AHC: plausible "Dieselpunk" present with different approach to civilian technology

Alex99232

Make it so that integrated circuits and anything above their level of technology is developed for military and scientific use, but not for civilian use. For civilians a mid-1950s level of technology remains. Radios and televisions become somewhat widespread, as are cars, and household appliances not requiring microchips. Microcomputers are made only for military and scientific use but are likely more primitive than OTL computers because civilian needs like user-friendliness and gaming are not taken into account and they are developed by state-run companies rather than profit-oriented private companies.

Basically there needs to be a cultural or ideological divergence that makes governments think that a 1950s level of technology is "enough" for the Average Joe and anything more advanced should be focused on developing better armies and aiding scientific research.

Of course, advanced technology isn't forbidden to civilians, there's just a general notion that "it isn't needed for laypeople." Similar to how OTL civilians don't demand military-grade computers and the latest advances of nanotechnology in their living rooms.


Can you think up a plausible scenario that would result in a world like this?
 
I think you'd need some sort of dystopic totalitarian world with heavy -- probably ASB -- levels of censorship.

The technological developments that led to the microchip were inevitable in the U.S. given the widespread proliferation of open scientific journals, trade magazines, and even pop mags like Popular Mechanics.

In a free society, it won't be sufficient for the government to just think that the microchip is unnecessary for consumers; it will have to have the power to prohibit those consumers from tinkering on their own. The only way I can think of to do that is to have heavy, heavy control over all information flow relating to just about everything.

What kind of a POD would give you a world with both a globe-spanning totalitarian government and said government having a paranoid desire to prevent its billions of citizens from learning the basics of electronics? That's a tough one (thank god). Perhaps one in which the U.S. develops and detonates an atomic weapon in the late 1930s for some reason (??) and the resulting military government lives in abject fear of anyone else acquiring comparable technology?
 
Like Andrew T said, it would be HARD, even if Hitler won WWII and the Axis conquered all of earth, because then we're in ASB land and they might as well go on and become Space Nazis and conquer the galaxy.
 
Alex99232, there is another alternative:

Soviet union used Vacuum tube for various reason until there end in 1991
like MIG-25 Avionics, here vacuum tubes were more tolerant of temperature extremes.
and were easy to replace in remote northern airfields.
where sophisticated transistor parts might not have been readily available.
next to that the MIG-25 had most powerful radar of 600 kW, thanks to Vacuum tube.

So what if US military for some reason adopt same attitude ?
Because a Pentagon bureaucrat decide that Transistor is nothing that a scientific toy...
 
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