How much computer lingo or babble is important in a story?

[Mirage]

I try to glance at every stories that comes here and some are great, some are just not my thing. That's okay. Everyone is different here.

Something I realise, the ones that reallly manage to NOT get my interest, is when a story has a high percentage of the dialec contribute to computer gibberish, technical lingo or I am almost reading a technical manual for a computer. When the gynoids or other characters spend a majority of the story booting up and getting repaires or transformed, or malfunctionning and giving TONS of realistic details about it.

I just wonder, how important is this to people here? Is this a very high point of a story is for you, how realistic the computer technical aspect is makes the story more interesting for you?

I think of myself, more of a story teller than a writer, I think. God knows I need a full time editor (L).

Please don't see this as a negative aspect, I am just curious, as I know I am lite in this subject in my own stories. My knowlegde of teck lingo is very limited compare to the many writers here.

What do you think?

Mirage

[King Snarf]

I love it. Nothing better than seeing a beautiful woman say, "Initiating orgasm sequence." Rrrrraawwr!

[--NightBattery--]

As long is plot related or sounds kinky i love it.
but if it is some complex name of some never showing inner device that is not part of the sexy and also sounds unconvincing, meh.

[Grendizer]

As a matter of craft, it's boilerplate to always bend whatever you are doing to the purpose of the story. That is why when you write you should have a theme in mind, because it keeps things focused and moving in the same direction. The more problematic issue is one of proportion, which is at the heart of the question here: how much is too much? You have to play that by ear, but when it is happening it needs to describe something the story needs described in order to move forward at that moment. It is related to a problem all scifi confronts: the inglorious infodump, sometimes called an expository lump. It's often not totally unavoidable, but you have to give it in bight-sized chunks, rather than all at once.

[darkbutflashy]

I love to have technical descriptions of what's going on, but not to the extent of "babble". Babble is when it gets tedious - mostly it's not the amount of technical info but the inaccuracy paired with the amount. I have to skip it to stay calm and in the usual story of that kind, I have to skip until "THE END" in the process. This makes me sad, but I cannot feed these things to my mind. Sorry.

In the same category is the repetition of the whole arsenal of "common knowledge" about robots in a story. A plea to Random. J. Writer: this is "common knowlegde", so you don't have to prove you know it by exercising it. This isn't a test. It is your unique story. So write about things that are unique!. Don't hesitate to throw away 90% of the stuff you wrote to distill the 10% which is pure gold. I doubt any boot sequence et al. would survive that process.

As a writer, I have to admit I have big problems following those rules myself. That's one reason I have this little output.

[WilloWisp]

By its nature, our fetish is a technical one. Part of the allure comes from convincing the audience that the character in question is actually a machine, and not simply a person behaving in a robotic manner. Some technical language is practically a requirement.

Writers dislike becoming clichéd. Without a solid technical background, a writer will likely either re-use the same general descriptions over and over ("...a maze of circuitry..." seems to show up a lot), or have to make up their own technobabble.

There's no fixed rule for this - some of my favorite stories here don't even have open panels, but instead concentrate on the mind of the machine, so-to-speak. We're an existential lot, and our fetish isn't just about sexual machinery.

[darkbutflashy]

the same general descriptions over and over ("...a maze of circuitry..." seems to show up a lot)

That's another thing I spot often: the focus on electronics. But a robot is mostly mechanics, when you open a panel, you won't see much wires, but more likely nuts and bolts, bearings and servos. Cables are rare, even if the thing has purely electrical drive (unlikely). Circuit boards are another thing which is rare. Think of your smartphone. It's tiiinnnnyyyy and it's a full-fledged computer. The only electronics thing really taking up space are heatsinks.

EDIT: I like to refer to biology. We are autonomous moving beings, and most of our body is digestive system, second is drivetrain and only a small part is nervous system. A robot would certainly have to follow that scheme because nature had more time and options to try out different designs and the ones observed are most likely the best ones available for the given environments.

[jolshefsky]

In general, I'm for technobabble, but I'm trying to figure out the fine line that ruins my suspension of disbelief ... I know it has something to do with my own expertise in electronics and computers.

One example is in Class of 1999 where one of the robot teachers proudly announces "one megabyte" or something – a number that sounds really exciting on paper if you never heard the word, but is a pathetically small amount of memory. In fact, I'm put off by any announcement of any specific quantity (memory, processor speed, number of cores) or any specific technology (nanobot, quantum computer). That said, I'm okay with fictional terms like "positronic brain" because it doesn't refer to anything in the real world. I'm also okay with quasi-modular descriptions like "sex module" or "sexual system" even though it would probably not be the way one would design an android. Perhaps modularization that mimics biology is the key.

In this particular forum, I might not be alone that it's really the technobabble that make stories erotic to me. Kissing, licking, and fucking are okay and that sort-of turns me on, but plastic, programs, and interfaces really do.

[WilloWisp]

A certain amount of license has to be taken with the electronics and internal workings.

At the same time, if someone talks about reprogramming a resistor, or boosting the processing power of a solenoid, I'm going to find it extremely difficult to enjoy the story. Authors should have at least a basic grasp of the technology they describe. Otherwise you get things like "download more RAM."

[darkbutflashy]

Kishin, I'm not into talking down someone. That's why I don't give more specific examples, authors usually know about the corpses in their assets. Looking at those things with scrutinity is how progress is made and authors should do it. And I don't think one has to have an engineer's degree to see that robotics is mostly mechanics. Looking at the innards of some real robots is sufficient. In contrary, I'm pretty sure the focus on electronics and circuit boards is heavily driven by pictures implanted by Westworld, Bionic Woman and other Hollywood movies and series from the 1970/80ies. Anytime I recognize that meme, I feel like I'm reading the script of a new Austin Powers movie.


About Asimov's "Positronic Brain": he did it on purpose as he admitted in 1994, because positrons had been exotic back then and he wanted the futuristic flair.

[--NightBattery--]

I love to have technical descriptions of what's going on, but not to the extent of "babble". Babble is when it gets tedious - mostly it's not the amount of technical info but the inaccuracy paired with the amount. I have to skip it to stay calm and in the usual story of that kind, I have to skip until "THE END" in the process. This makes me sad, but I cannot feed these things to my mind. Sorry.

you should make a Fw article about the mechanical data of battlemachine ayako one day. a lot of people would feel awe of it. and im not being indulgent about it.

[darkbutflashy]

Argh, shhh. I really have to get back to that story... Talking of it, that will be uncovered along the storyline, in very very small doses. Like recommended by others here.

[darkbutflashy]

who cares if its accurate?

Mirage and some of the others here do. His specific question was about technobabble, and the answer here was along "Use it as a spice. Leave out anything that may disturb the reader (e.g. blatant inaccuracies)."

I don't want to write about mechanical components and cables. I dont want to read about it either. Sure its probably realistic and accurate, but its about as sexually interesting as describing the inside of a pocketwatch.

But electronics is ok? I mean, from outside view electronics is just another mechanical component. The only thing which makes it different is something *you can't see*, the currents flowing. You couldn't see hydrolic fluids in a tube either. And if it's the AI that counts, I don't see how an accurate mechanical description (or leaving out any description at all) hurts. Or is there some sub-fetish about circuit boards which just doesn't apply to anything else? I don't have a grasp of it...

And yeah, I admit: I'm fascinated by mechanical works, though my profession is mostly electronics. Or maybe because of? Nah, I'm just into futuristic badass babes. Lindsay Wagner was hot back then

There are a lot of liberties authors take with these things, for example the faceplate. We all know its not viable. We all know its most likely not how androids are going to be developed. But since a lot of us grew up on or have watched things like the fembots or Westworld, its what stimulates us.

Well, ok. But that wasn't my point. I tried to say writing about fembots the way they have been depicted elsewhere 40 years ago isn't exactly new. It will always feel to me like a reminescence to these "good ol' tymes" which kills all the erotic feeling for me. Too cozy.


EDIT: By the way: I fully agree on "nanites" and their magic abilities. Avoid at all cost.

[darkbutflashy]

Aww see I dont get that Dark. You always remember your first blowjob, or the first time you got into a girl's panties.

Well, no. But that's my major dysfunction I think. "Amygdala, please remember the feeling, damnit... Hey, Amygdala, you there? Hmm, gone fishing I presume. Ok, feelings memory is out of order, so see what we can do here... Did she really had a perm wave hairdo? What a mess, all that goo. I had to shampoo the carpet two times to get it out. Next times in the bathroom. Okay, what's the magic in it again?"

Likewise you always remember the first robot picture, film, or story that first got you hard when you viewed it.

I don't remember. Really. I can't even say if it was some series, some movie, some comic or some book. Really. It was just too much. Along with all the other impressions I had back then.

I'm an old guy. I grew up in the time when Bionic Woman, Futureworld and such was NEW.

Same here.

The terminator is a really good example of accurate and ugly. The terminator chassis is probably about 1000 times closer to being accurate on what would be inside a female android then what was in the androids in Bionic Woman, or Westworld. But I think universally most of us would agree that the terminator is ugly, intimidating and totally lacking in any sex appeal at all. And that's what I think authors should avoid.

Don't think so. We (males) consider the terminator ugly because Arnie is a big, ugly, archetypely male goon. And they made the terminator's robot face look like a skull - this is appealing only to people who are into corpses. Take the same mechanical being, give it female curves and decoration (hourglass not needed, tits, ass, lips and cheeks are completely sufficient) and BANG.

This board is about a sexual fetish connected to female robots. Its not a sounding post for the next great scientific authors. Asimov would have been repulsed and disgusted by us. With that in mind, why try to limit ourselves to the confines of realistic mechanics and systems established in the robots of today? Isn't it more stimulating to write what feels appealing to you and your audience, rather than what is real and possible?
And sure if you're fascinated by mechanical works, GO with it! Chances are good that others share your fascination.

You got me wrong. I'm not arguing any story should feature accurate mechnical (or electronical or OS) descriptions. I advocate any author should avoid piles of inaccurate descriptions. Because the people who are into detailed descriptions are likely to skip them because of the inaccuracy and those not into detailed descriptions would skip them anyway. Any author should write what they have knowledge of and vice versa. If you don't have the knowledge, you should get it first; you don't need a degree, just some basic knowledge of things implausible would be nice.

I agree after sorting these out, there is still audience for stories that use those descriptions to trigger the reminescence of old times, disregarding all inaccurracy in the process. MUCH AUDIENCE. And even more stories. It would be nice if more authors would make a difference. Regardless if their stories fall into the SF kind or are plain porn.

[smalk]

Asimov would have been repulsed and disgusted by us.

I disagree. Asimov has never been concerned on the actual workings of an artificial body - he prefereed to investigate the social and ethical implications of an artificial mind. Heck, in half of his robot-related novellas he tries to hack the faults of his own Robotics Three Laws, but I don't remember him complaining on the power being generated by nuclear reactions or steam.

Maybe it would be amused on the discussion of sentimental issue related to an artificial mind presents in much of the stories.

As a PhD student in Robotics I mostly agree with darkbutflashy. Talking about the current state-of-the-art robots there isn't much of wires or electronics inside the panels, mostly mechanical components.

And if you want to get real, I don't think we are going to see a great development of electronic humanoids robots. The IA have been developed in a logic domain that it is simply alien to us humans - as the "reality" domain is simply alien to an IA. You can imagine that for an IA to take a pen on a table is as just as difficult for an human to solve an exponential integration.

My opinion is that in the future the real "robots" in our society will by much more similar to the replicants of Blade Runner or the original robota of Capek - when they will eventually remove the ethical limitations of that area.

[Grendizer]

I disagree about nanotechnology being problematic in this fetish. In fact, I would disagree that any future technology should be absent from this fetish. Whether it makes sense in any given story is a matter of how it's used. It's a tool. Just like technojargon in general, it has to be seen that way, or you get mindless gibberish. Nanotechnology specifically won't seem like magic if it is given proper context and imagery/description.

Anyone who has read Slant or Diamond Age understands what I mean. In Slant, it's the failure of nanotech that is compelling, and in Diamond Age it is its ubiquity. As with anything, the important thing is how you use it. I can be bored with a malfunction or a panel much of the time, since it isn't part of what I like in this fetish -- but equally I have found them compelling in some stories, because of how the author goes about it.

[dale coba]

Add me to the list of nanotech enthusiasts.

Stepford doesn't intend to traumatize our Wives, to rip into their flesh and their psyches.
Nanotech can be silent, autonomous, progressive, painless, and unnoticed even by the target. Those qualities are worth a bit of authorial effort, or the reader's genre-based suspension of disbelief (like spaceships traveling at any speed close to C).

Also, try as I might, I can't convince myself that the technology won't eventually be developed (too soon).

- Dale Coba

[D.Olivaw]

Actually, I'm not sure about the "real robot women wouldn't have a lot of electronics in them" thing. Most modern robots have very minimal and primitive "brains," basically just enough to move around. Given that we don't know how much hardware would be required for all but the lowest-tech fembots we write about, I think its best left up to the author. Some, like (IIRC) Asimo, don't even have the controlling computer on board but communicate with it wirelessly. That's not a terribly realistic solution for fembots (either computer controlled or human controlled like in The Surrogates) because of the bandwidth requirements and the complexity introduced.

That said, I think the mechanical bits are as sexy as the electronics. That's what clockwork stories get at, for instance.

Some of the argumentation in this thread strikes me as being across one of the (many but benign) fracture-planes in our community, specifically the dialogue between DarkButFlashy and Kishin. Basically, some of us like fembots because of associations of sensory and/or situational cues (e.g. sparks, face-offs) with arousal; for others it's the psychological nature of the fembot and those cues, many of them being unrealistic, break suspension of disbelief. For many of us its a mix of these conflicting impulses.

With regards to nanotechnology, it's really a "your mileage may vary" situation. In reality, there are almost intractable thermodynamic problems with making complex (i.e. more than a simple motor or some clockwork) mechanisms on that scale, and more with having them do their work on any timescale faster than days or weeks for even small stuff. Thermodynamic problems are the sort of problems that aren't easy to overcome, if it's even possible in the first place.

That said, there are some ways in which it's no less realistic than many of the sensory cues or situations I mentioned above, and yet I find those sexy and nanotechnology merely interesting (if done well) or annoying (if done poorly). There's such a huge element of subjectivity in any discussion like this that argument cannot serve the purpose of convincing someone, only of more fully revealing the inner workings of our attachment to the ideas swirling around ASFR.

[D.Olivaw]

Oh, and I really doubt Asimov would have been dismayed by us. He would probably think us a bit odd, certainly, but no odder than his friend Arthur C. Clarke who was gay, and for whom he showed no distaste.

[Grendizer]

D.Olivaw,
I don't think the thermodynamic problems in nanotech are intractable. Most of what people object to in nanotech can be overcome by pointing out that nature already does it. That we are communicating at all is existence proof for nanomachines. The chief difference is proposed substrate and design. The physics is there, the engineering is not. That is the job of researchers: to make the two meet in the middle. I'm not claiming it's easy or that it will come quick, but I believe it will come. Maybe sooner than many think. The world is full of surprises. It wasn't that long ago that people couldn't understand how bumblebees could fly -- and yet they do anyway. The same prevails for nanotech. Protein folding is extremely difficult, mysterious even, and yet proteins fold.

[D.Olivaw]

D.Olivaw,
I don't think the thermodynamic problems in nanotech are intractable. Most of what people object to in nanotech can be overcome by pointing out that nature already does it. That we are communicating at all is existence proof for nanomachines.

Hence the "almost"

Think of the time span in which cellular machinery (the extant nanomechanisms in the world) can make/remake things. Days or weeks. Months for big things. I'm not saying it can't or wont be done, but "nanites" of the sort that get thrown around in scifi these days are less likely than heavily re-purposed microorganisms, or some other solution. There are possible applications in ultra high-precision additive manufacturing, but that's something in which taking days to make the parts is acceptable.

[dale coba]

Stargate's Replicators use building blocks. Imagine them assembling into a fembot. "Turning a woman into a robot" with Replicator-style micro building blocks would be a matter of infiltrating and replacing her material, far less difficult than making complex plastics from her organic compounds would be.

- Dale Coba

[darkbutflashy]

That we are communicating at all is existence proof for nanomachines.

The problem with "nanotechnology" in stories are the vague and at the same time exxagerated claims what "nanomachines" do. It's, like written by others, a substitute for "magic". Ok, magic is nice, but I don't expect it in a futuristic setting and if it's magic, it should be named "magic".

I'd love to read believable things about nanomachines, e.g. a special bacteria/substrate/electrical circuit that allows a fabric to change it's colour like a screen or conduct water at selected pores or grew "hairs" where selected. Another believable claim would be "nanomachines" bonding with our nerves, allowing us to attach artificial sensor arrays to our bodies. We are back at my original statement, descriptions should be accurate. If they are short, they should use the right, common words for a thing and if they are long, they should explain what is different from common knowledge with common words.


About the bumblebees: that's a prank some students of aerodynamics expert Ludwig Prandl got into the press in the 1930ies. The important role of turbulences in flight was already well-known in the academic community back then - mostly by Prandtl's studies 20 years ago. But the reporter obviously didn't know what Prandtl had been researching and printed the prank, which became a meme.

[Mirage]

Er.. You will never see nanomachines in my stuff.. well, kinda (did it to inffect and kill humans). As the creation of a gynoid, I am old school, circuits and cables for me.

I don't like also BIO-machines... Look, it's a robot, but made a flesh and blood... IT'S NOT A FREAKING ROBOT.

Just my 2cents. Glad to see my post got the ball rolling.

Mirage

[Grendizer]

darkbutflashy,
You misunderstand about the bumblebees. I said there was a time when bumblebees flew and people didn't know how. That is a true statement, not withstanding any prank, and perfectly illustrates my point. The reference may be popularized by a prank, which may be why it came so readily to mind, but it is nevertheless accurate.

But then, this site is focused on science fiction, not fact. Just how believable is warp drive as something achievable? I think that leap is vastly larger than nanites, even of the magical variety, and warp drives actually have theoretical underpinnings as well. We accept it in our fiction. Sure, it's a matter of taste, and that's fair, but I still maintain that many people who otherwise don't like it may be swayed by sufficiently artful application of just about any literary device, nanites or otherwise.