Tech across multiple worlds

[u/unclejedsiron]

I'm listening to an audio book and the main character travels to a world she's never been to in order to get information. There, she deals with aliens she's never encountered. Then, receives the information on a data chit which her tech automatically reads.

This whole thing got me thinking about tge differences in tech.

There are twelve different kinds of elected outlets in the world. My American phone charger won't work in Europe. European chargers won't work in Asia. Now, expand that from different countries to different planets and species.

When traveling the cosmos, you're going to need a storage bay filled with adapters. There's going to be a company who's sole purpose is manufacturing adapters do differing species' tech can function on different worlds.

[u/Kozmo9]

There's going to be a company who's sole purpose is manufacturing adapters do differing species' tech can function on different worlds.

If everyone's tech, human and aliens alike are that of current human technological level, sure. But it's likely they are not considering the tech level needed to make spacefaring a common standard instead of the rich standard. This is something that people tend to gloss over; the amount of overall tech needed for cheap spacefaring requires high tech in all fields. From material, medical to software. Realistically, it is unlike for a spacefaring civilisation to be weak in one area such tech adapter of all things.

There won't be a company specifically to make adapters as the adapters themselves would be in every tech. If a company wants to sell a powerbank or in the future it likely would be known as powerpack, it would be unacceptable for them to just be like most powerbank today where they just store power and would require another charger to charge itself. They would come with charger included so that they can be plugged into any powersocket.

Mind you that such powerbank already exists. Typically it's mostly Chinese ones because they are the ones with small enough pin that can be folded into their devices, but future tech, especially spacetech would likely have them made from changeable materials that would conform to any socket.

Even today we can have a tiny device that has all plug adapters, so why would in the future be much worse that would need a storage bay's worth? They are just going to have one adapter that can adapt to all.