Wgat if technology is 30 years ahead than this timeline

I think it's more of a cumulative thing. We want to be 30 years ahead by today, which given this is a post 1900 thread means an 'average faster development'* of 26%. That means nukes in 1935/36, satellites in 1945 and a moon-landing in 1954/55. Or maybe not, it depends how technology develops. If the space race is multipolar and more even that OTL, you might see far more development being put into space-stations, with no-one bothering about a moon-shot until much later.


* total crap, but then so is the idea of '30 years ahead'.
 
No WW1 and the right investments from the 1910s could get close in some cases.

I am skeptical. Major wars tend to temporarily put a stop to basic research/science, but increase spending on developing existing technology.

I have a hard time believing airplane technology actually improves without all that government money developing airpower. I think the opposite would be true - without all that government money, aircraft development and production are less because there are far fewer manufacturers with far lower budgets and far less demonstrable achievements.

The major benefit of avoiding WWI is that the European economy is much stronger and commercialization of existing technology (not development of new technology) would be stronger. But that is hard to see how we gain a whole thirty years even with plugging in the Depression and WWII as a result. We aren't going to reach 1950 technologies by 1920 or 1925 if we begin at 1910 and avoid WWI. I'd say maybe 10 years gain tops, and that is being very generous with the butterflies.

What is needed to gain an accelerated technological advance is to significantly boost worldwide R&D in business and academia by a huge magnitude and keep it sustained for several decades, buying one or two years advance every one decade. I have trouble seeing an obvious way to do that.
 
I am skeptical. Major wars tend to temporarily put a stop to basic research/science, but increase spending on developing existing technology.
Some existing technologies, and the basic research/science stuff includes transistors and nuclear science.

I have a hard time believing airplane technology actually improves without all that government money developing airpower. I think the opposite would be true - without all that government money, aircraft development and production are less because there are far fewer manufacturers with far lower budgets and far less demonstrable achievements.
Okay, some of this is right, but much is wrong. For one thing, instead of warplanes you have airliners, the first being Igor Sikorsky's Ilya Muromets's in 1913/14, but given the era, I can see other nations following soon after (national prestige, no-one wants to have to buy other nations' airliners if they can make their own). As for fewer manufacturers, not really, you simply retain the older companies rather than replacing them with newer ones (Sopwith crashed and was replaced by Hawker, similar with Airco and De Havilland). Sure you don't see the meteoric rise of the big names, but then you don't see the post-war slump either, which knocked things back. And even if there were fewer aircraft, given the gradual amalgamations post-WW2, I don't see that such a thing is actually so bad.

The major benefit of avoiding WWI is that the European economy is much stronger and commercialization of existing technology (not development of new technology) would be stronger. But that is hard to see how we gain a whole thirty years even with plugging in the Depression and WWII as a result. We aren't going to reach 1950 technologies by 1920 or 1925 if we begin at 1910 and avoid WWI. I'd say maybe 10 years gain tops, and that is being very generous with the butterflies.
And what inventions were sidelined as a result of war, bankruptcy, etc? Colour TV was certainly possible in the 40s, video-tapes too, radio control, etc.

What is needed to gain an accelerated technological advance is to significantly boost worldwide R&D in business and academia by a huge magnitude and keep it sustained for several decades, buying one or two years advance every one decade. I have trouble seeing an obvious way to do that.
No WW1. Without WW1 you probably avoid or significantly soften the collapses of the Russian, Austria-Hungarian and the Ottoman Empires, the Spanish Influenza Pandemic, the Second World War, the Great Depression, etc. That's depending on how you want to count it, 135-200+ million lives saved (and many millions more not ruined by debilitating injuries). Further, there much less economic devastation, and you still maintain the international rivalries that are in fact the best driver of technological development.
 
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Part of the problem with WI is that we don't now what tech will be available in 2045.

If would be easier to look at a 1985 and ask WI they had 2015 tech.
 
Or 1991, which is my figuring of how far ahead tech would be if '30 years ahead' was figured as being a gradual increase from 1900 to 2015, rather than a big 30-year lump of tech.
 
'Yes' is a rather stupid answer when asked 'A or B?' If you're getting at me, this is a WI thread, we change history and see how it affects things, and I'm firmly of the believe that WW1 did far more harm than good to technological development, so technological development would do better without it.
 
we would have hdtvs in 1976 produced (720-1080p)
4k and 8k tvs (2160-4320p) 1988
16k and 32k tvs (8640-17280p) 2000
64k and 128k tvs (34560-69120p) 2012
256k and 512k tvs (138240-276480p) 2024
1m-2m tvs (552960-1105920p) 2036
4m-8m tvs (2211840-4423680p) 2048
 
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The problem is mostly the maintenance of technology. You need a mass-produced educated people to use technological equipment and to improve it. And a high-productivity farmers who feed them. And horde of miners who supply materials etc.
Therefore, the question is mostly how to get population density 30 years ahead of schedule without becoming non-sustainable. In 2010-2040 gap it mean extra 40% population. It is..hard. The 2 world wars have barely affected the growth curve. No more than by 10% cumulatively.

The plagues had more effect. But butterflying away a single pandemic is also inefficient, because population growth without a sanitary advances will just lead to more severe later plagues.

So early spread of sanitary may be have the best effect on technological levels. The ~150 year gap between first observation of bacteria/pestilence relation and the aseptic/antiseptic doctrine seems surprising, regardless of all public taboos. How about Louis Pasteur analog born back in 1700? To do this, we need to remove single paragraph from Aristotle works - a one what describe a spontaneous generation of the life.

So, if technology to be 30 years ahead of schedule..we need to live in clean, antiseptics-soaked world!
the population today would be 10 billion
 
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