Tech Levels

These categories are extremely general. They do not take into account that societies can advance at different rates in different categories of civilized advancement. There is no reason that a society must have gunpowder before discovering the Humanities for example. This chart follows the general progression of technology and civilization in Earth Western societies with speculation based on a warp drive future. That said it is the chart we have. 
To indicate a society that is mostly a given tech level, but either advanced or deficient in some category a +/- sigh can be used with the anomaly noted in the notes.
See also: Magic Level.
==Technology Level Chart==
 
0 Early
Stone Age First
tools, tribes, hunter gatherer. 
1 Late
Stone Age Agriculture,
communities, diversified labor. super tribes. 
 
2 Copper
Age 3500 BCE+ Arithmetic, writing. smelting, stone buildings Nation states.
 3 
 Bronze Age 
 1200 BCE+ Geometry, philosophy, Empires 
4 Iron
Age 600 AD+ Algebra, square sail, water & wind mills, roads
 5 
 Medieval 
 1150+ Calculus; movable type, "gonns", three field farm system, plow, horse collar. 
 6 Renaissance 1550+ Scientific method, high literacy, common books, Humanities. First age of Exploration, Match and wheellock guns. 
 7
 Pre Industrial
 1660+ machines to make machines, accurate and portable mechanical clocks, navigation, scientific farming, flintlocks, lightning rod, barometer 
 8 Industrial Revolution 
 1780+ Steam, Mechanical calculators; telegraph, cheap iron, cheap cloth, percussion cap, rifled musket, repeating firearms. 
9 Mechanized
Age 1880+ Common steel, electrical machines; telephone and radio Airplanes,
airships, machine guns, tanks, internal combustion engine 
 10 Nuclear Age 1940+ Fission, Mainframe computers, television. 
 11
 Digital Age
 1980+ Personal computers; global networks. 
12 Microtech Age 2025+ Artificial intelligence; real-time virtuality. Fusion Interplanetary craft, slow boat spacecraft, cyberwear. 
13 Warp Age 2075+ Dihydrogen warp drives, Nanotechnology, anti-matter. cloning Second age of exploration 
14 Early
Galactic Dilithium, reliable transporter, universal translator. living computers, regeneration. Third age of exploration. 
 
15 Middle
Galactic Replicators, end of scarcity, youth drugs, early terraforming. macro engineering.
 16 
 Late Galactic 
 Disodium, end of aging, serious terraforming Fourth age of exploration. 
 
17 Post
Galactic Dipotassium, zero point energy, soft technology, building planets, Dyson spheres
 18 
 Clarke's Tech 
 Indistinguishable from magic.
 
==History==
I have made several attempts to come up with a better mousetrap that is simpler than the eponymous game. So far my efforts have been totally in vain. Any chart that approaches the needed complexity cannot be expressed in a simple fashion. 
My first attempt gave the breakdown of Power, Transportation, Humanities, Information Technology, and Medicine. That is a five number chart. At that some categories are interdependent. For example philosophy and the advance of the humanities depends on communication, so information technology is vital. So is transportation to get that writing around. Transportation cannot advance beyond wind and animal power until something else is invented, like steam. A sticky problem to say the least. It could well be that a similar progression is required for any advancing society. Being that Humanity is the only example we have one must needs follow it even if the given pattern proves to not be the necessary case. One does what one can.
However that said the five number system was too complex to quickly give one the ballpark estimate of a given society’s technology level. While more flexible and actuate, it was cumbersome to use. That defeated the whole purpose of the exercise. Ergo I have fallen back on this variant of the GURPS technological track. Tesral (talk) 14:29, May 30, 2013 (UTC)
Category:Lexicon
Category:Technology
Category:Background