In TML biweekly V19#5 msg 2845 [email removed] writes:
> For those of you who wonder about what technology is handy at various
> TLs, here's a little tidbit I picked up from an educational-supply
> catalog this arvo at lunch. For $300, you can buy what I believe is
> the world's smallest practical visible-beam laser so far
...
So here's one I've been wondering about for a while. Traveller
has been around for 10 years or so now. We all know that
"Knowledge doubles every N years," with N some
impressive-sounding small integer :-). So, when do we bump the
TL of "modern-day" Earth? There's sure a lot of technology
around now that wasn't even 5 years ago. Maybe an 0.5 TL
increment?
The real questions I'm trying to ask, of course, are: How are
tech-levels scaled? Linearly? Exponentially? In what
variable? Some performance measure must be being used for the
technology being rated. What is this measure, e.g. in
transportation, weaponry, or medicine?
Probably some part of the rules, (with which I'm afraid I'm not
very conversant) make this clear, but it seems to me to be hard
to both justify the assignment in the rules of technology to TL
and simultaneously reason that technology will keep expanding
at the current pace on Earth without taking it through a TL in
the next 10 years or so, if not in the last.
My apologies if Traveller die-hards already all know the answer
to this one...
Bart Massey
[email removed]