Subject: 71:10/7158 Tech and Ghettos
T::>> The 3I was in no way homogeneous - either technologically
::>> or culturally.
T::>Well, yes, but is it really relevant to say that some low-tech, backwater
::>world was `part' of the Imperium. Such a world played little or no role in
::>the conduct of Imperial affairs. It was the worlds with an `affinity' for
::>technology that `made up' the Imperium and it will be worlds with similar
::>affinities that will make up whatever interstellar state or states that
::>arise from the Collapse. I guess the worlds without these affinities are
::>what you would refer to as `ghettoized'?
It's as relevant as saying that cities like New York, Chicago, and
Los Angeles "make up" the United States, or that countries like
the United States, the United Kingdom, and the People's Republic
of China "make up" the United Nations. Certainly, there's a lot
of influence concentrated there. But would the US be able to
survive without the "backwaters" of western Wisconsin, or upstate
New York, where there are a lot of dairy farms, or the
"backwaters" of central Nebraska and South Dakota, where a lot of
wheat is grown? The Imperium was a whole, with all planets
contributing. In different ways, but they all contributed. The
fact that all 11,000 worlds didn't appear in the TNS doesn't mean
anything; my small town, for instance, hasn't made a New York
Metro region newspaper in several years - and when it last did, it
was because there was a murder committed within the town limits.
Yet this same town is home to many UN diplomats, and many
high-level executives of big corporations.
No, I'm not saying that worlds without a tech affinity are the
ones that are going to be ghettoized. I'm saying that the ones
that are "forced" to focus their production to service the needs
of the planets that (re)acquire tech early are the ones that are
going to be ghettoized. A TL12 planet whose sole industry is
exporting starship power systems, without building any ships of
its own, is as surely ghettoized as any arbitrary corner of the
United States whose sole reason for existance is to send whatever
it produces to the major cities of the coasts.
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Jeff Zeitlin [email removed]
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~ QMPro 1.52 ~ You are in a maze of twisty subroutines, all alike.