for reasons of the story. So the first thing you have to realize is that realism isn't one of the requirements for a SA superhero story and is only done to the extent that genre conventions allow it.

 

The magical basis of the fairy tale, with its internal consistancy based on rules that aren't realistic but make for good storytelling is reflected in how superpowers and supertech are handled in high Silver Age stories. Powers are magical things. A lightning bolt and some chemicals give someone superspeed. That's more of a magical ritual than an actual scientific event. It's really just magic with a science paint job on it. A lot of supertech also follows the same principle. High Silver Age supertech is just magic with a scientific paint job on it.

 

Because it's magic rather than technology, you don't have to treat it in a consistant and logical manner. Devices reflect the moral standings of their creators. Villanous devices have flaws that ultimately allow them to be defeated. Devices invented by heroes may be weaker but are unflawed. Likewise the fact that villanous devices that do have flaws are abandoned rather than having their flaws repaired is also a story convention.

 

One of the effects of the Law of Magic with regards to Silver Age supertech is that all devices are built for a specific individual or group and at best are occasionally borrowed now and then for use by others. A superhero with a powerful weapon or rocket boots or whatever didn't make copies for his fellow superheroes that could benefit from such devices. At best you had things like the Legion Flight Ring, but how often did you see one of those rings outside of the Legion? And supervillains always managed to recover their armor and weapons, even if they couldn't be replaced.

 

There are a few other effects of the Law of Magic. One of which is that the integrity of devices tends to reflect the moral stature of their creators. Villanous devices always have flaws in them that can be exploited. Heroic devices may be weaker but ultimately have no such fatal flaw to them. The status of many devices also reflects the status of their creators, which is why a lot of bases and technology blow up when their masters are killed or when they're captured.

 

Remember that all supertech in the Silver Age tends to have a moral alignment as well. There is good technology used by good types and there is evil technology used by evil people and it's pretty clear which is which. Good technology can be saved. Evil technology has to be destroyed, and typically is.

 

Then there's the Law of Conformity, one of the other fundamental principles of the high Silver Age. The fundamental principle states that the status quo is the highest and best society and that conformity to the status quo is the highest good. Anything that deviates from the status quo is moral only if it is used to preserve the status quo. Superpowers and supertech are treated as deviations from the norm, but a necessary evil. It's not explicitly stated but it's pretty implicit in the setup of the Silver Age world.

 

As a result, superheroes, being moral beings, only use their superpowers and supertech to uphold the status quo from those things that threaten it. Even then, they're really only allowed to use those things morally when there is a threat to the status quo, and are only allowed to use them until the threat to the status quo is over. And while they're using superpowers, they create a secret identity that means that their morally suspect powers and technology and methods will not contaminate their conforming regular identities.

 

Even then, such things are used sparingly by good people. Time machines, space travel and so on should only be used when there is an absolute need for such things, and otherwise they should be kept in mothballs. The more powerful and disruptive a device could be to the status quo, the more sparingly it should be used. And in the end such things should always be kept out of the hands of the status quo.

 

Villanous devices are evil in part because they are used against the status quo, and often infiltrated into it in a corrupting fashion. These devices are evil and are usually destroyed at the end of matters because they are immoral technology.

 

So supertech has no impact in a Silver Age world because such technology disrupts the status quo and superheroes are too moral to corrupt society with such things and villains, barred from society are incapble of truly introducing such corrupting technology by legitimate means. By the Law of Magic, supertech can be built for individuals, but by the Law of Conformity it must be hidden or disguised, like Jimmy Olsen's watch and like the watch or the Bat Signal, properly used only to summon the hero to protect society.

 

The Iron Age is completely opposite and has the fundamental premise of science fiction. Whereas the fundamental roots of the Silver Age are in a fairy tale world, the true Iron Age world tends to focus more on consequences and extrapolations from the existance of superpowers and supertechnology.

 

In the Silver Age world, origins can only repeat under special circumstance. Once the Super Soldier formula is used successfully once, by the Law of Magic, that's more or less it unless there's some higher purpose for it being repeated successfully. In the Iron Age world, once a piece of supertech is invented, like real technology it can be replicated and will be replicated and tends to be used to maximum effect.

 

And by consequence and extrapolation, supertechnology and superpowers will have an effect on society in more than a little way. There are no moral barriers between superpowers and supertechnology and the rest of the world and so supertechnology will invade the rest of the world. Someone invents a cloning device, that technology will leak and cloning will become one of the things the world has to deal with.

 

Usually supertech is kept somewhat under control by the virtue of it being horribly expensive and thus found only in the hands of the superrich, confining its disruptive effects somewhat. Often supertech is concealed from the public as well. That just means that it tends to be found primarily in certain circles of society, but it will have common usage there. Someone invents time travel, time travel becomes a fixture of the universe from then on, even if its only in a certain elite society.

 

Even so, there's no implicit moral barriers or genre conventions that bar technology from society and the creator of an Iron Age world has to introduce in general secrecy and cost barriers to keep it from spilling all over the place. There's no Law of Magic to tie technology to certain individuals or to give it any sort of inherent morality, and because it isn't just magic with a scientific paint job extrapolations of the technology are possible.

 

In short, in an Iron Age world, supertech can completely renovate society, with the only bars to it being cost and the owners of said technology deciding to hang onto it or not.

[Zeropoint]

Re: Effect of Super-Tech on Society?

 

I basically break supertechnology into three categories.

 

First, you have very low-level stuff, which is basically modern technology that nobody else thought to build, or something a few years ahead of real-world tech. This doesn't have much of an effect on society--computers are faster, cell phones work better, but for the most part, no new capabilities are added.

 

Second, you have real technology which is ahead of its time. This tech conforms to the real laws of physics, and can be built, maintained, and operated by anyone who can understand it, but is sufficiently advanced that not many people CAN understand it, and the industrial infrastructure for manufacturing it doesn't exist, so it's extremely expensive to build. Imagine a microwave oven in 1910, and that's about where this is. Super-gadgeteers somehow manage to build this stuff without huge resource bases, then governments (and VIPER) reverse-engineer it so they can equip agents with plasma rifles.

 

Finally, you have "overtechnology", which basically doesn't work for anyone other than the creator. Maybe he or she knows some physics that the rest of the world doesn't, maybe it's some kind of tech-enabling aura; who knows? All we can say for certain is that only Doc Brown can keep the flux capacitor working. This technology doesn't change the world at all, because there isn't enough of it to do so.

 

 

This gives me a world where plasma rifles exist, but you're more likely to see the Paranormal Alert Response Team carrying a .50 BMG rifle with armor-piercing bullets, or that new Barret 20mm rifle, because they're a LOT cheaper and easier to maintain. Power armor exists, but every suit is a hand-built one-off, so you don't see hordes of power-armored troops on the battlefield. Robotics is more advanced that in RL, but usefully inttelligent robots are still beyond the grasp of normal development.

 

Zeropoint

[zornwil]

Re: Effect of Super-Tech on Society?

 

Mutant for Hire - great post!

 

I would add as a sort of tangent/additional thought, that Moore's Miracleman "Silver Age" issues were an intrigueing fusion of the fantastic elements of the comic book Silver Age with the heavy morality of the Bronze/Iron (?) Age and the Iron Age "super can remake the world" idea. It was very thought-provoking and a shame it didn't get finished.

[Mutant for Hire]

Re: Effect of Super-Tech on Society?

 

The Miracleman books are pure Iron Age down to the core. They deconstructed the Silver Age, brutally, by showing them to be nothing more than fantastic dreams designed to brainwash Miracleman and his companions. In the end, Miracleman breaks free of the dreams and their dream logic and applies his powers in the real world, and shows the Silver Age dreams to be nothing more than just that: dreams.

 

They only toyed with the Silver Age concepts to show them for what they were, dreams and fairy tales. Alan Moore has since repented and understands that dreams and fairy tales have their place, as has the rest of the Silver Age revival.

[zornwil]

Re: Effect of Super-Tech on Society?

 

The Miracleman books are pure Iron Age down to the core. They deconstructed the Silver Age, brutally, by showing them to be nothing more than fantastic dreams designed to brainwash Miracleman and his companions. In the end, Miracleman breaks free of the dreams and their dream logic and applies his powers in the real world, and shows the Silver Age dreams to be nothing more than just that: dreams.

 

They only toyed with the Silver Age concepts to show them for what they were, dreams and fairy tales. Alan Moore has since repented and understands that dreams and fairy tales have their place, as has the rest of the Silver Age revival.

I don't agree. The idealism of the so-called Silver Age which follows Miracleman's ascendance speaks to the power and purity of simple idealism. The stories of the people who look to favors from on high in particular, I think.

[dbsousa]

Re: Effect of Super-Tech on Society?

 

I don't agree. The idealism of the so-called Silver Age which follows Miracleman's ascendance speaks to the power and purity of simple idealism. The stories of the people who look to favors from on high in particular' date=' I think.[/quote']

 

I think the whole Kid Miracleman plotline, from the buggery, to the snapping of his neck, to the Kid Miracleman cult that arose after his death, were pure Iron Age. Miracleman was the Authority before there was an Authority, complete with a London Holocaust and everything...

[Guest Witch Doctor]

Re: Effect of Super-Tech on Society?

 

In the campaign I'm envisioning, the super hero world is just like our real world with some differences. In the super hero world, the rapid acceleration of technology which we've seen in the real world is explained with super-tech. However, noone actually knows that supers exist because the media really is controlled by a secret organization and their agenda includes keeping this stuff secret and using super tech most of us can't conceive of, they've pretty much kept everything off the internet as well (and what does get out is typically thought of to be written by some crackpot).

[Mutant for Hire]

Re: Effect of Super-Tech on Society?

 

I'm with dbsousa. Incidentally, during the Golden Age and afterwards, you really have a "superheroes playing Olympian gods" more than anything that resembles the Silver Age. Where is Miracleman's secret identity? Where is the ordinary everyday world that superheroes conceal themselves in?

[OddHat]

Re: Effect of Super-Tech on Society?

 

I don't agree. The idealism of the so-called Silver Age which follows Miracleman's ascendance speaks to the power and purity of simple idealism. The stories of the people who look to favors from on high in particular' date=' I think.[/quote']

 

I think you and MFH are talking about two different story arcs. He's talking about the origin story, you're talking about the arc after Miracle Man and Miracle Woman have created a "utopia" on Earth.

 

I think it was a very Iron Age utopia, but the Silver was there.

[zornwil]

Re: Effect of Super-Tech on Society?

 

I think you and MFH are talking about two different story arcs. He's talking about the origin story, you're talking about the arc after Miracle Man and Miracle Woman have created a "utopia" on Earth.

 

I think it was a very Iron Age utopia, but the Silver was there.

The latter story arc that you refer to is what I'm talking about, and my apologies if that wasn't clear by referring to it as the Silver Age, that is the specific name of that story arc.

[zornwil]

Re: Effect of Super-Tech on Society?

 

I'm with dbsousa. Incidentally' date=' during the Golden Age and afterwards, you really have a "superheroes playing Olympian gods" more than anything that resembles the Silver Age. Where is Miracleman's secret identity? Where is the ordinary everyday world that superheroes conceal themselves in?[/quote']

Guys, I'm referring to the mixture of elements and I'm not saying that the Iron didn't outweigh the Silver, but I am saying that there was an interesting fusion there in the second story arc, as we saw some very basic return to questioning why and how should supers be so super, a sort of conservatism regarding their role (as Moore was known for), and a contrast to that role of how people were living their lives and aspiring.

[Mutant for Hire]

Re: Effect of Super-Tech on Society?

 

Okay, I got the confusion now, zornwil. You keep refering to Alan Moore. That wasn't Alan Moore who wrote the Silver Age stories, that was Neil Gaiman. He was taking the series in a much different direction then.

[zornwil]

Re: Effect of Super-Tech on Society?

 

D'oh! I forgot that, obviously, ugh.

 

PS - sorry!