Cultural Factors

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Cultural Factors

Culture and Society > Cultural Factors

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The major factors involved in Terragen Culture.

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Asymptote System - Text by Anders Sandberg
A place where many species converge. Usually trading and network nexuses, and generally core systems for a Cooperative Venture.
Citizens (Zars) - Text by M. Alan Kazlev with additional note by Steve Bowers
Citizens, or zars, are sophonts who have some say in the running of their environment and polity. "Zar" is the Anglic name for this concept.
Emergence of Empires in the Terragen Sphere - Text by Anders Sandberg; updated by Steve Bowers 26 March 2009
The dominant factors influencing the growth of interstellar empires in the Terragen Sphere.
Environment - Text by M. Alan Kazlev
[1] The physical or virtual surroundings in which sentient beings live; The air, water, organisms, minerals, and other external objects that surround and affect an organism.
[2] From the perspective of any system, rest of the world or universe.
[3] Any precious biosphere, especially a garden world.
Eugenics - Text by Tony Jones
Some transapients attempt to shape species using selective breeding.
Extinction Event - Text by M. Alan Kazlev
Extinction of a lesser or greater number of biological or alife species, usually as a result of environmental trauma, deliberate extermination or assimilation (e.g. by a blight or swarm) or inability to compete with rival organisms.
Fads and Fashions - Text by M. Alan Kazlev
Every society knows its fads and fashions; since the dawn of mass communications during the late Industrial Age, such fashions have influenced many millions of persons at a time, and in a few cases today such fashions spread to suitable societies via the wormhole network to blanket the entire Terragen Sphere.
God Dwellers - Text by M. Alan Kazlev
Sentient to transapient entities who live inside the structures of archailects.
Human Appreciation Festivals - Text by Stephen Inniss and James Rogers
A celebration of Homo sapiens as a whole, for all that species' achievements and as the ultimate origin of all Terragen mindkind.
Industrialization - Text by Stephen Inniss, after the original by M. Alan Kazlev
The development of a manufacturing sector in a region's socioeconomy. The actual effects of industrialization vary dramatically according to the level and the type of the technologies employed and according to the local culture's prior experience with managing those technologies.
Novelty Node - Text by Stephen Inniss
In memetics, a region or time of particular memetic influence, one that generates new concepts, philosophies and fashions that influence a broad region and may have effects lasting for decades, centuries, or even millennia. A number of such nodes have been or are presently active within the Terragen sphere. Some of these are associated with full-blown Renaissance Events.
Paradigm - Text by M. Alan Kazlev
[1] A pattern, model, or general approach to solving a problem.
[2] A memetically entrenched way of looking at things.
[3] Short for the Efficiency Maximization Paradigm.
Paranoid, Paranoids - Text by M. Alan Kazlev
Generic term for individuals, subcultures, or communities who have adopted the meme that the SI:1 and higher intelligences wish to coldly dominate, manipulate, and/or exterminate S<1 sophonts, and that salvation lies through establishing hider communities, through high level cryptography, or through setting up communities or civilizations beyond the reach of of the archai.
Polity - Text by M. Alan Kazlev
An organized society; a state or quasistate; any form of politico-social organization.
Pop Culture - Text by Anders Sandberg and M. Alan Kazlev
The accretion of fads and fluff that has built up over the millennia - ever changing in details, ever constant in fundamentals. Although most pop-culture is S<1, there is also a rich tradition of transingularity pop-culture.
Redux Strategy, The - Text by David Jackson
A fall-back position in case of the collapse of civilization.
Renaissance Event - Text by Stephen Inniss
A flowering of artistic creativity, scientific discovery, technology and trade, together with some significant changes in the operation of personal culture, and a political ferment. There is typically a "rediscovery" of some older cultural models and information or an influx of new foreign ideas, or both, and usually an upsurge in local population. A renaissance event often sets the pattern for future cultural development in ages to follow.
Significant Cultural Impacts in the Terragen Sphere - Text by Stephen Inniss
Some of the most important events which have had a significant impact on the Terragen Sphere.
Thanatology - Text by Steve Bowers
The study of life and death as experienced in the Sephirotic Empires.
Translation and Language Cladization - Text by Anders Sandberg
Instead of unity and a single tongue, there was a great cladization of languages during the First Federation era. This is because the different habitats got together and could hardly understand each other, and AI was now so cheap that everybody could afford translator devices. So instead of forcing linguistic convergence (although some did their best to make a common language), a lot of clades diverged further protected from outside influences in cocoons of translation.
Translation Metamorphosis - Text by Tony Jones
A problem that can arise when virch entities move from one virch environment to another is that there are beings which will be so altered by the translation that they are effectively utterly different beings in the two different virches.
Wormholes - Cultural Factors - Text by Anders Sandberg; additions by Todd Drashner and Stephen Inniss
The addition of a wormhole stargate to a system has multiple effects both on local culture and on Terragen culture generally.