Babylon 4: Technology
Technology in this setting is not that different to modern technology, it’s more advanced in a few areas and more backwards in a few others:
- Fusion power has solved everyone’s energy needs.
- Handheld computers are common but a bit bulky.
- There are guns that fire energy bolts, yet some people still use swords.
- Non-energy weapons are surprisingly rare; slug throwers have been banned and ships never use bullets or missiles, only energy bolts and lasers.
- The Minbari and Centauri have artificial gravity, but Humanity, the Narn, and the League don’t, relying instead on spinning parts of their space stations and ships to generate spin gravity.
- Data crystals are used to store and transfer information between computers. They look like quartz points.
- Medicine can treat most injuries and diseases quickly, wounds can often be healed in minutes, but there are new diseases that can’t be treated.
- Scanners can detect the energy signature of a battery hundreds of meters away and can scan for life signs to identify how many people are on a ship.
- Holograms exist but they usually look terrible and people rarely use them. Good holograms are very expensive.
- Cybernetic prosthetics and implants exist but they are inferior to the organic body part they would replace so they are used only to replace tissue damaged due to injuries, not as an enhancement like they would be in a cyberpunk setting.
- Instantaneous communication and video conferencing between the stars is possible due to a network of tachyon relays called StellarCom. This system can send signals faster than light to avoid any delay. It cannot be used to send matter though.
- Hand held communicators exist but phones don’t.
- There are hand-held translators that allow people to speak other languages.
- Telepathy exists and most species have telepaths. Having telepathy is genetic, it's caused by a "telepath gene". All species have found ways to control their telepaths through religious, social, or legal restrictions.
- It is possible through a mix of machines, drugs, and telepathy to completely erase and replace someone’s memories and personality. This is called the “death of personality” and it is done in the Earth Alliance as a form of capital punishment for particularly violent criminals. The criminal's memory and identity are replaced with a new one that is programmed to help society so they can make amends.
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