Tech they ought to have.

GabrialSagan wrote:Disclaimer: I recognize that RFC set out with certain intentions with the Honorverse novels and certain technologies would get in the way of the story he is trying to tell. But with that being said...

I have always found it interesting that for all the amazing wonders of technology in the Honorverse that there are still certain pieces of technology that humanity does not have 2000 years in the future. Mind-Machine interfaces and cybernetic computer implants are completely absent. The ability to copy a human mind into a synthetic substrate and immerse a human consciousness into a virtual landscape completely eludes humans even after mastering counter-gravity and FTL travel. Never is there any mention of android servants or anti-matter being used as either a weapon or an energy source.

Again I am not criticizing as I imagine many of these technologies would make it difficult for Mr. Weber to tell the story he wants to tell. But it does make one wonder. What tech would you think humanity would have 2000 years from now that seems to be absent from Manticore, Old Terra, and the other worlds humanity has settled?

You might want to read Elizabeth Moon's Trading in Danger (Vatta) series of books. She has extensive implants and human body modifications. Space combat, micro hyperspace jumps, no wedges. FTL communications etc... Ships that fail due to stress fractures. Much more transportation of goods and station life. RFC focuses on Politics and combat. Moon is more Tech and ship operations station operations oriented.

Relax wrote:Physics & logic do not change. Manipulation of the data does not change. Either the sensors have high enough fidelity or they do not. All manipulation of the data in a few seconds a human can do through a GUI, a computer can do thousands of times using every single available permutation. New algorithms do not magically appear. If you wish to believe some chump is going to magically write millions of lines of code in a couple minutes, upload, reboot, test, then use them, all during a battle;(as if the captain would allow them to) then enjoy your fantasy super genius hyperactive tasmanian devil utopia...

Drop the SF trope BS dude. They are as stupid as the Rom-Com tropes.

Try this reality:
Computers >>> Humans
In everything other than design

But the humans can notice things that are outside the normal scope of the computer - like in one example, they seem to have fired a less than full broadside, I wonder if that was a tube malfunction or if they were trying to be cute and hide a couple missiles in tight behind the others. I'll bet it's the later and tell my computerized point defense to adjust for that possibility and direct "wasted" follow-up shots just in case a second missile comes zipping through the wreckage of a leading one. (Which is one way we've seen even the blazing sensor reading of a missile be 'hidden' in the Honorverse). The counter-argument is that you'd be even more effective if you had punched good RD downrange where they could get a good look at the missiles as they went past - that would let you, and the computer, know if there were masked trailers and probably even which missiles they were trailing behind.

Yeah, you're leaving the computerized part to do the split second decisions; but you can attempt to outguess the other size and tell it to expect certain ECM routines (out of the huge library of known or possible ones) or tell it to reallocated fire based on your intuition about how to interpret the sensor readings. If you're wrong then it's worse than using a randomized canned routine - but if you're right you get better flexibility.

We also saw humans work out (ahead of time) the counter to the triple-ripple. It happened to have been between battles, but in theory if the first time you saw that tactic was when the Ziska varient was used to blind your missiles a human could have come up with the pop-up counter 'on the fly' and passed it to the computers controlling follow-up salvos. But you wouldn't necessarily expect a computer program to have the flexibility to come up with that counter without input.

The difference between a human and a computer is in the "on the fly" paradigms.

A computer is but to do or die. A human is but to reason why.

It is this paradigm that allowed Ralph "Guns" Cordones, IIRC, to detect an opening in the Peeps ECM defenses and get that nuke in on 'em. He didn't have time to pass it by the Old Lady first, remember?

A computer can think on the fly. A human can think on the run. Big difference.

This difference is even more magnified by the fact that the human brain can "see" in abstractions. Abstraction is a powerful concept. Indeed, programmers attempt to use some layer of abstraction in developing code. Which in itself, ironically yet obviously, highlights another absolute advantage of the human brain over the computer -- the difference of being programmed to "mimic" something as opposed to "conceiving" it naturally.


Several colleagues and I once discussed the notion that had computers been borne first, they would never have thought to create man.

Sigh: Triple ripple was complete BS to start with. Either missiles have particle screens or they don't. If they could overwhelm missiles sensors with nukes, SD's etc should still be using it who should have vastly better sensors with vastly higher S/N and particle screens further increasing the S/N ratio making missiles 100% useless outside of pure luck.

knock Knock, Hello reality...

cthia wrote:
It is this paradigm that allowed Ralph "Guns" Cordones, IIRC, to detect an opening in the Peeps ECM defenses and get that nuke in on 'em. He didn't have time to pass it by the Old Lady first, remember?

Which is complete BS if you think about it from an engineering perspective and not Science fiction drivel.

Fighters, Helo's today do not have ECM. They have jamming and only jamming. Why? Because they reside in the real world. Sure, they call these systems big fancy names, but in reality it is one thing only: jamming.

Relax wrote:

cthia wrote:
It is this paradigm that allowed Ralph "Guns" Cordones, IIRC, to detect an opening in the Peeps ECM defenses and get that nuke in on 'em. He didn't have time to pass it by the Old Lady first, remember?

Which is complete BS if you think about it from an engineering perspective and not Science fiction drivel.

Fighters, Helo's today do not have ECM. They have jamming and only jamming. Why? Because they reside in the real world. Sure, they call these systems big fancy names, but in reality it is one thing only: jamming.

You do know that jamming is just part of an ECM suite, right? It is the most common offensive ECM used. So your are dead wrong saying that only jamming is used today.

And FYI fighters and helo's today do have other types of ECM too, like radar spoofing, laser spoofing and IR spoofing so they appear like multiple targets.

kzt wrote:

Somtaaw wrote:Your claim that it should be everywhere in Honorverse, when we still haven't managed to do it right is a joke, and I give up pointing that out.

I find it shocking that people claim there were no freight trains in 1000BC. How could they not have have them, it's not like the concept is hard? Steel rails, steel wheels, fuel producing steam? People tell me "you know, it was 3000 years ago", but come on! What could have changed?

Point taken, but just because we can't get something to work, doesn't also mean that they can't get it to work in the future

With computers, maybe it's totally outlawed because AI is recognized as some form of electronic slavery, and nobody has yet figured how they can make money off selling e-slaves? or perhaps every experiment to date has gone absolutely, and utterly Skynet insane?

Sci-Fi doesn't always have to be exactly the same copy/paste worlds in every single futuristic sci-fi's, otherwise why do we have a million or so "future" sci-fi's, each and every one has it's differences. Some have proven to be damned near prescient and we now have the same technology, and others still hold onto that charm of being out of reach.

It's a nice touch that if I want self-aware computers and DW writing it, I always have Dahak and the Imperium, Alicia and the Empire, and perhaps Safehold (never read even a book of those, so who knows what enjoyment I may find there). And in Honorverse, for whatever reason they don't have AI at all, and while the computers are quick, they're dumber than a brick of moldy cheese.

GabrialSagan wrote:Disclaimer: I recognize that RFC set out with certain intentions with the Honorverse novels and certain technologies would get in the way of the story he is trying to tell. But with that being said...

I have always found it interesting that for all the amazing wonders of technology in the Honorverse that there are still certain pieces of technology that humanity does not have 2000 years in the future. Mind-Machine interfaces and cybernetic computer implants are completely absent. The ability to copy a human mind into a synthetic substrate and immerse a human consciousness into a virtual landscape completely eludes humans even after mastering counter-gravity and FTL travel. Never is there any mention of android servants or anti-matter being used as either a weapon or an energy source.

Again I am not criticizing as I imagine many of these technologies would make it difficult for Mr. Weber to tell the story he wants to tell. But it does make one wonder. What tech would you think humanity would have 2000 years from now that seems to be absent from Manticore, Old Terra, and the other worlds humanity has settled?

Jumping back to this original idea, some common Sci-Fi concepts that the Honorverse is missing (some of which have already been mentioned) - some of these absences are more noticeable than others. (And none of them detract from my enjoyment of the series)

1) Anything about brain machine interface (I'm thinking not so much of the download your brain use you mentioned, but neural linkage for sensor input or command output (bypassing the relatively slow human optical system and muscle response system)

2) Routine bionic upgrades. Yes we get things like Honor's replacement arm, and cybernetic eye. And we're told there are some cultures that go more heavily into optional cybernetic upgrades. But you don't have people routinely getting bone strength reenforcements, or musculature upgrade.

3) No combat drugs to improve reaction times, etc.

4) Nanotech - they have some very limited stuff for medical, and some 'vat' style nanotech for growing warship armor. But they don't appear to have routine nanoscale manufacturing for complex items. A ship's workshops don't seem to be able to nano-grow arbitrary spare part from raw elements -- ships still need to carry specific spares (see the atmospheric handler thing that was being flow over to Prince Adrian, on the pinnace Honor caught a ride on, just before her capture..

5) Expert systems verging on AI, or true AI. As others noted, very powerful computers, but not so bright.

5a) No voice commanded computers - not even the equivilent of Siri or Alexa for entertainment.

5b) No computer translator (yeah, a 'universal translator' that works for even unknown languages would be asking a bit much, but they don't even appear to have Google Translate 4.0; now with voice recognition and translation)

6) No tachyon or FTL active sensors. Just the grav wall ripple passive sensors.

7) Nobody seems to have taken the obvious step of making a countergrav hoverboard for kids to play on

8) No laser pistols - a plasma carbine (which is IIRC heavier than a battle rifle) is the smallest energy weapon I can recall.

9) Can't remember them mentioning vat grown food (esp vat grown protein; something we're on the verge of today - if not yet economically)

10) Haven't seen any combat robots/drones - though that might be an Army thing; like grav tanks. (I'm not thinking humanoid, but armed recon drones, mobile gun emplacements you can order out to your flanks, or even mechano-donkeys)

Jonathan_S wrote:10) Haven't seen any combat robots/drones - though that might be an Army thing; like grav tanks. (I'm not thinking humanoid, but armed recon drones, mobile gun emplacements you can order out to your flanks, or even mechano-donkeys)

There was one, I think, used when they hit the space station to free the people the idiot governor had locked up. But I think it pretty much just blew itself up.

GabrialSagan wrote:Disclaimer: I recognize that RFC set out with certain intentions with the Honorverse novels and certain technologies would get in the way of the story he is trying to tell. But with that being said...

I have always found it interesting that for all the amazing wonders of technology in the Honorverse that there are still certain pieces of technology that humanity does not have 2000 years in the future. Mind-Machine interfaces and cybernetic computer implants are completely absent. The ability to copy a human mind into a synthetic substrate and immerse a human consciousness into a virtual landscape completely eludes humans even after mastering counter-gravity and FTL travel. Never is there any mention of android servants or anti-matter being used as either a weapon or an energy source.

Again I am not criticizing as I imagine many of these technologies would make it difficult for Mr. Weber to tell the story he wants to tell. But it does make one wonder. What tech would you think humanity would have 2000 years from now that seems to be absent from Manticore, Old Terra, and the other worlds humanity has settled?

Until we devise some way to measure and capture the metaphysical world of "consciousness" "spirit" and "soul" we are helplessly absent from even being remotely close to copying a man's mind. For to copy it we must capture it. Even the owner of a particular mind himself can't do that. We can only hope to copy a mere shell of the original man.

My prediction would be a shell of a man whose mind wouldn't produce enough "food for thought" that even Hannibal Lecter could eat.

https://youtu.be/xx_hlStCL7g