That is basically how I run my universe. There are certainly areas that technology has advanced. Simulspace Acceleration and Cognitive Tweaking are the big two in my setting (the former doesn't exist BF, and the latter wasn't mature). However by and large the Fall arrested development in most areas, and transhumanity is only now starting to get back to where they were. One of the things I really do is make pre-Fall technology much easier to break into, such that it is essentially trivial for post-Fall exploit programs to take control. The Fall brought about great advances in infosec technology. The TITANs revealed avenues of attack that humanity had never even conceived. Most of those have been patched in modern technology, but most Pre-Fall technology was never patched.

Post-Fall tech for recyling your poo and pee into water & food is 90% more efficient. Because it would be. Life support systems are probably way more efficient, too. Necessity is the Big Mama of invention.

Here are the big ways that post-fall technology has changed, so far as I can tell. Reverse these to get an idea of how pre-fall tech was. [list][*]Mesh technologies, both software- and hardware-wise, are significantly more capable. Security is at an all-time high, but so are the complexity of exploits. [*]VR tech has improved dramatically. Simulspace acceleration has taken off in a big way. On the other hand, most AI are likely less advanced then they were pre-fall (intentionally hobbled in how they think, for fear of seed-AI). Also, I imagine that infomorphs running on pre-fall hardware would run very slow, and the systems which could run biological brain-based infomorphs were somewhat rare. [*]Biomorph manufacture has likely improved significantly after the fall, as the need for faster production methods has become an imperative. Vat-growing mindless sleeves is likely far more common now, as most people had bodies pre-fall and resleeving likely wasn't nearly as popular. [*]Free-floating swarms were reverse-engineered from TITAN technology, so those didn't even exist. You can probably assume that most stuff under the advanced nanotechnology header probably didn't exist BF, as well as many nanotechnological implants. The most significant nanotech of the time was likely the cornucopia machine. [*]Psychosurgery was in the infancy of its infancy in the BF period. Forking might have just been a thought experiment. [*]Of course, there was no such thing as psi before the fall, so anything dealing with psi did not exist either.[/list]

Reading through, we're pretty sure that pre-Fall was still dominated by state actors. Therefore, the implication is that the most cutting-edge advances are likely also held by state actors or major megacorps. These sorts of projects take huge budgets and infrastructure to manage; something even the PC won't be up to taking a stab at yet. Looking at our modern world, that likely includes: Military -- We can imply that the Jovians inherited the old space navy, but the ability to manufacture more ships is likely gone (which would explain the Jovian military edge, despite putting actual biomorphs in their ships and lacking the full range of nanotech). Stealth jet and aircraft carrier technology (or the future equivalent) are lost. Infrastructure -- Massive dams, nuclear plants, and the highway system are our modern industrial wonders, and are outside of the budget of everything except governments and the truly massive corporations. Figure out whatever is the future infrastructure, and recognize that the PC doesn't have the population density to pay for that either. Without being able to pay for it, it means that the skillset required to build and maintain it, even if it survived the Fall, is disappearing. Medical technologies -- Medical research is a big tech-pusher, and includes some closely-held secrets. However, morph swapping has made many advances less useful. I imagine pre-Fall they had the ability to cure more diseases, and apply more radical cyber- and bioware. Computer science -- I imagine that there were megalith CS projects (the early TITAN project being one of them) that we just can't replicate now, lacking the cash. (Although we'll hit that same processing level soon, due to Moore, the ability to tie a massive number of computers together into one core may be currently limited by tech loss.) Physics/Particle Science/Cosmology -- Things like the CERN particle collider are just outside of the cost boundaries for a post-apocalyptic setting. Same-so with whatever tech they're developing pre-Fall. The super-massive Q-state brane-testing project has been lost and is unlikely to be recovered for at least 50 years. All of the technological achievements which were about to trickle down to industry- or consumer-level markets have disappeared. Celebrity tech -- When people are barely scraping by, do we really need the investment in Kardashian-creation technologies? Probably not. I imagine the big celebrity labs have been lost to us, and re-invested in more practical areas.

nezumi wrote:

Reading through, we're pretty sure that pre-Fall was still dominated by state actors. Therefore, the implication is that the most cutting-edge advances are likely also held by state actors or major megacorps. These sorts of projects take huge budgets and infrastructure to manage;

interesting, I kind of got the opposite idea from my reading. I thought that the development of the 'hypercorp' model and major corporate (and Argonaught) migration of research off planet was driven by restrictive policies and regulations; research embargoes, corruption of purpose and enforcement of Intellectual property and patent laws, etc. by nominal 'State actors' as the functional subsidiaries of large corporate entities. The old system was choking advancement by trying to control and own it. So research interests moved to the 'intelectual freeport' of the inner and outer system. Just like testing nukes in the desert or moving your financial assets 'off shore' the safest place to experiment with something that has major implications is on a sealed habitat away from the biosphere, government regulation, and mega-corporate competition. This would be why no nations continued to function after the fall. There were no large State actors off earth to claim authority on mars or luna or venus. And the Planetary consortium was able to form with not a nod to those old national identities or territories. The exception would be the Total Information Tactical Awareness Network, which I'm pretty sure was a governmental project. (anyone else remember a reference to that belonging to the Americans? Can't find it now.) Regardless, the Promethians still exist so the ability to make recursive software hasn't been lost.

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Computer science -- I imagine that there were megalith CS projects (the early TITAN project being one of them) that we just can't replicate now, lacking the cash. (Although we'll hit that same processing level soon, due to Moore, the ability to tie a massive number of computers together into one core may be currently limited by tech loss.)

That might be the case but I'm not sure why it would be. Also Sunward page 112; [i]"The rumor that the ComEx core software itself keeps emerging into consciousness and having to be reset so that it stays below the threshold is a lot more interesting. But that one ain’t been confirmed."[/i] Some people are worried that this is happening by accident. :) I'm not sure that transhumanity has lost the ability to do mega-scale engineering they are, after all, continuing to terraform Mars and build Hamilton Cylinders. Certainly the knowledge is still out there. So what has been lost? Any knowledge that existed solely on Earth or on those habitats that were completely destroyed. Given the tendency for electronic data to flow like water I don't think we've really lost that much.