Technology v2

Overview

Over two thousand years since the industrial revolution, technology has changed every aspect of human life. Not just human tools but human minds and bodies have been transformed by its application. Some have even chosen to forgo humanity as it was once seen all together, using the digitization of their consciousness to occupy virtual havens capable of running forever. For most though, physical immortality and transhumanism is enough.

Building Blocks

Most expanse technological philosophers split technology up into various building blocks which can be examined individually. These also help in the classification of the technology levels of alien beings, which was the original reason for their development. With over twenty thousand systems in the Expanse however, it's easy to see why you'd want to apply them to humans too.

Materials

Perhaps the biggest advance of the last two centuries of Expanse life has been the growing use of smart matter. Simply put, in modern expanse technology almost everything is a moving part, right down to individual molecules. This has allowed for super tough armour which can dynamically change its self to survive heat or impact, and buildings and vehicles which can easily reconstruct themselves into new shapes.

While shape shifting clothing has been used in some areas, it's often rather impractical, and most suits are capable only of self repair, self cleaning and colour shifts.

Force fields in the form of areas of slightly altered metric or bounded fields of magnetic or gravity are also fairly common.

Power

Power generation in the expanse is extremely cheap and easy, with fusion reactors small enough to fit onto a desk top. Larger power generators vary, but everything from simply very large fusion generators to spun black holes or degenerate matter collapse inducers has been used. the cutting edge of current generation power sources however are Fractal Exotic Helix (FEH) devices used on many warships. These devices use an area of quantum vacuum charged with exotic particles and bent by a skip field into a repeating helix to produce a massive amount of power.

Battery technology (storing power in tiny metric folds) is also popular, and used extensively in smart matter. Most batteries recharge from any local ambient energy when not in use.

Genetics and Cybernetics

Genetics and cybernetics are an everyday fact for most Expanse clades. Even above the genetic engineering that goes into most Expanse humans, almost all of them also have colonies of non-biological nanomachines for the purpose of updates, the creation of implants and various medical functions.

Genetic engineering is also used widely in teraforming and entertainment, especially the creation of decorative plants and new foods, some of which are still grown, as many gourmets prefer food that has been grown to food that was made in a fabricator.

Movement

Faster than Light travel is the ultimate in Expanse movement, and many vehicles, especially military ones have their own. It is little problem for FTL units to operate in atmosphere, though the accuracy of the other end prevents teleporting munitions or the like from being widely used. Generally an FTL jump takes place at high altitude to avoid translating into the ground and the massive explosion that would result, though some weapons have been based on this principle.

For non-teleport movement, fusion or hotter conversion jets are used on aerospace craft, while ground based vehicles used magnetic or air repulsion. A few vehicles also use ducted fan designs, but their fans bear little resemblance to those of the twenty first and twenty second century. Rather they feature multiple layers of large and small smart matter blades which push air through them with great force.

reactionless thruster systems are something of a new development for the Expanse, and mostly applied to certain military vehicles and a few newly built civilian craft. Anti-gravity still requires an amount of computation and power which is prohibitive, or at least inefficient for most vehicles but has been adopted extensively in large installations like space docks and vehicles where a large and highly visible exhaust is a substantial issue.

Computers

Ubiquitous computing is at least a millennia and a half old for the Expanse, with augmented reality, universal wireless access and the like being old technologies. Computer power and speed are no longer a problem for programmers, though certain applications, like AI creation remain problematic as many AIs are so alien as to be barely able to interact with humans.