Assistance sought with very far future setting

Discussions about constructed worlds, cultures and any topics related to constructed societies.
Whitewings
hieroglyphic
hieroglyphic
Posts: 65
Joined: 07 Apr 2019 06:25

Re: Assistance sought with very far future setting

Post by Whitewings »

Keenir wrote: 24 Jul 2019 07:19 I am sorry - all my past few posts have been, is quibbling, not addressing major issues; please, continue your worldbuilding.
AI and robotics get cheaper and more versatile every time you turn around. Do you have any idea how much of the work force still does repetitive rote work?

I was referring to personal debt, not sovereign debt. And I've not heard of MPs or MLAs throwing tasers or pepper spray at each other during debates.
Keenir
mayan
mayan
Posts: 2399
Joined: 22 May 2012 03:05

Re: Assistance sought with very far future setting

Post by Keenir »

Whitewings wrote: 24 Jul 2019 15:12
Keenir wrote: 24 Jul 2019 07:19 I am sorry - all my past few posts have been, is quibbling, not addressing major issues; please, continue your worldbuilding.
AI and robotics get cheaper and more versatile every time you turn around. Do you have any idea how much of the work force still does repetitive rote work?
and how much of the work force wants to do repetitive rote work? there will always be work for humans, because we always manage to find something to occupy ourselves with.

otherwise, by that logic, why are your humans going to another solar system when there are plenty of planets in our solar system?
I was referring to personal debt, not sovereign debt. And I've not heard of MPs or MLAs throwing tasers or pepper spray at each other during debates.
why throw tasers when you can throw chairs, fists, or other people?
At work on Apaan: viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4799
User avatar
Lambuzhao
korean
korean
Posts: 5405
Joined: 13 May 2012 02:57

Re: Assistance sought with very far future setting

Post by Lambuzhao »

Salmoneus wrote:I'm not sure that's a good idea. Designing your ship to land is hugely difficult and expensive - imagine trying to float a city! - and there's no real need for it. What you'd actually do is "anchor" in orbit and portage everything down to the planet on shuttle.
[and if a colony ship is a city, you can indeed carry factories with you... indeed, you'd certainly want to do so, rather than having to stock a year or two of everything you might possibly want in advance]
I want to chime in, but I think I need to reread to clarify what were suggestions and what were Whitewings' original thoughts.
[:S]

(rereads)

Okay, I'm back.
Just a few things.

20,000 years from now - technology will essentially be "magic" to us. Folks that far into the future will be able to make faster than light communications and absorb it through their skin right into neural receptors. Whether its cybernetci implants or some kind of über-CRISPred biotech, they will be there enjoying what will be only merest imaginings to us.

Ki energy/Tesla energ/wutevs… that will also be harnessable in that much time. Heck, Humanity has gone from the bow-drill to microwave ovens in, what, 100,000 years? Your magical spells or whatever will most assuredly be some kind of barely imaginable technology at work for humans.

Also, Whitewings, you have stated that your ships have had FTL (faster than light) travel capability, in order to bridge distances with herculean speeds. So, regardless of a 20,000 year distance between when the first colonists left, and when your sole survivor arrives at that distant settlement, as lomg as the first generation got to its destination by FTL technology, then likewise there ought to be FTL communication.
Thus, folks living in even the most distant space settlements ought to be able to receive near-real-time communications from Earth, or any number of the colony worlds. Therefore, some sort of Lingua Franca ought to be mutually intelligible among colonists and Earthers.

Now, of course, 20,000 yrs is an immense period of time. We have no record of any language that's as old as that today, and as pointed out by Sal, our proto-language reconstructions only go back 5,000 to maybe 7,000 years ago. In your scenario, human languages will have undergone thrice the amount of time. As was pointed out, a (pure) descendant of Japanese (or any language) is highly unlikely, about as unlikely as anyone speaking a lineal daughter-lang of, say, Denisovan or Neanderthalese.

However, I might argue that, with the overall increase of literacy worldwide, language change may not happen as rapidly over future time as it did in past time. As long as there are networks that keep distant far-flung colonies connected, and repositories of knowledge are likewise accessible to colonists anywhere by means of FTL communication, I would think that might slow language change since these phenomena would buffer against speaker-community isolation, which is a major agent of language differentiation. But then future linguæ francæ, pidgins, patois and creoles that will certainly arise in such a broad swath of time… the possibilities!

I have another point, concerning "prohibitively expensive investments" in Super Swift Sleeper Colony Ships. As with movie franchises and Space Shuttles, I am sure the nations or interested parties providing the outlay for such an expenditure of R&D would not be banking on just one (all ur eggs in one basket is never sound financial advice) final product. It would make more sense to make at least a pair, a trio, a dozen of these at a time, to help cover would could be potentially devastating (cf. Space Shuttle Challenger tragedy) results if it were one ship alone.

One more point. I absolutely do not get how planet/star system-hopping Swift Ships, composed of, as you said Whitewings, crews of mixed nationalities, would, after 19,900 years of hopping, arrive at the conclusion that Edo Japan is exactly what this near-Earth exoplanet needs as a colonial aesthetic. Possibly a number of adult colonists who were traveling somewhere close, say Mars, in the near future, might perhaps find out that they coincidentally happen to be Japanophiles, but how that would help unite & rally them more than the utter joy of exploration, the "against-all-odds" pioneer spirit... I just dunno.

The only possible way I could even slightly wrap my head around that kind of choice that a group of people would consciously make together would be this. They are all some part of a sort of futuristic joint-stock venture whereby, in order to even sign up to be part of the crew or the colonists, you would have to have agreed that this is what you would want to paint your colony. But like Keenir or Sal mentioned, it's kind of like wanting to live like cavefolk while surrounded and immersed in well-nigh magical (by our standards) technology. But if that's the kettle of fish folks wanted, then some sort of a future version of a joint-stock venture would cross national/political/ and maybe even traditionally ethnic divides for such a colony to begin to be feasible.
:?: :wat:
Keenir
mayan
mayan
Posts: 2399
Joined: 22 May 2012 03:05

Re: Assistance sought with very far future setting

Post by Keenir »

Lambuzhao wrote: 25 Jul 2019 02:27 The only possible way I could even slightly wrap my head around that kind of choice that a group of people would consciously make together would be this. They are all some part of a sort of futuristic joint-stock venture whereby, in order to even sign up to be part of the crew or the colonists, you would have to have agreed that this is what you would want to paint your colony. But like Keenir or Sal mentioned, it's kind of like wanting to live like cavefolk while surrounded and immersed in well-nigh magical (by our standards) technology. But if that's the kettle of fish folks wanted, then some sort of a future version of a joint-stock venture would cross national/political/ and maybe even traditionally ethnic divides for such a colony to begin to be feasible.
:?: :wat:
hmm...*thinks* maybe Japanese or a near-future variant is like Hebrew, Sanskrit, or Church Slavonic/Latin...whether or not its been kept "pristine" over the future centuries is a moot point -- what matters is that the colonists (Japanese or not) regard it as worth using in its pristine(ish) form - and they associate Edo as the best historical point in terms of building designs and maybe culturally, like they regard the pristine(ish) Japanese as the best historical point linguistically?

(i mean heck, there are internet forums these days for people who want to speak PIE with each other)
At work on Apaan: viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4799
Whitewings
hieroglyphic
hieroglyphic
Posts: 65
Joined: 07 Apr 2019 06:25

Re: Assistance sought with very far future setting

Post by Whitewings »

OK. I think I need to clarify some assumptions.

First: FTL travel is slow, compared to what's shown in most SF, only five lights.
Second: No FTL signalling. Communications between systems is by way of the analogue of e-mail on USB keys.
Third: Ki is not yet fully harnessed for the simple reason that this is the first colony to be established on a world that orbits a star that sits within a bubble of ki.
Fourth: The colonists do not live as the people of Edo Japan lived, they just like the architecture and general aesthetics. There are only so many ways to build a building that are useful and pleasing to humans.
Fifth: There are three sorts of interstellar vessels involved in this setting: sleeper ships, which are STL and long since obsolete, Swifts, which are basically trade vessels with large crews, akin in some ways to FTL generation ships, and Super Swifts, the vessels that carry settler expeditions.
Sixth: Settled space covers a very approximately cylindrical volume stretching 500 or so light years, with Earth at one end and the world I currently call Japan of the Sea of Stars at the other.

Now, as to the founders of this specific colony: They're the remote descendants of a moderately large group of Japanese men and women in their early 20s to middle 40s who wanted to get as far as possible from Japan's utterly toxic corporate culture. The group has travelled from star to star over the course of many, many generations, and their goals have in all likelihood changed many times and in many ways, but they've managed to retain some aspects of their ancestral culture (unlikely, I know. Maybe they've come and gone several times).

I really like the joint-stock idea.
User avatar
Lambuzhao
korean
korean
Posts: 5405
Joined: 13 May 2012 02:57

Re: Assistance sought with very far future setting

Post by Lambuzhao »

Whitewings wrote: 25 Jul 2019 07:44
I really like the joint-stock idea.
[;)]
Historically, it was good enough for the Pilgrims, Puritans, Catholics who wanted to escape a culture that oppressed them in England.
This was also a similar reason for the migrations Of the various groups who would become The Pennsylvania Germans, and for Sefardic Jews escaping the Portuguese Inquisition, though the latter two groups came to colonies already begun by previous joint-stock ventures.

Not to give it a dark spin, But your Japanese pioneers might also be doing this to prove a sort of Edo–Supremacist agenda; That there is somethingValuable worthwhile and even superior (at least in their minds) about the Edo Culture, and that some backwater outer-rim settlement would be the perfect crucible to bear out the sort of social experiment.
:?: :wat:
Whitewings
hieroglyphic
hieroglyphic
Posts: 65
Joined: 07 Apr 2019 06:25

Re: Assistance sought with very far future setting

Post by Whitewings »

One thing I don't understand is why everyone seems to assume that "Edo period architecture and aesthetics" also means Edo period tech and society. Unless aesthetics has some additional meaning I've not previously encountered.
Post Reply