Here's an idea. "Fallout"
suggests that the transistor
is a symbol for peace.
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If your last couple months
have been anything like mine,
you have spent hundreds
of hours wondering
the blighted, irradiated
wasteland that is Boston.
Oh, no.
I mean fictional,
alternate universe Boston
from "Fallout 4."
Not actual Boston.
Actual Boston's
very beautiful, not
at all a kill or be killed,
fight for survival--
I guess unless you're holding
up the line at the Dunkin'
Donuts during Monday
morning rush hour.
Anyway, published by
Bethesda, "Fallout 4"
is the eighth "Fallout"
game since the series'
start in 1997.
And they all follow
a similar theme
based on an alternate
universe history where things
so poorly for civilization.
ANNOUNCER (IN GAME):
Confirmed reports
of nuclear detonations in
New York and Pennsylvania.
MAN (IN GAME): We need
to get to the vault. Now!
MIKE RUGNETTA: In the
"Fallout" universe,
the Resource Wars
begin in the year 2051.
They're a series of bombings,
wars, and forceful annexations
that occur as a result
of dwindling supplies.
Most importantly,
petroleum and uranium.
Where in our world, we abandoned
our nuclear-powered hopes
and dreams, eventually focusing
on computers and electronics,
in "Fallout," the atom and the
great material costs associated
with harnessing
it reigns supreme.
The conclusion of the Resource
Wars comes on October 23, 2077
with the Great War, a two
hour nuclear missile exchange
between every
nuclear-capable nation, which
leaves the world in ruins.
As the bombs are falling,
a very few, very lucky
people are ushered into
underground fallout shelters
called vaults.
In the game, players take the
role of various vault dwellers
and travelers
exploring the wasteland
to see what of pre-war society
has remained or been rebuilt.
I will be the first
person to tell you
that wandering around
in the post-apocalypse,
collecting bobble heads, and
finding cap stashes is a blast.
But I'm also curious
about the pre-apocalypse.
Like, how did the "Fallout"
universe gets to a point
where the Resource
Wars were unavoidable?
The easy answer is
"Fallout's" writers said so.
So perhaps a more
interesting question
is to ask, if
"Fallout" suggests,
how we didn't end up in such
a post-apocalyptic scenario.
I think it does, and I
think the answer it provides
has something to do
with transistors,
a fundamental building
block of modern electronics.
Integrated circuits
specifically, and therefore,
computers.
The long answer involves a
lot of history, both alternate
and actual.
So to talk about
that stuff, we're
going to go somewhere less
stately and a little more
powerful.
In this universe,
in our universe,
we had a brief
radioactive love affair.
From the 1940s to the
1960s, we experienced
something called the
Atomic Age, where
the development of
nuclear technology
led to a widespread infatuation
with all things atomic.
Radioactive material was going
to solve the energy crisis,
make water and food cleaner
and more nutritious.
It was going to bring us to
space and cure all disease.
MAN: [INAUDIBLE] uses the
most advanced techniques,
including atomic science
to work wonders with oil.
But after the destruction
of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
and in light of growing
skepticism regarding
the safety of nuclear
power, our atomic tryst
ended up having a
brief half life.
In the US alone, there are
over 100 nuclear power plants,
many of them decommissioned.
This is the Three Mile Island
Nuclear Generating Station,
which is still in operation.
And in 1979, it was the site
of the worst nuclear accident
to occur on US soil.
It was one event in a string
of many that would end up
stigmatizing nuclear power.
By the late 1970s, nuclear
had become inextricably linked
with annihilation in
the minds of the public,
and so our atomic
age came and went,
leaving behind only a few
remnants, one significant one
being its design.
The industrial design
of the Atomic Age
expressed atomic fascination as
well as a timely preoccupation
with space via a kind of
streamlined, chrome-plated
futurism.
Glossy and massive,
rounded, gigantic TV sets,
giant land yacht automobiles
with fins, wings, and domes,
bright colors,
obnoxious curvature,
and abstract organic
forms contribute
to an ostentatious
Jetsonian futurism.
Except we never got that future,
and no longer really desire it.
Our demands are for hover
boards, network access,
and artificial intelligence,
not nuclear-powered cars,
irradiated super
foods, and plastic pals
who are fun to be with.
It's a future
imagined in the past,
and so it becomes
a retro future.
What "Fallout" depicts
is a retro future future.
It depicts what we previously
considered futuristic,
and gives it a full
historical progression,
along with a full complement
of failures and shortcomings.
It's a non-romantic rendering
of some potential outcomes given
how we thought now
might look then.
The US may still produce 33%
of the world's nuclear energy,
but culturally, we've abandoned
our atomic hopes and dreams.
"Fallout's" scientists,
engineers, and governments,
on the other hand, stuck
sometimes quite literally
to their atomic guns.
They doggedly pursued
nuclear technology
as the harbinger of progress.
And the game shows what
some potential outcomes
of that process might be.
At the start of the Great
War, nuclear reactors
are found in homes
and automobiles.
They power advanced
machinery and inform
the base-level
functioning of society,
much in the same way
computer chips do in ours.
The atom is to the
"Fallout" universe
what the electron is to ours.
"Fallout" lets players
look nostalgically
at both a past and a future
that we'll never have.
Unlike "Shadowrun,"
it's not a warning
of what we could become.
And unlike, "Star
Trek," it's not
some hopeful imagining of a
post-scarcity civilization.
"Fallout" provides a view
back but then forward again
to some distant point
of critical divergence,
and then its outcome.
WOMAN (IN GAME): Oh, my God.
Which may lead one to ask why.
Why imagine a future based on
something that we didn't do?
Besides the fact it looks cool.
Which may very well
be the central reason,
but I think we can
also find encouragement
to understand how and
why we didn't end up
in the "Fallout" universe.
If we can understand
what "Fallout" suggests
that point of critical
divergence was,
we may be able to find
deep within the differences
between our world and its world,
insight into the right choices
to make if we're ever faced
with such a point again.
And there are few differences
between the electron future
and the atomic
future as significant
as the number, role, and
capability of computers.
In the "Fallout"
universe, wandering
around the wastelands,
there are none of these
and an abundance of these.
Well, I mean, not this one
specifically, but similar
computers.
This is the NEAC 2203,
first sold by NEC in 1959.
It's hard to compare
processor speeds,
but basically, the 2203 could
perform 4,000 fixed point
add operations per second.
A modern i7 processor can
perform over 200,000 million
instructions a second, within
a much more sophisticated
architecture.
Basically, to
equal one of these,
we would need acres of these.
We're able to fit so much junk
inside such a tiny computer
trunk, thanks in
part to the shrinking
size of the transistor,
the basic building
block of modern CPUs.
The more transistors, the
more computational operations
you can do more quickly,
which means the better
your computer is at computing.
Older computers were large
because the technology
required them to be so.
The 2203, which was one of
the first ever transistorized
computers, has 1,338 transistors
for its main processor,
and 1,241 for its
tape controller.
And they are massive.
Modern computers have
billions of transistors,
and we can fit 30
million of them
in an area of the
size of a pinhead.
To give you a visual
sense of this,
we have these three
transistor wafers.
In the manufacturing
process, sections
are cut from wafers like these
and are packaged into CPUs.
These wafers are from
the '80s to the mid '90s,
and you can plainly see the
decreasing size and increasing
density of the technology.
This is a progression
that is largely
absent from the
"Fallout" universe.
The creators of "Fallout"
imply that a commitment
to atomic tech
displaced development
of other technology, most
noticeably, the transistor.
For the most part,
"Fallout's" computers
are giant,
unsophisticated, or both.
The wager seems to be that a
preoccupation with reactors,
robots, and ray guns may have
meant a lack of development
for other important, perhaps
more compact technologies.
This is a great though
quietly made statement
within the "Fallout" universe.
The vast majority of
its technology is huge.
Cue the guy.
Huge!
Because the transistor,
rather than the atomic reactor,
became the linchpin of cutting
edge technology in our world,
we ended up engaged in
a still ongoing pursuit
of miniaturization.
Because of the transistor
and it's shrinking size,
our technology is
always getting smaller.
This is something
that's nearly impossible
to do with nuclear
powered technology.
In our universe, nuclear
tech was and still
is big for practical reasons,
mostly related to safety.
Radioactive material gives
off, well, radiation.
It radiates.
It has to be shielded and
cooled if it's to be safe enough
for people to be around.
And even low emission systems
give off heat, and lots of it.
And you'd need, in square
footage, oodles of it
to power anything, but
especially, say, a Buick.
WOMAN (IN COMMERCIAL):
It would certainly
be this beautiful,
big Buick sedan.
Our physicists never
solved this problem,
but "Fallout's" somehow did.
They developed
micro fusion cells
and car-sized nuclear reactors,
fusion-fueled electric motors,
and even yes, the
occasional Android.
But by and large, at least
before the apocalypse,
it all remained big,
bulky, heavy, and awkward.
Due, in no small part,
I'm sure, to the size
of their transistors, but also
the material costs associated
with cooling,
carrying, shielding,
and housing radioactive
material that
would have to be around meaty,
vulnerable human bodies.
Lead, steel, petroleum products,
plastics in everything.
There's a great
future in plastics.
Is it such a stretch
then to imagine
this very fact exacerbates
if it didn't cause
the global resource-related
tensions and eventual world
war that led to the apocalypse?
It's never stated
explicitly, so this
gets us pretty solidly
into fan theory territory.
So it may be more
useful and interesting
for us to ask how and why we
didn't end up annihilated.
I mean, our Cold War
was 50 years long.
Destruction was
mutually assured.
The Cuban Missile Crisis had
our real and actual civilization
on the brink of annihilation.
How is each and every one
of us not a vault dweller?
I think "Fallout" suggests
one potential reason is
the transistor and
its development.
The transistor isn't
at all the solution
to any and every conflict
or resource problem.
Our own world has resource
shortages and labor conditions
of those making technology,
which uses transistors
is notoriously, nearly
apocalyptic itself.
What I wonder, though,
is if "Fallout"
implies a potential
for the transistor
to unite where nuclear
pursuits divide it.
After all, nuclear fusion,
which fuels nuclear power,
is the splitting of atoms apart,
while the transistor joins
streams of electrons together.
Poetically at least,
it packs a lot
of power in a relatively
small package.
We should be clear, though.
Transistors, computers,
and even the internet
are just as much technologies
of separation of the ring
and combat as nuclear weapons.
Except, I mean, for
the fact a computer
isn't a literal weapon.
Unless it is.
But you're picking up
what I'm putting down.
The genealogy of all
of this technology,
like so much technology, leads
us inexorably back to war.
War never changes because
human beings never change.
It's not that as
history progresses,
even if our technology improves,
combat always looks similar.
It's that no matter
the universe--
"Fallout," "Call of
Duty," "Mass Effect,"
or actual-- no matter
the setting or history,
if people are present,
so is this type of war.
But in "Fallout's" suggestion
that the transistor,
due perhaps in part to its
ongoing miniaturization,
its imagined comparatively
minuscule resource strain
may have ameliorated the effects
of some global nuclear power
strain leading to
the apocalypse,
we may find some
hope and instruction.
Transistorized electronics
have been about many things.
Status, power and
prestige, sure.
But also increasingly
the enabling of
communication, community,
experience, expression, even
revolution.
The metaphorical coming
together of the transistor
isn't, I don't think, a
solution by any means.
But perhaps, "Fallout" tells
us, it's a good suggestion.
What do you guys think?
Does "Fallout" somehow
suggest that the transistor
is a kind of symbol for
peace or coming together?
At least as far as it's
compared to nuclear technology?
Let us know in the comments, and
I will respond to some of them
in next week's comment
response video.
In this week's comment
response video,
we talk about your thoughts
regarding personality quizzes.
If you want to watch that
one, you can click right here
or find a link in
the doobly-doo.
One quick announcement,
we did finally
record those dice-inspired
short stories,
so those will be
coming out this Friday.
That's in two days.
So keep an eye out on your
sub box and your Twitter
and, you know, just keep
an eye on all the things
that you normally
keep an eye on,
because there's going to be
a video there eventually.
Get hype.
We have a Facebook, an
IRC, and Subreddit links
in the doobly-doo.
And the tweet of the week
comes from Nate Mattias who
wrote a really great comment on
metafilter about psychometrics
that was inspired by
the personality quizzes
episode with lots of great links
to how psychometrics works,
how people think about it,
and sort of related theories.
Really good stuff.
Really interesting.
So thank you, Nate.
This is great.
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Thanks, team.
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