Civilization101Blueprint

Tier 6 — Logic

This is where the ladder stops being climbable by a determined group and starts requiring a supply chain of thousands of specialised firms. A vacuum-tube computer is within reach of a small industrial society. An integrated circuit is not.

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6
Logic
Electronic and computing Year 90 – Year 170 ≥ 500,000+ people

Make matter that computes. Stop paying for every copy of a thing you know.

Energy used: about 230,000 kcal per person per day, Cook's technological stage (AD 1970) · where civilization stands

Binding constraint. The binding constraint is purity and cleanliness, not cleverness. Semiconductor silicon must be 99.9999999% pure — nine nines — and worked in air cleaner than an operating theatre. Every step is understood; none is achievable by a workshop. This tier cannot be reached by a village, however skilled, and that is the honest answer.
A valve radio. Amplification and switching, before anything was solid state.
t6-electronics
Electronics: amplification and switching
Control a large current with a small one.
Computing Guide ×4Sheet
An integrated circuit die. Thousands of switches printed at once instead of assembled.
t6-semiconductor
Semiconductors
Make matter with controllable conductivity — the hardest thing on this site.
Computing Guide Nine-nines purity; sub-micron features
The Atanasoff–Berry Computer. Calculation that follows a stored rule rather than a hand.
t6-computing
Computing
Automate reasoning that is mechanical.
Computing Guide ×4
A data centre. Machines that are only worth this much because they are connected.
t6-network
Networks
Let every store of knowledge reach every person.
Computing Guide
A cutaway turbofan on display, 2018: fan, compressor, combustor and turbine in one long casing.
t6-jets
Jets, helicopters and air traffic control
Understand the gas turbine, the pressurised cabin, the helicopter and the air traffic system that let aircraft fly high, fast and safely in crowded skies.
Transport GuideSheet ×9
A replica of Hollerith's tabulator, built for the United States census of 1890: each punched card closed circuits through the press at right, and each dial counted one category.
t6-accountability
Audit, statistics and the published number
Give the public numbers it can trust about what government spends and achieves, produced and checked by offices the government cannot instruct.
Society Guide ×2
Combine-harvesting wheat in Punjab, India, in April 2023: the short, stiff-strawed wheat of the Green Revolution, grown with fertilizer and irrigation from wells.
t6-greenrev
High-yield varieties, and the Green Revolution's bill
Breed and supply short-strawed, high-yielding cereal varieties with the fertilizer and water they need, and pay their known costs up front: metered groundwater, no highly hazardous pesticides, a gene bank for the varieties they replace, and nutrients bred back into the staples.
Food Guide ×2Sheet