Just information dense to be useful. I really want it to be reasonable to have one movie/album/game per thing without wasting a bunch of space. But it should be large enough for high quality and plenty of bonus content.

Cheap enough to produce that any jerk with a computer can print some out and hand them out at a booth or on the street

Big enough not to loose and to clearly label, but smaller than a cd.

Robust enough that it won't get destroyed easily.

Because I'm a worldbuilding nerd and we all just have to come to terms with that. Frankly, I have no idea if I'm just reading into this too much, or if these details were all purposefully considered, but it's fun to speculate either way.

First of all, the year at the start of the show is 2019. Fairly standard, usually when a year isn't specified in a show, you can generally assume it takes place in the year it came out. But we actually have confirmation of that, because the Salem Accords were signed in 1692, which according to Alder's speech in the first episode was 327 years ago. Why is this important? Because think about the level of technology we see casually throughout the show. No cell phones, only the most basic of cordless home phones, TV's are all still big ass boxes, no references to GPS or tracking technology, none of that.

I'm not an expert on the history of technological development, but I do know that there are a lot of scholarly articles out there about the relationship between tech advances and military priorities. And why would the witch army put any priority into technology that would allow non-witch civilians to match the capabilities they have with Work. They have Farspeech, they have Fetches, they have Scrying, they don't need the fancy tech and they surely don't want anyone else to have it.

Another thing I noticed, and someone correct me if I missed something, but I'm 99% certain we never see anyone use a gun in this show. I don't think we ever even see a gun outside of historical depictions of muskets (See my earlier point about tech development). The agitator in 2x01 even makes a point of mentioning that the populace is unarmed. This leads me to believe that the 2nd Amendment doesn't exist in this version of the USA. Why, you might ask? Aren't Americans obsessed with their guns and theoretically being able to overthrow the government? In our timeline, yes. We have a great cultural emphasis on the citizen soldier, the average person who rises up to defend their home. And the possession of weaponry is a big part of that. But guess who didn't win the War for Independence in MFS? The citizen soldier. The War for Independence, and every American war after, has been fought on behalf of the average citizen by people they fundamentally consider to be Other.

Effectively, we now have, in the MFS version of the US, an elite military class, separated from the average level of society, with it's own rules, it's own standards, it's own internal hierarchy. The very thing our actual Founders didn't want (but they don't get a say here, because they weren't around. The Revolution was started and won a full forty years before ours even began). Few people think about the sacrifices that the military makes here, because they're so effectively insulated from war that they can't fathom it anymore. They just see a group of Others with power and privilege (never mind the existence of poorer witches, because the media doesn't focus on them) with lifestyles many consider to be immoral and hedonistic.

agartha is very serious about recycling. Where there’s one trash can, there’s four more. They have limited resources and that impacts not just the gadgets but all the materials they use.

They believe strongly in “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” that’s why you’ll see CRTs next to flatscreens next to flip phones next to [unrecognizable]. Everything they make is designed to last and to be repaired. They don’t update designs arbitrarily.

Compatibility is a major pain in the ass, but it’s almost offset by how much old stuff is still functional. They don’t have Brands™, you get whatever the labor dept lends you.

Anything of significant value cannot be owned in agartha. Vehicles and computers are rented from the manufacturer, and they expect you to bring them back for maintenance, or you lose your privileges to using it.

Anyway, back to the Average Agarthan Media Experience.

“Radio” is popular for news and entertainment. I put it in quotes bc it’s all piped in with wires, but it’s audio-only and has “channels.” Their screens/cameras suck.

The internet is for grownup important business if you’re a nonstripe. Its initial purpose was for record keeping, as they keep accounts on every citizen and how much they’re worth.

IdLegi is a heavily censored forum. Anyone can read (most of) it, but only Archangels and Seraphim can write or edit, and they tend to do that in spaces among themselves. (that’s the side of the internet Sylvester got addicted to immediately) Anonymity is illegal; your account is linked to your official records and all your activity can be tracked.

They don’t have smartphones. Dido’s laptop is the closest thing to that we’ve seen, but those are not widely available due to production complexity. I imagine some of them are custom made/modded or made in small batches, if you’ve got a buddy with connections. (she does)

if you see a smartphone charging on a nightstand, it’s actually a dumbphone plugged into a service line. They still have/use public phones, but you get your own handpiece with the numbers stored in it. You have to find somewhere to plug it in when you need to make a call. (I’m not saying radio is impossible underground; they do have wireless options—but this is the more reliable way.)

On top of that, the devices can be azoth-powered, all-electric, or a hybrid of the two. The azoth ones are slower (small data transfer can take hours) but can do things the electronics can’t.

The slipscreen Ulloriak watches the campaign on is azoth-powered. The screen is bendy like fabric, which stretches taut over a collapsible frame. It’s like a one-file mp4 player, it’s just got one inloaded video and that’s it. The battery lasts a very long time and can be recharged. The screen is alive so it’s always a little damp to the touch. but that’s the only way they can make touch screens; they’re not very popular. On the plus side, it isn’t destroyed by water. They’re cheap to make and commonly used to distribute films or music videos.

Not everyone owns a computer, but everyone has at least a data card with their personal documents, which fits into a wallet. Plugging that into any random terminal (freely available in many public places) will let you access your own files.

They don’t do video games. The cabinets we see in vin’s chapter are actually pretty risky, cutting-edge ventures. Agartha is harshly anti-gambling (they think it will ruin the economy) so ANY kind of gaming is treated with suspicion. The ones vin is making are officially sanctioned to scratch the “push buttons look at rectangle” itch & keep people from sinking into the debauchery of pachinko.

Their team is working on Subsole, which is constructed to uphold good Agarthan values like “surface bad” and “might makes right” and “centaurs are chaotic evil monsters.” there’s also a gambling minigame that uses pretend in-game money so, don’t say agartha never did anything for you.

The cabinets themselves can be reprogrammed to output different games, like switching disks/carts in a console except it takes disassembly and hours of inloading (how they call downloading). That’s also how they update the game. Same as the data cards, you keep your save file with you and bring it to the arcade.

Arcades of course being your only option if you want to play, because letting people put sinful gaming machines inside their own homes would be catastrophic! But they are warming up to the idea of legal, public “gaming spaces” that can be heavily monitored.

(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com, Steve's Tumblr, and Pillowfort.  Find out more at my newsletter, and all my social media at my linktr.ee)

More on Alternate Histories through the eyes of Alternate Me’s. This comes from some past speculations on the internet, useful technologies, and vital functionality. In this case I wonder how conference calls/party lines could have been more widespread, giving us casual group chat long before Zoom, Teams, and so on.

Let’s meet an Alternate Steve who remembers the Conference Call Boom of the 80s and 90s . . . even if he missed the start.

I’m going to confess - I missed out on the Party Line/Conference Line craze when I was younger. Yes, I know, this is me, I’m the guy that has set up conferences. But Back In The Day it just didn’t register for me until I graduated college.

So anyway, let’s talk me in the 1990s. I’ve graduated from college and pending getting into graduate school, ended up working as an admin in an anthropology department. Pretty good gig and I figured I’d eventually go back to school to get into that PHD program. As you know I didn’t (even if I did get two more degrees).

One of the things people were talking about is Conference Calls, though everyone kept calling them Party Lines, an older name for shared phone lines. I think it honestly stuck because the term also got used by sex lines and so on. Boy did I work to call it “Conference Call,” and boy did people embarrass themselves throughout the early 90s.

Anyway at the time, I vaguely knew about Conference Calls and we all know the drill - people call one number or someone calls them and you all chat at once. It’s very standard now, but it exploded in the 80s and 90s - in ways that made perfect sense when you look back.

And in 1990 boy did I have to look back. I’m there in the office, suddenly having to catch up on all of this stuff that passed me by as I was A) in the dorms, and B) a computer guy.. I still remember sitting out a weekend with some of my co-workers to understand what was going on. And how I missed it.

You have to remember the 80s saw a lot of changes in communication. The Bell system got broken up. Compuserve and AOL were becoming noticeable. People met on internet forums in academic areas. And what happens when you’re a suddenly-regional phone company after a big breakup and you have a vision or just want money?

People are using computers to talk. But you are used to phones. So by pushing conference lines you sell phones, sell services, and get a leap on these growing services. Also some bigwigs use conference calls and you see them in movies. It was kind of a slam dunk, moreso in the business-obsessed 80s.

A lot of people claim to be the brains behind the Conference Call revolution, but I think it was more a thing of the time - everything came together. Certainly it did for us there in the office as we had PHDs and scientists who were MORE and more interested in figuring how to chat with each other without having to travel. I mean trust me, they wanted to travel (I had to do some of the billing), but you can’t rush back to the lab or something then.

Anyway all that happened while I was busy getting my degree and I only paid attention when I had to. I mean it moved slower than people make it sound because there was a lot of technical stuff, but to me it seemed fast. It had changed over four years.

So I kept learning.

Of course the Conference Call thing began creeping into many aspects of life and nerds like me were there on top of it. Sure they got pitched to business, then families, but I remember when TTRPG (Table Top RPG) was jokingly called Telephone Time RPG. Then there were writer’s roundtables, etc. Or the time I attended the Atlanta Fantasy Fair and someone did a panel by conference line, and that’s when things were definitely in full swing.

Am I saying that Conference Calls exploded even more because of enormous nerdery? Honestly, I kind of am.

I ended up staying on top of it way more than most because I worked in admin and I was a nerd. Despite missing all of it at the start, it became a pretty integral part of my life. When I moved to Berkley in the mid-90s, it was even more prominent there. People forget how cable companies and other infrastructure companies got in on the deal and how vital it was to academia.

Which, come to think of it, was also a huge bunch of nerds. Seriously, by the late 90’s I knew professors who “had to suddenly” give a class by Conference Call.

I think in a weird way the Conference Call revolution both drove and delayed the adoption of the Internet. You could do a whole lot with a line, and the fancy specialized phones that companies sold (at a big markup) that maybe you didn’t need the internet. At the same time the growing infrastructure changes led to interests in other changes. I wonder if videoconferencing like Ringer would have come about as quickly - or were they accelerated?

It’s funny now how we still use these lines. But they afford security, they’re easy to use, and they’re familiar. I get it, even if I didn’t at first.

The 80s and 90s was a time of weird technical and cultural ferment, and I could see Conference Calls getting a big boost. Certainly I knew the various zine groups and geeks I went to, cons I went to, were filled with people who’d have taken advantage of it. Considering how phone companies broke up and consolidated, I see it as a potential business opportunity.

Steven Savage

www.StevenSavage.com