The Stone Dogs (83 page)

Notes: Most T-7's incorporated a single-shot 35 mm
grenade launcher below the main barrel; this was
loaded from a slot near the buttplate, and there was a
selector switch above the trigger group to change from
regular to launcher.

Author's Note:

COMPUTERS AND TECHNOLOGY

The development of computer technology and
electronics in general followed a rather different course
in the timeline of the Domination. The precocious
development of pneumatic power systems and
machine-tools made Thomas Babbage's mechanical
computer a marginal success in the 1830s, rather than a
marginal failure. Mechanical-analog computing was a
fact of life by the 1840s, controlled by punch-card
memory systems analogous to Jacquard looms. They
were expensive and cumbersome, but they gave a
distinct impetus to many types of research and to
engineering.

Next, the vacuum tube came along rather earlier, by
about a generation; the same is true for the transistor.

Analog data-manipulation technologies (e.g., for
numerically-controlled machine tools) were therefore
more advanced when digital computing techniques
were achieved. All-digital systems are therefore much
more limited.

In consequence, the research methods followed by
both Alliance and Domination were quite different from
our history's. The climate of the Protracted Struggle
bred an obsession with security that sharply limited the
flow of information and ideas even in the democratic
nations of the Alliance. It also resulted in a "crash
project" attitude towards research in general; the
result was very quick progress in fields where the
possibilities were known, but less serendipity, less of
the shotgun approach. As an analogy, if there had been
a Manhattan Project attack on polio in our 1950s, the
result would probably have been a magnificently
advanced iron lung. The fact of stable, rather than
expanding, population also altered the market
structure and reduced demand for innovation in the
Domination's timeline.

Consequently, computers in the timeline of the
Domination developed on a "big brain" basis.

Software—what they called compinstruction sets, or
instruction sets—was "burned in" to central core units,
embedding the program. The central cores were
generally sealed, with their own internal memories; an
interfacer unit translated data from the external
memory storage for the central unit to manipulate. The
thought of "open" programming was rarely brought up,
even as a theoretical possibility—it gave

counterintelligence agencies the willies.

Personal computers—perscomps—evolved up from
sensor-effector systems like those used on machine
tools, rather than down from big-brain computers. They
too had embedded programs, and they were mixed
digital/analog rather than digital systems. Large,
complex jobs like running a spaceship were handled by
a central brain, which acted as a coordinating node for a
number of perscomp-type subsystems, each handling
something like a weapons mount or fuel-flow monitor.

Note, however, that the sophisticated use of digital/

analog systems was an advantage in some fields like
voice recognition.

This computer system had built-in limitations. Many
of the embedded programs were very capable, and the
manufacturing facilities in space permitted the use of
quite exotic materials— silicon/sapphire sandwich
wafers, and gallium arsenide—but there was less
innovation and less pressing need for miniaturization.

The existence of heavy-lift missile and orbital launch
facilities alone removed a powerful incentive, and
nothing like the hacker subculture of our timeline ever
emerged. Research was limited to a number of large
companies and government institutes, and the number
of participants was very small, a few thousand at most.

The spillover effect of widespread perscomp use was
restricted, because only the largest central-brain units
could be used for "software" design or programming of
any. sort; new programs were bought as physical
components and inserted into the core. Computer
applications were many and crucial to most aspects of
war and business, but they were vastly less flexible than
in our continuum; by the 1990s, capacities were
approaching a plateau, a dead-end.

In some respects, this was true of science and
technology generally. The precocious development of
heavy-lift space capacity biased technological
development towards bigger and better applications of
known principles; so did the constant rivalry between
the powerblocs. The overall result was a technology
more powerful than ours, but also rather cruder—as if
the technological visionaries of the 1930s had been
given unlimited funding, and as a result the course of
development had been littered with a series of "roads
not taken" because attention was focused on the
immediately achievable. By the 1960s, there was a
built-in bias (on both sides) towards projects which
were obviously
possible
given massive applications of
personnel and funding. The basic mentality was that of
engineers rather than scientists, and dam-building,
metal-bashing rule-of-thumb engineers at that.

In the end, the world of the Domination achieved
what might be called "yesterday's tomorrow."