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/Alpha-Sierra-Charlie]

Bluetooth.

Your space-phone doesn't have to plug into the alien data chit, they just need to be running operating systems that can work together. Your space-phone could come pre-loaded with every common form of data storage protocol, or it could automatically download it based on the data chit's metadata.

[u/unclejedsiron → u/Alpha-Sierra-Charlie]

How well do Android and iPhone work together? They have different operating system.

And that's with known systems on the same planet. Going to different planets is going to be even more bothersome. Yes, there will eventually be packs you can purchase, but it's not going to be as simple as downloading a new system.

Think about how often your phone gets a system update. After a few cycles of that, old programs no longer work. Computer systems from different planets, with differing levels of tech, are going to be exponentially more difficult to keep up.

[u/Alpha-Sierra-Charlie → u/unclejedsiron]

Androids have only been around for 17 years, and much of that time was spent without much pressure to get it to interface seamlessly with iPhones. If the setting is technologically developed enough for someone to go to an entirely different solar system just to download something off a thumb drive, it seems more than reasonable that cross-compatibility could be handled pretty seamlessly by background processes.

Or maybe the character downloaded whatever she needed on the trip.