Technology isn’t static, but it has been fluctuating a level baseline for a few thousand years. Inventors are very protective of their creations, and most cutting-edge creations have a great deal of design to prevent reverse engineering. Between that and the tendency of larger conflicts to wipe out industrial bases, and many advances have to get reinvented.
Because baseline technology isn’t improving, manufacturers have been focusing on durability. Your grandfather’s speederbike may be one tuneup away from being competitive with a freshly manufactured one. Some of the best starships are hundreds of years old, lovingly or carelessly patched over the years, and many city towers have been standing for millennia.
There is a general aversion to swarms, nanobots, and systems designed to evoke emergent properties, but more predictable forms of nanotechnology, such as carbon nanotube adhesives (aka gecko glue), are quite acceptable.
A common design philosophy is that no matter how much high-tech gear you have, ultimately there will be situations where you have to rely on the Mark I Eyeball— that technology is not perfect and needs to have a fail-safe mode that leaves you your native faculties.
The traditional datapad is a rigid rectangular display using either electronic ink (e-ink), organic LEDs (OLED), photonic crystals, or interferometric modulation (IMOD). There are many variations involving flexible screens, up to one that folds up like a paper fan that can be read crudely when completely closed (by illuminating the edges), or opened into a screen. A lightboard is a larger such surface on which people can sketch with a stylus; a computer within it can clean up handwriting to create formal notation, run calculations, and do graphing.
Augmented reality is usually handled through visors and spectacles; faceless troopers are usually getting information through their heads-up displays. They may show up as pince-nez, or headsets wrapping around the back of the skull and providing earphones as well (usually via bone conduction). Gang members sport tactical models as a sign of thug chic, but they’re normally seen as gauche— the sort of thing that security, technical, and medical personnel use while on the job. HUDs are available as very expensive contact lenses and as cybernetic implants as well, but not being able to remove your HUD quickly when it crashes can be a big problem. The contact lenses are much cheaper than the implants, and are usually complemented with earrings that project focused sound into the ears. All models of HUD also include shutters that can dim incoming light as well, both to reduce glare and to provide more immersive interfaces. Haptic gloves are available, though usually only used by professionals who need that level of feedback from a computer.
Full-on virtual reality can be created using a 3m cube equipped with traction fields and grav plates to provide the sensations of acceleration and gross interaction, and a haptic suit to provide the fine interaction of touch. These are moderately expensive, and generally used by technicians who need to work in virtual reality or well-off videogame players. They don’t simulate interaction with a humanoid body very well; if you want practice in ballroom dancing or hand-to-hand combat, training droids are available for that purpose.
A protocol droid’s translation matrix can be embedded in a portable device that clips to your ear, but without a consciousness able to follow a being’s narrative, it will run into errors much more often than a droid running the exact same software. The delay involved in a conversation where someone is experiencing translation lag imposes a –1 penalty on social skills, which a protocol droid’s etiquette abilities would be able to negate. The delay can be slightly reduced by using a heads-up display to give people subtitles, but this interferes with eye contact, so it’s pretty much a wash.
Sound playback is usually achieved through flat carbon nanotube speakers.
Holobooks are used for transporting large quantities of information. Moving it around from person to person can take place via wireless radio links, modulation of the body’s electric field, or acoustic signaling through the skeleton.
RFID tags can be used for all manner of tracking. The smallest and most passive ones, RFID dust, can be used to mark ownership; naturally, there are many devices for locating and burning out these chips. Larger and more sophisticated ones can be used for tracking; the longer the range, the bigger the device. Active-on-demand tracking devices that work at a range of a kilometer are available as thin, transparent circuitry that can be applied with an adhesive or applied with a specialized sniper rifle.
A petalscope is a collection of special-purpose minimally smart droids, each of which consists of a 1m hexagonal mirror-segment, maneuvering using cold-gas thrusters and positioning with laser interferometers, which deploy into a set of precise positions to create a single telescope (much like the real-world Keck telescope). They are only safe to deploy in sufficiently deep space that debris won’t smash the mirrors; it’s not a good idea to have them in low orbit around a planet with active space traffic. Many ships carry one crate of 7 mirrors, which is useful for anything from planetary survey to astrogation. Capital ships have much larger arrays, but they need to know where to point them... They’re reusable as long as you’re very careful when packing them up.
Hydrospanners. Multidriver: electronic screwdriver with a MEMS head that can reconfigure to whatever shape of bolt or screw you need to manipulate. Somewhat expensive, since it’s hard to make MEMS that finely detailed and also strong enough to do tool work.
Ultrashort pulse (USP) lasers (2 3) are often used where lower-tech societies use mechanical cutting implements.
Folded optics allow cramming binocular-quality zoom in something that looks more like a pair of goggles. Photoreceptor goggles can pick up information from most bands of the spectrum, though they still have their source limitations (e.g. infrared doesn’t penetrate dust or moisture well).
Night vision apparatus includes light amplification (which has difficulty with
changing light levels), ultraviolet imaging (which requires a source of light,
which can make you a target), and infrared imaging. The far
infrared is the range for thermal imagers that pick up body heat and can fail
to pick up droids and other ambient-temperature hazards; the near infrared is
more like visible light, passing through glass normally, and can work off
natural near-IR
airglow from the sky while
outdoors. Good goggles integrate all these spectra to provide a useful image;
military-grade ones have a great deal more processing and can integrate feeds
from goggle-wearing and droid companions and produce a synthetic
deep-scan
view, showing objects behind obstacles.
Cybernetic replacement eyes are available with light amplification and imaging from the near infrared on up; thermal imaging won’t work in cybereyes, any more than you can take useful pictures with a camera whose metal is glowing. Extremely expensive cybernetic eyes can sometimes be mistaken for organic ones, but their users report that the image always seems to lack a certain richness.
The glowrod (aka luma) is common throughout the galaxy.
A portable medical diagnostic suite, with size between that of a thick mass market paperback novel and a shoebox depending on quality and sophistication. It uses contrast-enhanced ultrasound and terahertz radar (2) to assemble a picture of the inner workings of a being, full-spectrum photoreceptors to scan for discolorations and temperature variations, and can run fluid samples past an extensive set of microarrays for analyzing proteins.
This is also the name for a heuristic analysis mode on short-range terahertz lidar that is supposed to warn the operator of nearby living beings.
A favored tool of the Sith: a device that looks like a dark grey metal
centipede whose legs
are hollow, flexible tubes that stab into a
being’s back on either side of the spine, infiltrating circulatory
and nervous systems to keep the being alive through tortures that would
otherwise kill them. It can shock the heart into beating and lungs to
pump even when the autonomic nervous system would give up, and injects
drugs into the bloodstream to prevent the victim from losing consciousness.
Flexible impact armor based on shear thickening fluids (sometimes under computer control), magnetorheological fluids, and/or auxetic fabrics is available, though hard shell armor can provide better protection. Layers of reflective material can diffuse most of the energy of laser beams. Blaster bolts, whose plasma temperatures can vaporize many substances, are the most reliable ranged damage delivery method, while vibroblades that erode armor at high speed are the favored one in melee. The best armors have weaves of superconducting fibers that repel the magnetic bottle of a blaster bolt, alternating with elastic fibers that dissipate the energy of vibration. The superconductors stand out like a beacon on radar, so the best stealthy alternative is ablative armor that has layers that flash into vapor to repel the hot plasma.
Heavy armor comes with lots of extra goodies: thermal pumps to combat fatigue and extreme environments, medical monitoring to induce hibernation when critically injured, and more.
Myopia is trivially correctable with outpatient surgery; the only people wearing glasses do so out of historical affectation or the need for a personal heads-up display. The latter devices are seen as working gear, and wearing a personal HUD in galactic society is the modern social equivalent of wearing a fully loaded carpenter’s toolbelt.
Security personnel and soldiers have heavily integrated tactical displays in headbands and helmets; in addition to a HUD, they also have earphones and haptic proximity sensors.
There is a large market for poison detectors, and there are many brands made to fit in a stylus that can be easily used to sample an item of food or drink. More expensive ones can fit in a ring, and very expensive cybernetic ones in a tooth.
Generic spacesuits are balloonlike and cumbersome; custom-fitted ones are skintight and offer good freedom of movement. Spacesuits don’t block hard radiation well, so most people working outside usually do so under a particle screen, so EVA work usually happens with a force field generating droid handy; some even provide a bubble of air and allow workers to operate in their shirt sleeves.
Hooded robes are popular across the galaxy. Convergent evolution has selected for humanoid races as the most popular body plan, and a hooded robe does a good job of concealing the differences between species.
Smartcloth is a popular fabric: it contains sensors, processing elements, and contractile fibers that allow it to loosen and tighten to keep the wearer comfortable in differing climates. A smartcloth overcoat or robe can serve well in the desert or snow, and can be augmented with a heated underlayer powered by a small energy cell for colder climates or an evaporative cooling insert for hotter ones.
A universal makeup applicator uses microelectromechanical systems to adjust its brushes to precisely match the contours of the wielder’s face and draws from multiple reservoirs to provide the components for a desired effect: simply hold it to a different part of the face and the brush thins or thickens to match. They are extremely useful in disguise kits.
Best damn boots in the galaxy.
These are expensive boots that are
custom-fitted to an individual, made of extremely high-tech smart
materials.
Energy from the wearer’s footsteps creates power for the internal
systems, which can affect the flexibility of the boot for the current
activity, making the sole hard on rough ground and supple indoors, the
insides soft when propping your feet up and firm and supportive when
in motion.
They can close tightly around the wearer’s shins to
keep the feet dry in a driving rainstorm, or open small pores to vent
heat and moisture and admit cool breezes. They are tested in climates from
arctic to desert. Available modifications include extending
crampons for climbing and walking on ice, springing out spars and membranes
for swimming or walking on snow...
Water filtration canteens and straws can take care of all but chemical contaminants.
Force fields can protect vehicles traveling to great depths, but no one has worked out how to make one small enough to protect an individual person. Dive suits that use liquid breathing can allow surface beings to survive at great depths; a more expensive option is pressure-mesh, which resembles finely scaled chainmail armor; when placed under high pressure, the scales link up into structures that can withstand the pressure outside. Preshmesh is faster to get into and out of than liquid breathing, but hampers the wearer more, and neither one can compete with a native water breather. (Thanks to Peter Watts’ Starfish [p199] for preshmesh.)
Irradiators are tunable light sources that emit omnidirectional bright light, but also continually sense their area to locate living beings; any space not occupied by a living creature gets hit with strong ultraviolet light, killing viruses and bacteria. They are commonly used in places that see a lot of traffic, particularly spaceports and spacecraft. Areas where irradiators are in use are typically upholstered in something that won’t suffer from bleaching.
Lighting is extremely efficient, with quantum dot arrays
with plasmonic
nanostructures allow designing a light source to emit custom frequency
spectra to order; a common one is blackbody curve of this
type of star, chopped to fit in the visual spectrum of these
species
, with very little wasted in spectra that the users
can’t see. Special-purpose lighting, such as the frequencies
best absorbed by chlorophyll
lamps used in hydroponics (leaving
out most of the green part of the spectrum), can be very harsh on the
eyes. Lighting systems often have a high-speed modulated flicker that
allows data transmission; this is invisible to organic eyes, but clear
to electronic photoreceptors. A techie’s HUD will usually highlight
any data sources it spots.
(Incandescent and ionized-gas lights still exist as retro
technology, and can be found in buildings trying for the quaint,
historic look and in sculpture— many artists blow their own glass and
then fill them with appropriate gas mixes to run current through.)
Furniture for beings with tails is usually designed without back support, or is asymmetric so a tail can slide in from one side. Simply knocking a hole in the back makes it too much work to sit down.
An electrocandle consists of a tube containing a heating element and a small fan, with the output end surmounted by a convoluted structure (roughly in the shape of a candle flame) made of tiny conductive sheets covered in quantum dot lights (tuned to emit, in aggregate, a slice of blackbody curve from the far IR into the visible spectrum) and MEMS sensors. The lighting element glows and flickers much like a candle, responding to subtle variations in air currents; from a distance, or behind translucent material, they can pass for candle flames, but they are clearly something different close up- they sparkle subtly. They can be rigged to emit scent, if desired. They're often seen in space where someone might want a candle as decoration or as a meditative focus, but doesn't want to use up oxygen with an open flame; they're also used where candleflame-style light bulbs are today, though they're more expensive (about twice the price of a glow rod).
Repulsorlift skateboards, popular among youth and extreme sportsmen.
Usually matched with grip boots that can hold to the board well, and
even with hitcher guns
that shoot gecko-foot-adhesive grapples
that are anchored in a harness at waist.
Scouts who discover unpopulated, uninhabitable worlds are usually carrying terraforming packages in their holds— usually a couple of cubit meters. They can start a planet down the path to habitability while the scouts auction off the location and the colonizing organizations start organizing their expeditions.
The standard scumworld package is designed to exploit the existing environment on a scumworld that has not yet managed to evolve any complex life forms. They contain a small fusion cell good for 25 years of operation and three small special-purpose droids that are programmed to decant species from storage. They start with microscopic flora and fauna (cyanobacteria, ...) and build up the food chain, leading to nitrogen-fixing grasses and earthworms, then flowering plants and pollinating insects. They generally maintain a patch a few miles across, usually near a body of water, and the species spread on their own from there.
A slushball package is designed to be deployed on a thawed world containing no life at all. It contains a selection of scumworld life and extremophile bacteria, all tailored with easily-activated backup genes for coping with changing environmental circumstances. These are designed to get an oxygen atmosphere up and running. It contains a large fusion cell tan a scumworld package; it’s designed to create a microclimate in a light force field, cultivating black lichens to melt ice or deep taproots for mosses that pull up water as they cover a desert.
Adaptive camouflage tarps are available, and many light freighters have a couple of cubic meters in the hold keeping one stashed away that will cloak their ship from casual passersby. (They contain a number of small motivator units that make it easy to fling it over the entire ship.) Installing adaptive camouflage plating on the ship (including those that slide over the windows and drive ports and thruster ports and sensors and...) is much more expensive. Camouflage is usually only useful to a parked starship with its fusion plant shut down; a ship with cold drives might be able to go a short distance on fuel cells alone, but in general a flying starship is too noisy to benefit.
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