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Message: <blockquote data-quote="s/LaSH" data-source="post: 1675398" data-attributes="member: 6929">That's certainly a valid way of going about it, although tech levels are fairly much independant of my strict classification methods. Most people would consider biological robots to be a far-future concept, but the word 'robot' is taken from the Romanian word for 'slave', which we've had since history began. Also, technology shows a suprising propensity for adapting with time; consider the traditional TV/monitor screen, a cathode ray tube. Plasma, projection, and LCD (liquid crystal display) screens have recently burst onto the scene - but the CRT remains dominant, because it can be tuned and upgraded. Or the internal combustion engine, which has had one or two little performance tweaks in the past century, and isn't very different to the steam engine it succeeded, despite the fact that we now have electrics, turbojets, solid-fuel rockets, and ion drives to make things go fast.That said, I can imagine a few stages.Stage 0: Preindustrial. Slaves and domesticated animals - 'biologicals'.Stage 1: Steam. Slaves and animals remain; primitive mechanoid automatons surface, but they must be controlled manually and can't be counted as robots.Stage 2: Electronics. For the first time, logical control circuits can be implanted into automata, and mechanoid robots are properly born. Slaves are no longer necessary, but remain popular in many regions of the world. Late in this stage, virtual robots become viable, and are often smarter and more useful than mechanoids. We are at this stage today.Stage 3: Molecular Science. Composite materials, genetic engineering, and microengineering emerge. This means that you can get syntho-biologicals (there are current plans for a submarine that swims like an eel), designed biologicals (all that fuss about GE in the press in recent years? It's nothing compared to what we could be doing), primitive nanites (still mechanoids - ever see Jake 2.0? The single nanomachines don't really act as a single entity), and maybe even psychodroids (we are seeing the first stages of this today, as 'black box' circuit design is responsible for our modern computers; people still direct the creative process, but computers put the incredibly-complex chip designs together. A mechanical equivalent is certainly possible).Mechanoids and virtuals are still present. Bios and syntho-bios may be more efficient in some fields (the swimming submarine, frex), but there's nothing to compete with virtuals (which leads me to believe there could be more subdivisions thereof, but the field isn't really developed yet), and mechanoids have the advantage that they can be incredibly strong; composite materials will only enhance this. A human arm is not as strong as a comparable pneumatic or hydraulic press, is it? It's more flexible and can self-heal, but the press is much stronger.Stage 4: System Science. I see this coming by the end of this century. Through understanding of complex systems, people can put together things that we'd consider hideously unreliable and make them work. Nanocolonies and primitive field effects probably come about at this point. Black Box AI and precision machining will create good psychodroids, too.However, once again, the other types of robot won't die out. Mechanoids are strong (and getting stronger, with advanced self-repair systems and super energy sources available). Bios and synths may be outclassed by nanocolonies, but then again, nanocolonies may experience unforseen problems and have to adopt a synth layout (consider that vertebrates have lungs (or gills) to support their size - we need oxygen fuel to operate, and we can't just scoop it out of the air like insects to, we're too big). Or maybe bios are still the most reliable way to produce certain goods, like modern bacterial cultures to produce medical products like insulin. Virtuals will still be around, and probably hopping into bodies with the right control systems - many of them will be sentient beings with civil rights, I expect.Stage 5: Postquantum. A daring title, but I think it's valid. This stage sees refinement of the other robot types, of course, but it also sees field effect robots come into their own. Rather than primitive plasma bottles or whatever, we'll be seeing things that really make us think 'whuh?'. Virtual robots may merge in function with field effect robots, able to step in and out of cyberspace at will. Field effect robots will be capable of doing things we don't even want to think about. The world will be very different indeed...So there you have my timeline. It can probably be stopped at a certain point, claiming that technology hits a brick wall. In fact, if you don't want to start researching posthumanism and quantum physics, you'd be well advised to stop it somewhere and implement only minor advances within a Stage. But I felt like being mouthy.</blockquote>

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