Once again, I was stuck on an idea. And once again, asking my friends in Facebook (and the fan club for the Hitchhiker's guide), helped me out again.

To my friends and family I asked:

I'm looking for some more world building ideas for that nuclear rocket/steampunk/space wizard series of books I'm writing. Today I'm thinking "What if radio was never invented?" If they developed telepathy in, say, the 1880s, how would people communicate? And what strange sorts of workarounds would they develop? Is telepathy something that people have to develop, or are there devices that can augment it? What sorts of things can you transmit telepathically? I'm looking for ideas.

Colin C

Try A Fire Upon the Deep, Vernor Vinge

Dan D

If speech is two minds communicating by transforming thoughts into sound waves, telepathy would be transforming thoughts into electromagnetic waves.

During the early days of telegraph, the telegraph operators (who had previously worked for the railroads) were conscripted into the Northern and Southern armies during the Civil War. They spied on each others communications. Not only could they decode what the messages were but they could recognize individual operators from their acquaintances pre-war ("That's Joe Ralston from Richmond"). This was possible because each operator had a voiceprint of sorts (called their "fist") in terms of the idiosyncrasies they used when keying in a message.

Telepathy would have the same characteristics. The biological or technical mechanism that transmitted the thought waves would contain metadata and subtleties beyond the core message.

Also think about noise. Crowded air space from either other speakers or background radio waves would trigger a "noisy room" effect. And there would likely be social rules and norms around all of this.

(Me)

There would definitely be the personal "touch" in psychic communications. No matter how much you've practiced, your unconscious and conscious thoughts and feelings and whatnot will still leak in. And perhaps that is what distinguishes an experience telepath from a novice. A novice is noisy and messy and barely intelligible. But a pro could transmit the sound of a pin dropping.

Great idea!

Mike D

I think you’d have to have a sort of “telepathic bus” of especially-high bandwidth telepaths that individuals could connect to to reach distant destinations.

(Me)

Agreed

Mike D

Like supernodes in a mesh network

(Me)

Yes. I was thinking that a ship would have a communication officer who basically act like a living telepathic switchboard

Mike D

You might also have hybrid neuro-electronic satellites that act as reflectors/boosters to bridge larger distances

(Me)

He or she would have a box of Zener cards, and a rotation of what day to be thinking of which card. And that lets other ships tune in, without the enemies telepaths being able to evesdrop

Mike D

Cool. Like a one-time pad

(Me)

I think they'd need some sort of augmentation. The question is, would that technology allow a non-telepath to become a telepath? Well, I guess I've established that (by the rules of the magic) most of us are telepaths already. But would it simply boost the ability of a trained operator, or make it easier for the novice?

(Mike D)

I think it would boost the ability of the telepath-enabled, probably because you’d need to be specially trained, perhaps even internally-bio-augmented, to be able to tune into the space where external augmentation can take effect. Of course until some evolutionary leap causes the ability to spontaneously appear within the hero/protagonist

(Me)

the twist with my protagonist is that she was raised in a laboratory, and has developed a telepathic connection with computers instead of people. Which leads to all sorts of funny problems and security violations...

(Mike D)

Cool!

(Me)

And I'd written that in very early in the story as a side effect of being artificially gestated. Now I have a magical explanation.

(Me)

Getting back to the augmenter. Maybe it doesn't work by boosting telepathic ability at all. But actually it's a noise canceller. You figure a ship with thousands of minds all awake at a time has to be a giant mess to try to a: broadcast over and b: receive through. While the signal itself is carried through spiritual ether, the mind of the telepath is deeply entangled with the people around them.

Mike D

That makes sense

(Me)

Another funny idea for the plot. The comms officer on this ship has a young child, who is a natural talent, and constantly breaking into psychic meetings or interrupting her calls at work. Maybe there is even a special set of books that let people telepathically speak to their children. And practically everyone who has used it has concluded it was a BAD IDEA

So maybe she spend a little extra time in the augmenter just to get some peace and quiet

Ron F

Interesting question about telepathy for me: is it always on or is it something you have to turn on (like opening your eyes to see vs. smell which is always operational)? If you have to turn it on is it unilateral or multilateral? Is it a communication channel or a sharing of mind state and memories? If the latter, how do you separate the selves(or do you) from the resulting multimind?

(Me)

My wife and I were talking about those very questions. Here's some ideas I was kicking around:

I was going to base it on the tropes we already have about telepathy. So let us suppose that telepathy is something most of us are born with. It works best between two people with a deep emotional connection. (Mothers and their children.) But as the child develops complex thoughts of their own, the connection breaks down.

So maybe rule 1 is that you have to temporarily suspend your own consciousness and participate in a "Group think." That group could be two. Or 10. Or an entire concert hall (or chuch sanctuary). But if the signal to noise ratio gets too high, people tune it out.

Rule 2 is that you just learn to turn it off an on. Like how astronauts just learn to shut off their vestibular system to combat space sickness, and turn it back on when they arrive back on Earth. It's not easy the first few times, or sudden. But it's something you can practice. Most people have had it switched off for so long that they forget its even there.

Telepath training would involve opening that ability back up, and how to operate with that ability in a "polite" way with strangers. Step one is learning to suppress your own consciousness, at least when you aren't "speaking". Step two is learning to concentrate on a set of standardized stimulating cues. Imagine, say, those Zener cards that psychics use ACTUALLY did something. In this case, help you tune into a "station" that another psychic is communicating on.

I'm imagining the Uhura on this ship has a box of cards, and a rotation of which days which ship or station will have someone tuned to which card. By now, she has learned how to keep the connection open while still holding conversations in real life. But it requires a chunk of her attention. (Radio operators do this in our own world all the time.)

Once the connection is made, everyone in the group basically shares one consciousness. They have to take turns with who is thinking, and while you can imagine basically anything, there is always the problem of how people are going to interpret that when they process the image on their own. Or if they'll even remember it.

Does that sound "suspension of disbelievable"?

Ron F

politeness allows for some interesting plot ideas involving impolite or downright sociopathic telepaths.

(Me)

And even "telepathic jamming" in warfare

Pat W

i think that there has to be telepathic ethics... thing no well brought up person would EVER do...like intrude into a non-family members thoughst without invitation. There should actually be crimes associated with unwanted intrusion. Also, without oral communication inaction, how do you pass down knowledge to future generations.

Ron F

Then, if telepathy is a rare trait there's the possibility of politicization/power hunger. I'm thinking of Psi corps in Babylon 5 as an example of that.

(Me)

I'm thinking it's more like law (or radio). You need to pass a telepath licensing process to legally employ one's services. And they probably have a PCC (Psionic Communications Commission) who responds to complaints, and tracks down abusers. With heavy fines for infractions, and the threat of surgical alteration for repeat offenders.

Re (Pat): I could see there being a lot of criminal law built around "tele-stalking" like we prosecute (or often fail to prosecute) as cyber-stalking. With a set of investigators who have special skills to impersonate victims, and forensically capture evidence for trial.

The main problem for the PCC would be jurisdiction. It's like the Internet. There's no "center". I imagine it would be more like the IETF or IEEE. A professional organization, who builds standards. But also, like a labor union, with a few wrench toting folks who can do some "non-jurisdictional enforcement"

And what about telepathic spam? Assuming that the mechanism works across the spirit realm, distance isn't an issue. What if there were the equivalent to door to door salesmen who lie in wait of popular memes and try to hijack them into a sales pitch, or information gathering scam? Kind of turn the telepathic world into as dangerous a place as, say, the Internet

Gerald L

use man made matrix crystals like in/on Darkover.


On the Galactic Hitchhiker's group I asked:

Fellow Hitchhikers, I'm doing some more worldbuilding for that nuclear rocket/steampunk/space wizard world I keep threatening to unleash on the world. And I'm to the point where I'm trying to figure out how ships talk to each other. In this world, WWII never happened, and magic was perfected in the 1880s. If they had telepaths, how plausible is it that Radio and Television were never invented? And if they use telepathy, would it be limited to the speed of light? And what are the other strange workarounds would have to be in place to utilize telepaths on a society-wide scale?

Laureen A

Don't forget about the ansible in Enders Game.

Walter T

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ansible

(Me)

Telepathy is basically the answer to the Ansible in this Universe.

Alison H

What would interference look like from brain to brain? Do words get transferred perfectly or is there an element of Chinese whispers as each brain receives and understands it differently? Is there a common language ? Would you include some clunky heavy steam tech? eg like something out of the movie Brazil? What would a telepathic brain fart or brain fog look like? 🤣🤦‍♀️ How would they know a message is incoming ?

(me)

I'm thinking chinese whispers. Professional telepaths can create clearer, less ambiguous images. But telepathy on a low level is almost as bad as dream interpretation.

(And, as it turns out, there's a reason for that...)

Robert R

The psyops in minority report.. ?.. the dragons in the dragon riders of pern were telepathic.

(me)

I have in my notes that many powerful mage have a familiar. A creature or artifice that they can command telepathically, and even use them as a remote set of eyes and ears (and hands or paws)

Howard B

In Asimov's Foundation series there were the two streams of development, the First on technology, and the Second on the ability of the mind.

(me)

That's a good point. But at this point we are only about 120 years into it's widespread deployment. We may be seeing the seeds of a mental skill/vs technology split. But for now the only technical assists are for those using the mental skill.

Lachlan M

i would think telepathy is instantaneous- via quantum coupling

(Me)

A very good way of putting that.

Lachlan M

but maybe in your world they haven't studied quantum yet so the effects would seem as magic

(Me)

YES!

Dave D

Some sort of quantum entangled pair of magic crystals, using Morse Code.

(Me)

Prehaps thats what the use for the electronic form of telepathy. For machine-to-machine comms.

Peter J.W.

Quantum entanglement obviously: spooky action at a distance.

(Me)

PI have to give it another name, or people start thinking I'm trying to bamboozle them with psuedoscience.

Peter J.W.

old Albert did have a way of reducing a complex idea to a simple phrase.

Joe M

Oh yeah that dimension is pretty cool I've been there too.

Jace G

Why limit telepathy to the speed of light?

(Me)

Agreed. It's magic, operating in rules outside of objective reality

Tabi H

Nothing faster than the speed of thought..I don't think 😅

(Me)

Except bad news, which obeys it's own special laws

Ben R

If telepathy is a thing then the speed of light doesn’t have to be.

(Me)

The loophole I was going to introduce is that the psychic connection is somewhere in a plane of reality where space doesn't exist, so all point exist in the same "point" simultaneously. Or... at least that is what they could sensibly discern from the pioneers in the field who all ended up quite insane

Ben R

nice flip. As ‘underlying fabrics’ go it’s a cool one.

Walton H

If WWII never happened then rockets may not have happened as it was WWII weapons that was fore runner for them.

(ME)

Actually rocket fundamentals were developed in the 1920s and 1930s. The reasons the Nazis could develop the V2 was because the only problems left to solve were "how do we turn this into a weapon." The real quantum leap in rocket science was the Aggregat 1, in 1933. The V4 was the Aggregat 4.

Aggregat Rocket Family]

Walton H

thats quite interesting but in order to remove WWII we have to remove Hitler and the nazi party from Germany and that would go back to cover quite a lot of this and the majority of fund for it.

(Me)

Well the problem with that theory is that Nazis actually shortchanged the project, quite a bit. Left to his own device, Von Braun would have been working on an interplanetary rocket. He actually had to un-develop his project by quite a bit to turn it into a ballistic missile. So all I need is a rich German eccentric who is Von Braun's patron, with the promise that the moon is basically free real-estate with no environmental regulations.

And given that most civilized places on Earth are under all sorts of environmental regulations, and in the midst of a cleanup from the Magical and Radiological pollution caused by "The Great War", your Henry Fords and Howard Hughes will be clamoring for some sort of Liberatarian paradise where they can be pollute/range test/etc to their heart's content. They just need a reasonably cheap delivery vehicle to get stuff from the Earth to the Moon. Which the plot can magically provide.

Walton H

quite likely given your scenario.

So rockets powered by magic rather than anything else would be logical.

Walton H

Although if telepathy was restricted to the few an alternative is very likely to have arisen

(Me)

Agreed. Plus can you imagine what sort of crazy stuff would be broadcast on their News Network?

"In tonights news: Researchers in Switzerland have the strongest proof yet that a parallel universe exists beside our own. At the teleport hub, an investigation into a missing sandwich has, literally, opened a whole new door into our understanding of reality..."

Or perhaps that actually happened..

Link to an acecdote of the LHC being shut down due to a misplaced bagette

Walton H

oh yes. That could be amazing.

Or the accidentally duplication of legs in a teleportation incident

(Me)

"I teleported home one night with Ron and Sid and Meg. Ron stole Meggie's heart away. And I got Sidney's leg"

(Me)

Teleportation. One of those Magic's that yes, it works, but it has so many side effects that nobody sane or not trying to escape from an exploding spacecraft would EVER use it.


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