Questions tagged [computers]
For questions regarding a device that can be programmed to carry out a set of certain set of tasks without external intervention.
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How would computers develop in a society where a Cherokee-like language is the dominant lingua franca?
I am writing a book set in a parallel universe where English is not the dominant language and the dominant language is a complex polysynthetic language that makes use of a complex system of word ...
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What would be a way to make uploading a mind into a computer an actual transfer instead of just making a copy?
I want to create a story about mind uploading, but I am completely convinced that even if you could transfer the contents of your brain to a computer emulation and then run it, it will always be a ...
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Computing technology in a world with only Gold, Copper, and Silver
As the title suggests, in this world there are only three metals available in any meaningful amount: copper, gold and silver. How advanced could computers get in this world? Could things like the ...
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Does magic speed up technology?
In a classic RPG magic system, energy/mana/handwavium points are expended to manipulate reality. The cost increases with the complexity and extent of the alterations being made.
Natural talents for ...
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What would aliens glean from our consumer grade computers? [closed]
David just bought a $1500 grand computer, he put the parts together himself. He was about to play some games on it and aliens just yoinked it to study. Without even looking at David or the biology of ...
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Can it make sense for a spaceship to be crewed by many individual AI, rather than a handful with all the processing power?
Related to my previous question regarding fine dining for computer processes.
Background
We've got a spaceship sailing through the ocean black, crewed entirely by self-aware artificial intelligences. ...
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Could a race with 20th century computer technology plausibly develop general-purpose AI?
I have a race of aliens whose technology roughly corresponds to humanity’s in the early 1970s. Wireless communications via microwaves have been developed, but are only available to important groups ...
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What is eating, for software?
Background
A spaceship is crewed entirely by self-aware artificial intelligences, who have no permanent physical bodies; they are processes in a digital environment controlling the ship. This ship is ...
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If magic is programming, then what is mana supposed to be?
So it turns out the universe is a computer. Or at-least that is how it can be analogized to our puny mortal minds.
Human souls/consciousness are simultaneously the equivalent of emergent AI, players, ...
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What kind of scanner can detect a hidden chip in someone's body?
So it's the lead-up to what might be World War III and the enemy is kidnapping and implanting mind-control chips into our people, one by one, to turn them into sleeper agents, to all attack en masse ...
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How would the development of computers be altered if it took longer to find out a practical way to synthesise silicon crystals for transistors?
How would the development of computers be altered by the time of the 1960s & 1970s if we only figured out a practical way to synthesise silicon crystals usable for silicon transistors after that ...
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If modern computers evolved a different way, how different might their keyboards look?
I've been sketching up a constructed script, and I've been drawing a computer keyboard to accompany it.
Now, I've drawn up keys equivalent to Ctrl and Alt, and a "OS Direct key" (equivalent ...
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How limited would computers be if silicon transistors were never invented?
In a world where silicon transistors were never invented, how many limitations would be incurred if we had to continue to use germanium transistors? In this world, silicon transistors were never ...
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How do I justify a world where drones are commonplace but computers remain large?
In those golden age sci-fi comic books, we often see the main character with some type of robotic companion (maybe controlled by an electronic computer or some organic "brain"), while ...
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Why is Hyperspace more hostile to computers than human brains?
For stylistic reasons, I wanted to impose some limits on the use of computers and automation to justify my setting's retro-aesthetic and elements for my science fantasy story.
Basically humanity has ...
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Why would sapient, emotional AGIs object to the creation of any lesser AIs?
When I asked this question, I was expecting there to be some way to have highly advanced simulations of physical systems without the technology for modelling social or psychological systems existing ...
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Advantages of software-breeding over normal programming
So, in the near-future, scientists are trying to develop better and better AI, which are better and better at the tasks they are designed for.
However, rather than coding them, there is another method ...
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Non-religious reasons to have highly advanced physical simulations without any AI which can predict or mimic human behaviour, even algorithmically?
Note: This question was heavily rewritten for two reasons: Firstly, many of the answers were not exactly what I asked for; Secondly, both the original question and all the answers to it were from ...
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Why might advanced digital computers be unusable on my planets?
A large ring gate appears on Earth that leads to other planetary bodies that vary between being able to sustain human life and just barely allowing humans to exist on the planet for a while.
Another ...
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Could a virtual person hack their own reality?
I am just contemplating a sci-if story set in a dystopian future, where the discovery that the universe is a computerised simulation has led governments to found a “Reality Guard”; an elite dedicated ...
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Creating a supercomputer powered by tidal heating
A race of beings decides over a few pan-galactic gargleblasters one evening that rather than waste scientific minds on developing hyper-advanced technology, they should just build a huge computer to ...
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Justifying why mind uploading destroys the brain
So, in the relatively-far future, humans, in their endless quest for immortality, develop a form of mind uploading. This involves scanning the brain, cell by cell, and creating an electronic model of ...
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How to download the mind once it has been uploaded [closed]
So, continuing along the basis of this earlier question: Justifying why mind uploading destroys the brain, these aspiring immortals now have a full computer emulation of their subject’s brain. (Big ...
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How can we cool a computer connected on top of or within a human brain?
Assume the ability to cybernetically implant a powerful enough computer to operate an AI inside the human skull, on top of or within the brain. Thin wires connect the computer to the various parts of ...
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How can I create an emotional computer?
In this project of mine, AI are described as being smart, but emotionless, for the simple reason that they lack any hormonal system to influence the way they think. In layman’s terms, they’ve got no ...
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How could two AIs “battle” within a closed off computer?
This is not so much for a story as much as something I’ve been thinking about for a while.
I’m really drawn to the idea of a sort of world that exists on a server somewhere.
The ‘gods’ that ...
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How long can it really take to calculate a hyperspace jump?
It is a common trope in sci-fi that engaging a vessel's faster-than-light travel requires performing some complicated mathematics that takes a non-trivial amount of time.
I want to know to what extent ...
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Uses for a planet-wide computer system [closed]
In the near(ish) future, (two or three centuries away) it has become possible to create enormous planetary computing systems known as geocomputers.
These are made by injecting nanites 10km down in a ...
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Why is my organic computer the only thing capable of manipulating my special particles?
I have a few fictional particles in my setting that can do many things, however getting them do something specific is the challenging part. There are a class of particles that only work while in the ...
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Why does my artificial dust storm affect pure autonomous combat vehicles, but not crewed weapon's systems with computers?
In my setting there exists some AI based weaponry. Though it's not sentient/AGI level. Rather it's a fanciful extension of what we have currently in terms of practical and theoretical. One of the ...
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How could a the global economy have no money/collapse? [closed]
I would like a plausible way to tank the world economy. I am trying to make a political horror world, that would be very different from today. The basis should be a lack of money or decreased value of ...
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Stone Age Circuitry?
As a tangent to How "advanced" can a stone age society get?, is there a way that simple electronics could be created by filling channels cut into rock with some form of conductive material? ...
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What design flaw would allow a computer virus to significantly damage or destroy computers on a hardware level?
Normally computer viruses are designed to steal information and affect things largely on the software level. Rarely do we see actors trying to outright destroy computers using a virus. However, that ...
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Following normal physics, can a world be unable to make electronics due to a lack of resources/materials?
I want to have a post apocalyptic world where 21st century tech is unable to be made anymore due to humans using up all the resources on the planet. Since space programs also use computers, there ...
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How can we build a space probe's computer to survive centuries of interstellar travel?
TL;DR: Can human build a computer that lasts for a few hundred years under active maintenance with a limited spare part supply, not too bulky or power hungry, and has the performance similar to a high-...
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The cure for all bacteria-caused diseases
Which minimal order of magnitude is required to simulate single cells and microorganisms in cyberspace?
In an utopian future, people will be possibly able to rapidly design new cures, be their ...
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If brain machine interfaces existed, what sort of failsafes might exist so a user would know definitively they are in the real world not a simulation? [duplicate]
I don’t imagine scamming and hacking going away. How can someone be sure they’re back in reality not a simulation? It seems like it would be all too easy to trick someone into disclosing sensitive ...
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Way to prove you are human when the Turing test is not sufficient
In a story I am working on there are 5 AI on a space station of varying levels of social, image recognition and general intelligence. At least one is good enough to pass a Turing test and do image ...
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How would people create nonbiological people with only very basic computer technology? [closed]
In one of the (probably too many) settings I'm working on at the moment, most computer technology is quite primitive; There are no home or office computers, and, whilst computers are quite common in ...
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What would a society without cryptography look like?
In this world you have access to computers powerful enough to decipher messages as long as the method used to encrypt it has at least one theoretical weakness (those computers cannot defeat an ...
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Death in a computer room
Years ago, computer rooms used Halon gas to extinguish fires in computer rooms by depriving the room swiftly of oxygen, killing the fire, but keeping expensive equipment safe (vs. sprinkler systems). ...
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How to trick a fairly simplistic kill-counter? [closed]
In my setting, soldiers carry with them kill-counters; devices that measure the lifesigns of everything in the vicinity and then count one kill if the lifesigns of a given humanoid suddenly ceases to ...
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How would the human brain aid a human computer interface/implant in solving complex problems in realtime/dynamic uses [closed]
Hooking up a computer to the human brain or somehow connecting the brain to a computer is nothing new in the realm of sci fi literature. But say you want to merge the human brain and a computer ...
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What would a hand-powered medieval computer need to be feasible?
To clarify, I'm not talking about electronic computation. Instead, the question is as to what barriers would prevent a medieval society from building something in the vein of a Jacquard Loom, or ...
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How to counteract a trojan horse when the horse is the anti-virus software?
I have got caught behind the 'irresistible force meets immoveable rock' conundrum.
A predatory country has been making very long-term plans for building an empire.
This country, as part of a very long-...
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Quantum supercomputers in orbit?
I have been wondering if it would be a good idea to exploit the natural coldness of space to create the conditions needed for quantum computation at a large scale.
The average temperature of space is ...
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Simulation Computing Loophole? [closed]
The story i'm working on is set on a near future where brain-computer interface has evolved enough for people to control virtual bodies in real time and feel every physical stimuli from the virtual ...
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Information necessary to simulate a brain virtually?
In the world i'm developing it's already possible to periodically scan your brain so you can keep a backup in case of you dying (people have rejuvenating treatments but they can still die of unnatural ...
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How many years could notebook computers and phones be stored in a closed bunker/vault and still operational when found?
The idea is for some people in a post-apocalyptic future to find these bunkers/vaults and be able to turn on the computers and charge the cellphones. How many years could the equipment last if they ...
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Were there problems for Babbage's Analytical Engine in 1850s? [closed]
Suppose that a mysterious philanthropist provided fundings for Charles Babbage's intricate projects and the Analytical Engine was finished by 1850.
Surely there would be a lot of raptured academicians ...
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