With a POD of 1900, the challenge is to retard technological development in the 20th century in whatever ways reasonable and possible.
Challenge: Retard Technological Development in the 20th Century
- Thread starter Emperor Norton I
- Start date
Not sure about this - some people argue that wars actually spur the development of technology, at least as it relates to things that can be used to fight the war. The whole "hostility is the mother of invention" school of thought. I take it you're not persuaded by that, though.
BlondieBC
Banned
No, major wars slow down technology due to the huge loss of life and material. While there is often to rush items under development to military use, there is an accompanying loss of R&D on all things deem non-vital. It is a huge net loss, even during the war in development. Then add in the much, much lower R&D budgets (cash, men, materials), and things fall way behind. After WW1, a whole host of technologies being worked on had a 10+ years of lost development due to funding issues - applied physics, radar, engine development, etc. And many of the items that were "advanced" by the war are delayed within 10-20 years of the war. Airplanes and aircraft carriers are prewar technology the RN and others would have keep working on without the war, and probably the RN has both a better ship and better planes by 1930 than OTL. Same for tanks and armored cars. Radar is at least a decade ahead of OTL. Submarines had a similar pause. Same with airplanes. Being broke means low R&D budgets means slow technology developments.
I'm not so sure about that. What reasons are their to develop aircraft tech beyond a glorified toy without the First World War? Or are arms races and cold wars acceptable?
a) Change the US GI Bill, thereby removing a lot of americans from higher education and stunting the growth of the US universities.
b) After Gagarin became the first man in space, let JFK answer with an expanded Peace Corps, more international aid etc - anything but the scientific-heavy Apollo project. Keep develoing ICBMs (and SLBM) and satellites, but no big NASA, grants to universities and making hard science sexy.
c) Don't develop the Internet. Don't create/disband DARPA, thereby depriving the original force behind ARPANET, then let Bell start something like the french Minitel (which kept France several years behind everyone else regarding Intenet growth).
d) Let the book publishers/authors succeed in with forbidding libraries to lend their books without a prohibiting high fee to the publishers/authors. An early anti-filesharing law on a global scale.
e) After WW1, let the military demand more control over research and science in each country. Just a "military coordinator" at each department could create huge damages to all forms of development.
On that line you could have more totalitarian states and have them last longer.
Now, now. the Greens out of a radical fringe are NOT against tech,
but against wastefull, poluating, etc things. Clean techs are a part of the greens's ideas, mind you.Let us not get to rightwing pundits idiocies.
MalcontentRex
Banned
Soviets and Nazis grind themselves out into Stone Age mutual total destruction instead of a slow and gradual Soviet victory.
Or could even just have the two of them rule over most of Europe for several decades with a Cold War or series of smaller, limited wars. For all the vaunted Nazi super-science you have to wonder how much that totalitarian system would have stifled development and science over time as the Third Reich ends up being ruled and run by the dinosaurs left from Hitlers era like what occurred in the USSR IOTL with Andropov and the other Stalin era survivors.
Did they really try? As in, was there a real legal struggle about it in the twentieth century (in the US, I suppose)?
In many countries the idea of public loaning libraries (what we today calls "library") was challenged by authors and authors organisations, just as producers of computer games have tried to forbid owners from selling their used games. But yes, that was as far as I know a 19th century thing, and far from global.
However, it should not be impossible to create a movement in the early 20th century. An alliance between publishers, newspapers (the dominant medium for news and politics before the 1920s) and conservative politicians aimed at libraries that fostered socialist thought, damaged the sale of newspapers and books - added to the Versaille treaty for globla reach. It would not be easy and probably have exceptions (schools etc) but each year public libraries are non-existing damages technological advancement.
Interesting. In my hometown (in Italy) there was a public loaning library approximately a century before any intellectual property regulation, so I guess it was a non-issue for us.
I can see how an alliance as you describe can emerge, but I doubt it would be very welcome or effective outside the U.S. and some other country. But maybe I am only overprojecting things I take for granted on other times and places.
BlondieBC
Banned
Look at the prewar pattern, which will continue. The RN had decided airplanes are important as fleet scouts. They will keep improving on them, a little bit each year. Just look at the capital ships. We went from slow firing 4 gun predreads with coal power with poor armor to 15" oil fired ships with much better armor in 15 years. Planes will not be as important, so will be lower funding, so looking at submarines is a better example. Look at how much the UK improved from the Class A to Class E boats in about 15 years. Or compare the USA Holland boats to the Germans diesel boats made right before the war. Huge gains.
What cause the Washington Naval treaty was the major powers being bankrupt and having three less players at the table (Russia, Germany, AH). Without the chaos of WW1 and the financial ruin, the arms race continues. We likely see someone do 17" or larger guns by 1925. We will see CVL types ships in the early 1920's progressing into what we call CV with metal planes in the early 1930's. I look at this stuff in detail for my TL, and it is the pace the navies were on. Radar shows up as harbor control by 1920 and is widely used on ships by 1925. Guided weapons (smart bombs) are quite possible by the mid 1920's and almost certain by the mid 1930's.
A better way may be to look at the financial costs so see how much was waste. The USA spent 22,000 million USD. The UK spent/loaned 57 million USD. Most of this went for things that were destroyed and low tech such as steel, ammo, guns, food, etc. Now look at how much things costs. Good dreadnought is around 10-15 million USD. You can probably build your first 3 CVL for this amount. Or you can fund a nice R&D program for better airplanes for this amount spent over 10 or so years and make major gains in airplanes. Or fund a engine development program to allow better tanks. These major R&D programs are literally rounding errors in the wartime budget.
And it is key to remember that killing and crippling about 1/3 of your men reduces the size of the economy quite substantially. So all this wartime spending (22,000 USD or 57 million USD) is not additional spending, it is pulling money out of future years. And for ever dollar spent in WW1, I guarantee that 2-4 USD were lost on the size of the economy in the 1920's and 1930's.
Or put one final way, lets say 10 years ago, an ASB kills 1/6 of all working age people on earth, 1/6 of all scientist, 1/6 of all engineers, has 1/2 of all workers sit idle for 4 years, and destroys 1/10 buildings on the planet. ITTL, do you believe technology would be more advance than OTL? Wars destroy on the whole, they don't create. Or did the USA invasion of Iraq in 2003 increase or decrease the number of patents in Iraq? Do car bombings actually help increase the pace of research? To me, the answer is obvious.
Now, now. the Greens out of a radical fringe are NOT against tech,
Let us not get to rightwing pundits idiocies.
Yeah my family has been heavily involved with the green movement since the 1970's and I'm going to disagree with you. The precautionary principle if taken seriously would have retarded pretty much every technologicial development of the 20th century.
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If the 1918 flu pandemic had been even worse, it could knock off a few more innovative types like for instance Robert Goddard. Just taking him off the scene would retard the development of the V2, possibly to the extent that it was never ready for use - how that would affect the development of space travel is hard to predict, but I'd guess at a short-term retardation. The same thing goes for any other area of science and technology (or politics, economics, philosophy etc) - if one or two key people are killed off before they can get properly started, there's no telling how the relevant field could be slowed down or diverted.
And of course as someone else has already pointed out, having totalitarian ideologies get an even stronger grip on the Western world in the 20th Century would be practically guaranteed to hold us back in all or most areas.
And of course as someone else has already pointed out, having totalitarian ideologies get an even stronger grip on the Western world in the 20th Century would be practically guaranteed to hold us back in all or most areas.
I know greens as well, and they do have a point. They aren't against progress. But against pollution.
The greens you know may have been radicals, deep greens, or you are rightwing strawmaning.