THE NAIGAJE
The Evolution of Reptilian Tech: From Library Interfaces to Pitch-Shifting Foot Pedals
In this recollection, the narrator—a “white scale” member of a long-lived reptilian species—describes the unique and often cumbersome technological evolution of their society’s version of the internet. Unlike humanity’s ARPANET origins, their network began as a direct home-access system for libraries, which was later modified by hobbyists to create games before personal computers, keyboards, or mice even existed. Because their written language is logographic and akin to Chinese, early input methods ranged from a tic-tac-toe-like board operated with rods to a highly complex 300-key keyboard. During their “Steam Punk” era—a lifestyle some factions still choose to live in, comparable to human Amish communities—they utilized a foot pedal similar to a guitar whammy bar to shift audio pitches to match their bird-like vocal clicks. Ultimately, the speaker contextualizes their culture as a Shogunate meritocracy resembling the Brotherhood of Steel from the Fallout franchise, where technology is highly controlled rather than driven by ubiquitous market forces.
THE NAIGAJE
The Evolution of Reptilian Tech: From Library Interfaces to Pitch-Shifting Foot Pedals
In this recollection, the narrator—a “white scale” member of a long-lived reptilian species—describes the unique and often cumbersome technological evolution of their society’s version of the internet. Unlike humanity’s ARPANET origins, their network began as a direct home-access system for libraries, which was later modified by hobbyists to create games before personal computers, keyboards, or mice even existed. Because their written language is logographic and akin to Chinese, early input methods ranged from a tic-tac-toe-like board operated with rods to a highly complex 300-key keyboard. During their “Steam Punk” era—a lifestyle some factions still choose to live in, comparable to human Amish communities—they utilized a foot pedal similar to a guitar whammy bar to shift audio pitches to match their bird-like vocal clicks. Ultimately, the speaker contextualizes their culture as a Shogunate meritocracy resembling the Brotherhood of Steel from the Fallout franchise, where technology is highly controlled rather than driven by ubiquitous market forces.
Image: ARPANET logical map circa 1977 (Photo by The Computer History Museum via Wikimedia Commons)
Source: RD (via GT), "Put your questions here so Reptiliandude can find them!" r/reptiliandude, Reddit, (28 June 2017) https://www.reddit.com/r/reptiliandude/comments/6jvn4t/put_your_questions_here_so_reptiliandude_can_find/
Reptiliandude: Our ‘internet’ started out as a way to access libraries directly through our homes.
We didn’t have an ARPANET sort of route as you did.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARPANET
We didn’t even have personal computers till some hobbyists took apart the home access interfaces and started messing around with them to create games.
We had no such thing as a computer mouse or a keyboard, either.
We had a track like a glorified tic-tac-toe board with squares and circles that we used rods to create our logographic characters.
😂
That was a long long time ago.
After that we invented an input device with an expansion of about three hundred ‘keys,’ that was just as bad.
Again, our written language is more akin to Chinese, so we had quite the problem back then.
I said it was three hundred because some of the keys did double duty as a way to make concise ‘verb’ conjugations.
We’ve come a long way since then.
To elaborate on this cumbersome device would be embarrassing to any of my species. But, since I am without shame, I’ll continue. We actually had something akin to your Morse Code back in our own Steam Punk days (a period of time which many of us are still relegated to, by the way) which involved a foot pedal much like the whammy pitch shifting device I use when playing guitar.
It would shift the pitch of the tonal sounds we would send through the wires. Since some of our ‘words’ are more like birds talking and clicking, this was necessary to eliminate confusion.
The simplest way to put this would be if I could explain our society to someone who played the Fallout franchise.
Picture a Shogunate meritocracy run by something akin to the Brotherhood of Steel.
Technology controlled exclusively by market forces and scientists doing things just because they can isn’t as ubiquitous in our society as it is among your own.
I came from that ‘relegated’ class.
Hence the surprise of a ‘white scale’ being born among my own.
Try and understand that we live much longer lives than you do, so division of our meritocracy into ‘chronicled classes’ encourages self-determination and an appreciation and respect for our past.
Some of us actually prefer simpler and less ‘intrusive’ existences.
You yourselves have something akin to it with your ‘Amish’ who enjoy their own conceptions of what constitutes ‘liberty…’
My choice of the word ‘relegated’ was perhaps, not the best descriptive.
