Alicornutopia

I think they'd get progressively less helpful at some point. Individual people know less and less of the technological frontier in greater and greater depth. If I overestimate my own ability, I know as much information about building stuff as the character does. Unfortunately, that knowledge is about software; I don't have a clue how to make even a vacuum tube.

I actually took a comp sci class that went pretty low-level. Given a way to build circuits, and enough time and brain and paper to reinvent and double-check everything I learned, I could bring computers to a world that didn't start with any. "A way to build circuits" is the tricky part, my knowledge there is much more vague, but if I managed to convince a smart mechanically-minded local that I wasn't insane, I'd be set. Or at least a hypothetical version of me who had energy levels to speak of would be set.

I remember enough from The Way Things Work that I know what you're trying to do to make silicon circuits. But I'm nowhere near good enough at chemistry to actually make them.

I don't need silicon circuits to start with, anyway, I just need any way to connect up logic gates. And I guess I'd also need switches and lightbulbs and stuff, for input and output.

I could wire together a computer given vacuum tubes and time.

I should probably get around to actually reading The Knowledge.

I wouldn't even have the first idea about what to make logic gates from other than the silicon way. Vacuum tubes exist, but, like, you have to create a vacuum? And then something electronic goes in it probably? I might be able to work out how to make a Babaggian difference engine, if I could work out a NAND gate I could go from there, I think.

Unrelated: I am rereading League and

"The pegs are not the point," growls Miles. "The point is victory."

I love Mileses so much.

Yeah there are some big question marks in my understanding of how to build a computer from scratch, but they're the kind of thing I suspect I could work around if I had an inventive friend with a more functional brain to help.

Also: :D

Part of why I would need the time in addition to the vacuum tubes is because I would need to figure out how to connect them into gates. I have seen this information, I know it’s simple, I know I could rediscover it, but I have forgotten it and would need to actually rediscover it.

Yes, Mileses is are great. My favorite line in League might be from Aurim, though. It’s the one the second main thread is named after:

"So when he gets in a particularly prolonged mood sometimes I have to defenestrate him," says Aurin, "why do you have a word for that."

That is also a good bit. Honestly, if I could pick any magical power from any of glowfic, except minting, I would be tempted by torching and powergameable things like enchanting, but I don't think I could actually resist the urge to take contagious-form Reform Draconic.

I’m not convinced I would actually choose minting if it were an option. Minting does not have direct interdimensional uses, and nobody has invented a way to deliberately and reliably get interdimensional magic from things that minting can give. There’s probably some way for enchanting to get you to Milliways, but the closest it actually gets is Shell Bell’s aura (which you can’t be sure you’d get).

If you could hex ialdae, then you could use the ialdae for interdimensonal travel. Given that the standard means of getting it is floating, though, ialdae probably isn’t hexable.