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I've always thought of it as being like Searle's chinese room

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_room

They don't have any real understanding of the technology at work, but, by following the directions, they can simulate (or construct, in this case) an understanding.

From the average citizen's perspective, an adept is well-versed in the Machine God's ways... and the adept himself may even believe that to be the case. But, really, he's just assembling lettered tiles in a prescribed order to tell a joke he doesn't understand.

Technology would works like anything else (medicine, for example): just like now, with more incense and prayers.

Think of the scene of Monty Phiton's quest for the Holly Grail where King Arthur throws the holly grenade against the evil rabbit; they needed not to say all the words on the book, but they believed that they where part of the procedure to make it work.

Gwar! wrote:

Kilkrazy wrote:This is even more puzzling.

If humans have the skills to take apart the STC instruction files, interpret them, and convert them into a set of instructions which allow the building from raw materials of systems of machines complex enough to build machines as complex as lasguns, Landraiders and Rhinos, they certainly have the skills to do any other bit of technology they want.

So why don’t they?

Because I don't think thats what happens. I honestly think they have no idea HOW it works, all they know is that it DOES work. Press this Button and you get told how to make a Land Raider.

That's not what happens.

If you had an STC machine you would press the button for Land Raider, shovel dirt into the hopper and eventually a Land Raider would pop out the other end. Maybe the STC machine would give instructions like "feed in more rocks" when it ran low on raw materials.

However there are no STC machines. Instead there is the "program" which tells an STC machine how to make a Land Raider.

To use this, you have to be able to decode the program and turn its instructions into human understandable instructions for how to make the parts to make a Land Raider.

While this would be formidably difficult, it has been done, since people are making vehicles like the Land Raider, derived from STCs, and there are no operating STC machines to do it for them.

We are led logically to the conclusion that humans have the knowledge acquired from STC programs and they know how to dig up minerals, refine them into Adamantium, cast that into plates, and assemble the plates. Make all the computer bits and do the programming required to create a machine spirit. And so on.

Unless every single human artifact is produced by following an STC program, people would begin to notice the similarity between making a Land Raider and making the other kinds o stuff they have to make, and extrapolate their knowledge gained from STC programs to new construction.

Ok, maybe they just are stupid then! xD

I think it is because there is a massive apparatus of control and indoctrination dedicated to preventing ordinary people from getting uppity ideas about technology.

Kilkrazy wrote:That's not what happens.

If you had an STC machine you would press the button for Land Raider, shovel dirt into the hopper and eventually a Land Raider would pop out the other end. Maybe the STC machine would give instructions like "feed in more rocks" when it ran low on raw materials.

Again, you're misinterpreting.

An STC system is not a manufacturing device. It's a computer.

Somehow, when you took the STC with you to the world you'd been sent to colonize, it would analyze all the resources available in the region. When you hit the Land Raider button, it would spit out a set of detailed instructions telling you how to make Land Raiders out of what resources you had there - instructions that you could use to build a Land Raider even if you didn't understand how a Land Raider worked.

However, there are no more working STCs. Instead, all humanity has left is a few of those instruction sets that they've managed to preserve or recover.

(Not all the authors actually understood this, which is why we got that stupid scene from Abnett's First and Only that no doubt has caused much of the confusion.)

How would you build a Land Raider with a set of instructions and no tools?

I'm assuming that included in the instructions were a set of required tools.

Kilkrazy wrote:How would you build a Land Raider with a set of instructions and no tools?

You wouldn't. The STC system was not intended to allow colonists who'd just stepped off their ship to immediately start a Land Raider production line. What it did do is allow them over time to develop a complete self-sustaining infrastructure that could produce whatever they needed, without them having to rediscover all these things that humanity had already figured out a good way to make. The STC designs kept humanity on the same technological 'page' over the huge interstellar distances involved, and each colony's STC system adapted the designs to suit local conditions and available resources while still keeping them functionally the same.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Codex Imperialis is an older sourcebook, but on page 42 under the heading "The Quest for Knowledge" there is a very good summary of what the STC systems were and how they worked. It states that STC was an information storage system; that no functional STC systems remain; and that current human technology is based on preserved STC print-outs. It's worth looking for, as it's probably most clear and comprehensive source on the topic, and as far as I know it has not been superceded by anything more recent.

(Not sure what the forum policy on Fair Use is. If it's okay to do so, I can transcribe the relevant paragraphs.)

All of this brings into question why the Imperium would not simply dedicate entire systems to either understanding or advancing current technology. Yes, it challenges the Mechanicus's monopoly and all that, but realistically, given the situation the Imperium finds itself in(you know, standing alone in a galaxy full of horrors), you'd think it'd be top-priority.

But of course, this mechanism for advancement would make things substantially less grim-dark, imo, hence why fluff never includes it.

Ronin-Sage wrote:All of this brings into question why the Imperium would not simply dedicate entire systems to either understanding or advancing current technology. Yes, it challenges the Mechanicus's monopoly and all that, but realistically, given the situation the Imperium finds itself in(you know, standing alone in a galaxy full of horrors), you'd think it'd be top-priority.

I think the biggest influence on my view of the Imperium and their attitude towards technology is a book I read called The Liberators. The book is a series of unrelated short stories about life in the Soviet army, and I think it gives a fantastic insight into the way a massively authoritarian, stiflingly bureaucratic society like the Imperium could function (for a given definition of "function", anyway).

One of the chapters is titled "The Brick Bomber", and talks about Soviet efforts to reverse-engineer a Boeing B-29 Superfortress bomber that had been forced down over Russian territory in 1944 - the project that eventually resulted in the creation of the Tupolev TU-4. I always imagined that the conditions Imperial design staff operate under to be very similar - the STC designs are very poorly understood, so there is huge pressure to copy each detail exactly just in case that detail performs some important function.

A little hole was found on the left wing of the aircraft. No aerodynamics or durability expert had the slightest idea what the hell it was for. There was no tube or wire attached to it and there was no equivalent hole in the right wing. The opinion of a commission of experts was that the little hole had been bored by a factory drill at the same time as the other holes for the rivets. So, what to do? Most probably, the hole had been drilled by mistake, and later no one had bothered to fill it in as it was much too small. [A. N. Tupolev] was asked his opinion.

"Do the Americans have it?"

"Yes"

"So why the hell are you asking me? Weren't we ordered to make them absolutely identical? Alike as two peas!"

So, for that reason, a very small hole indeed, made with the thinnest possible drill, appeared on the left wing of all the TU-4 strategic bombers.

Here's a narrow pipe, through which one can crawl on all fours the whole length of the aircraft, and it has been painted light green (some design bureau or other struggled for a very long time in an attempt to copy it exactly) but, at its very end, several metres have been painted white. Maybe some soldier simply did not have enough paint. But the order was to copy it exactly, which is why all the Soviet bombers are the same colour as the American one. It was calculated exactly how much green paint there was and how much white paint. Later, this ratio was included in all instruction books on how to paint the interior of the bomber.

Yes, the way the Imperium does things is shockingly inefficient. That doesn't make it unrealistic.

I have a book to add to my "To-read" list now.

Very cool, Genosaurer

F**king STC, how do they work?
*clownface*

When reading the fluff, one always has to remember that the Adeptus Mechanicus are neither working solely for humanity, nor solely in control of their own destiny. The higher powers are dedicated to the "machine god," who is neither human, nor cares one little iota for humanity (He's asleep on Mars at the moment).

A lot of the religious nature is about control too. The Space Marines are the strong arm of the empire. But the Guard could overwhelm them. Control of the high technology of the marines allows the entire empire to function - otherwise a rebellion with Space Marine power armor, land raiders, and assorted goodies would quickly overwhelm most chapters (look how close the Sisters of Battle come to being the equal of a Space Marine in that armor, without the Black Carpace - now imagine a Hive World full of that). In fact, the entire Imperium is clearly a despotic empire in decline - the control of technology is very similar to how Saddam Hussein, Pol Pot, or many other tyrants managed their country.

Wyvern wrote:Because humanity has lost the understanding of how much of their technology works, they can no longer make their own tech without the STC's, which they cannot build, and so must find. They depend on the STC's for all their technology.

That's not entirely true.

Certainly it is true for higher levels of technology, but hereteks invent things all the time-- and not all hereteks are chaos worshippers... they're just those who have gone against the teachings of the Omnissiah. And they aren't all techpriests, either. Sometimes they're just scum inventing things in order to accomplish a specific task, or modifying current technology.

Many weapons have been created this way, and some of them are adapted as an STC technology.

In reference to the idea of advancing scientific understanding by examining Imperial technology:

You had a society (pre-Heresy) devoted to the expansion and diffusion of human knowledge. That society (put very simplistically) discovered Chaos and unleashed daemons upon the Imperium. The post-Heresy Imperium has VERY good and solid reasons for discouraging, and even quashing, intellectual curiosity. We can't learn to summon daemons who can corrupt our entire planet. The Imperials can. An open mind, and a curious mind, is actually a dangerous thing. Given that millions, or billions, of human souls could be eternally corrupted, a decision to squash human innovation seems a little more acceptable.

Even pre-Heresy there existed the "Dark Age of Technology" and the "Age of Strife". In the Imperial universe, scientific exploration and innovation had actually "gone too far". The technological development of weapons and computer intelligence had occurred during a cataclysmic upheaval (the Age of Strife), which nearly destroyed all human civilization. Thus, certain technological innovations, such as machine intelligence, were, and are, quite reasonably viewed by Imperials as too dangerous and forbidden. These innovations were used to horrible effect during the Age of Strife, for things like nuclear war, intelligent war robots, etc.

It doesn't help that one of the factions of the Mechanicus which was willing to consider things like innovation, experimentation, and machine intelligence, was seduced by Chaos and became the Dark Mechanicus. If everyone who used Apple computers became mutated, evil monsters, Apple would get a bad rap, even if the problem was mutagens in the shipping box, and not the Mac itself.

The Imperials aren't just "dumb". Their society has been threatened, on a fundamental level, numerous times, by things which came in the guise of progress. Their society is also unbelievably big and long-lasting, so maintaining the status quo also seems quite reasonable. Their society is also threatened internally by mutants and psykers, and externally by Tyranids, Necrons, Orks, and many other gribblies. Again, maintaining the status quo sounds quite reasonable, or even optimistic.

For another specific example, consider "Thousand Sons". Magnus tosses the entire future of the Imperium into a cocked hat because he thinks that he has a pretty good understanding of what is going on, and turns out to be horribly, grievously, catastrophically wrong. Given that a super-intelligent Primarch got this wrong, it is pretty reasonable for the High Lords of Terra to presume that Billy Corrigan, Boy-Scientist, should just lay off the test tubes.



Also on the topic of STCs, I think that it is important to note that a "complete" STC has yet to be found. There are devices for which a Standard Template Construct(ion) exists, but no complete body of STC knowledge has been discovered. Knowing exactly how to make a tank which uses a plasma cannon is a little less useful if you don't know exactly how to make a plasma cannon, for instance.

Codex Imperialis, page 42:

The Quest For Knowledge

The Adeptus Mechanicus is driven by the quest for knowledge. This quest takes many forms, including research and exploration, but its ultimate embodiment is the search for ancient STC systems.

STC systems were created during the scientific high-point of the Dark Age of Technology. During this time thousands of human colonies were founded on distant worlds. Many of those colonies failed to survive, some were lost, and of those that survived most achieved only a subsistence level economy. Yet almost all those colonies managed to retain a high level of technology thanks to the huge base of computerized information carried from Earth. This massive computer databank was known as the Standard Template Construct (STC) system.

The STCs are often said to embody the sum total of human knowledge. This is probably true as far as technical accomplishment goes. Although most colonists required little more than designs for agricultural machinery, programs were included for all sorts of advanced constructions such as nuclear power grids and fission reactors. However, the early colonists' needs were simple and were met by conventional energy forms and comparatively low-level technology.

Today there are no known STC systems, and only a very few examples of first-generation print-out. On some worlds information about the ancient STC systems is regarded as holy and design copies are guarded as secret and sacred texts, housed in the inner sanctum of temples.

For thousands of years the Adeptus Mechanicus has pursued all information about the STC. It is their lost bible, Holy Grail, and Cup of Knowledge. Any scrap of information is eagerly sought out and jealously hoarded. Any rumor of a functional system is followed up and investigated.

By their efforts much information has been retrieved or can be reconstructed by the vigorous analysis and comparison of copies. Yet the most technically-advanced knowledge eludes the Adeptus Mechanicus, for the early colonists were simple folk whose needs were practical. Only rarely did anyone bother to take copies of the theoretical and advanced work which the STC contained.

Just remember that there ARE organizations-- illegal ones, but they nonetheless exist-- which pursue advances in technology other than the Mechanicus.

IIRC, during the heresy, the mechanicus really did completely understand how everything in the Imperium worked. If you read the HH series, you'll notice how a person walking into a room merely swipes his palm across the palmreader lock, and walks through.

Also, if you take the Leman Russ tank, and all of its variants, what i think could have been the case would be something like today. Say the Leman Russ tank, called something else during its initial run through the factories, made by for example, Ford Motor Company. Now, this Ford company has many factories all over the world and galaxy, and has these computers sort of networked, with the blueprints for their "Leman Russ" tank, different variants, etc. Fast Forward to the 41st millenium, and this Ford company (in this example) has disappeared long ago, replaced by Mechanicus Ltd. a subdivision of Emperor, Inc. and as a result of Old Night, and the subsequent reunification of humanity, the Mechanicus is finding these computers with the blueprint for a specific variant of tank, and because they have lost all knowledge of how things used to work in the Dark Age of Technology, believe that this is a new and unique thing.


and IIRC, the STC that Gaunt came across was an STC that was specifically created to produce the Iron or Grey Men, which of course was believed to be corrupted (although, may have been working perfectly normal had we known what the finished product did, 20k years before)

IIRC, it's stated in Imperial Armour that we have not yet found the original Leman Russ STC.

Melissia wrote:Just remember that there ARE organizations-- illegal ones, but they nonetheless exist-- which pursue advances in technology other than the Mechanicus.

Like the Tau?

This brings me to another question. The Tau are so far ahead of the Imperium in just about every technological aspect (Anti-grav, Railguns, stealth suits, I believe they even have titans...). They've actually managed to invent all this stuff BY THEMSELVES...So why doesn't the Imperium just take inspiration from them and steal some of their stuff, reverse engineer it and begin production?

I never understood this. Well, actually, I know very well why: "It's filthy Xenos technology"...Or am I overestimating the complexity of Tau technology? I know the imperium has anti-grav, but apparently it's really expensive. Just about everything the tau use is anti-grav, so they must have some other way to do it, or a cheaper way.

No, I was saying within the Imperium.

Ensis Ferrae wrote:and IIRC, the STC that Gaunt came across was an STC that was specifically created to produce the Iron or Grey Men, which of course was believed to be corrupted (although, may have been working perfectly normal had we known what the finished product did, 20k years before)

Yes, sites like Lexicanium have proposed fanon explanations to try and explain the fact that Abnett clearly did not bother to actually research what an STC was before writing First and Only. Most of these claim that what Gaunt found was a special "Standard Template Constructor", different from the Standard Template Construct systems (which DO NOT BUILD THINGS). That does not make the scene any less stupid, and frankly it's easier to just ignore that entire part of the book as apocryphal, rather than trying to bend canon to fit it.

Samus_aran115 wrote:This brings me to another question. The Tau are so far ahead of the Imperium in just about every technological aspect (Anti-grav, Railguns, stealth suits, I believe they even have titans...). They've actually managed to invent all this stuff BY THEMSELVES...So why doesn't the Imperium just take inspiration from them and steal some of their stuff, reverse engineer it and begin production?

In one of the editor asides from Sandy Mitchell's Caves of Ice, Inquisitor Amberly Vail mentions that she uses a Tau Blacksun Filter in the course of her duties. It was just a throwaway line, but I think it's quite possible that those sufficiently high-ranking in Imperial society do keep and operate some xenos tech.

Yes, the Inquisition especially uses xeno tech in the course of its duties.

Interstingly enough this thread brings to mind a rather sticky and somewhat forbidden subject within Imperial Canon....

Morgin Harad, Adeptus Mechanicus "The Squats have advanced our cause considerably over the millennia. On no other group of worlds has so much Dark Age technology survived, nor so much expertise been preserved."

They say the Squat homeworlds were destroyed by a Tyranid Hive Fleet..... but were they really? Perhaps something was discovered, say a working STC, and those within the Imperium that would fear such a discovery had them eliminated by Exterminatus....

Or maybe they were wiped out by a virus bomb and then the mechanicus moved in and took everything.

I'll add in that Inquisitor Amberly Vail is specifically a member of the Ordo Xenos, and that her use of xenos technology might be a neat little 'easter-egg' pointing to developing Radicalism.

Speaking of, while I don't agree with the specifics, the following guy's web page is a nice take on Imperial Techologies, specifically envisaging STC as a system of standardization (click here). If you have an empire of a million worlds, standardization is going to go a long way to simplifying the logistics of running the place.

But we seem to be getting away from the original question I posed (though kudos for a good discussion so far!): How does Human Technology really work? I recall in the "Mechanicum" novel there's the strong implication that there's something on Mars whose dreams stimulate receptive individuals (such as certain psyckers) to be able to create and innovate. One of the novel's protagonists is a woman who's phenomenally special because of her ability to channel technical insight.

But if that's the case, and going back to the Chinese Room for a second, it's not really her making the machines work or creating new machines, but something in the Warp speaking through her, and doing the creating.

Consider that machines, for example, have a warp presence (if a machine-spirit can be understood to literally indicate the soul of a machine) and can be possessed. If that is the case, then a ritual may actually be an efficacious way of propitiating that spirit as well as an effective way of ensuring reproduce-able results when technology is applied.

Consider as well the relation of the Warp to Real-Space in Warhammer 40,000. The Warp is the realm of emotions and concepts, a Platonic Heaven inverted to form a Hell. Given that things like genes are purely representational (as in they contribute to describing the heritability of organisms rather than being a part of the organism like chromosomes or DNA) and that genes in Warhammer 40k have an important role in psychic ability (psyckers are a mutation, blanks and pariahs are a mutation, navigators are a mutation, geneseed confers psychic mutations, etc), then how do techologies like cloning, genetic finger-printing, gene-seeding, and cyborgization work?

Returning again to the Chinese Room, presumably there's a program that makes machines work, but the question is begged whether the program merely describes and proscribes a set of mechanical arrangements (and is thus merely a representation), or whether that set of mechanical arrangements is the program or soul that makes the machine work.

So does Human Technology really work in the sense of being the application of knowledge about the universe (either scientifically discovered or dogmatically preserved), or is there some 'force' or 'energy' drawn down from the Warp to enable the desired result to be actualized?

Because if it's the former, then alright, but if it's the latter then that might explain why the enlightened men of the Mechanicus reject the use of advanced technology for the layman just as the Adeptus Terra might forbid wild psyckers as being psychically dangerous and vulnerable to influence by malignant warp entities and Powers. An expert system sufficiently powerful to be useful might lack the components necessary to resist malign influences, while an expert system with a sufficiently powerful software package and processors might be more expensive than a retro-engineered human brain (why build it when you can just use off-the-shelf components?). It might be a combination of these two (some technologies require psychic power to be input, or have psychic components, while some have sufficient mechanical components or even innate psychic power), it might be neither.

"Cogitators", for example, might not be computers in the sense that Alan Turing defined the latter. Their physical components might be access-points for the psychic components that do real thinking rather than the mere computations of an equivalent expert system. The mechanical components of a "Machine-Spirit" might not be a computer either, but rather the input-output port of an actual spirit bound to the machine.

I'm throwing ideas about here. Discuss.

Nurglitch wrote:

Returning again to the Chinese Room, presumably there's a program that makes machines work, but the question is begged whether the program merely describes and proscribes a set of mechanical arrangements (and is thus merely a representation), or whether that set of mechanical arrangements is the program or soul that makes the machine work.

So does Human Technology really work in the sense of being the application of knowledge about the universe (either scientifically discovered or dogmatically preserved), or is there some 'force' or 'energy' drawn down from the Warp to enable the desired result to be actualized?



"Cogitators", for example, might not be computers in the sense that Alan Turing defined the latter. Their physical components might be access-points for the psychic components that do real thinking rather than the mere computations of an equivalent expert system. The mechanical components of a "Machine-Spirit" might not be a computer either, but rather the input-output port of an actual spirit bound to the machine.

I'm throwing ideas about here. Discuss.

Perhaps, running with your idea of a "warp presence" that runs all technology (or at least a good portion) and provides a sort of Psyker spark to some individuals who can commune better with machines than others, this sort of being is one that some believe to actually be physically on Mars, in the form of Void Dragon??

Nurglitch wrote:I'll add in that Inquisitor Amberly Vail is specifically a member of the Ordo Xenos, and that her use of xenos technology might be a neat little 'easter-egg' pointing to developing Radicalism.

Hardly. Xeno technology is used all the time by Inquisitors. Digital weapons are xeno technology, for example.

I'd go a step further and point out that recent references to digital weapons leave out the bit about them having Xenos origins.

Not saying that some (many?) don't have Xenos origins, but that the most recent texts don't specify that they're necessarily all of Xenos stock.

EDIT:

Besides, if use of Xenos technology was as widespread as all that, what would separate a radical Ordo Xenos inquisitor from the rest?