Catherine Nemeth asked Lois McMaster Bujold:

Other than being raised with a strong moral code and sense of noblesse oblige, it seems that despite the Council of Counts and the Ministers, the only real check of the Emperor’s power is the threat of the Emperor becoming disliked enough to send enough popular support over to a relative to win a coup, hence Yuri’s Massacre and Barrayar’s stated bloody history. Or has there been a balancing act of power shifts?

Lois McMaster Bujold
Again, I don't actually have a 30-volume edition of The Encyclopedia Barrayarica in my garage that would answer this question in the detail it would require. But both the government/s and the legal system/s are more complicated that the books can show, since that's mostly not what they are about; I'm generally more interested in exploring the impacts of novel technologies, since they fall on the just and the unjust alike. That's the sort of thing that really changes worlds, often in subtle or subliminal or unnoticed ways that add up chaotically, in both the mathematical and common senses. Worked example: the entirety of human history on Old Earth. "Technology changes the ambit of the possible," would be my most succinct way of putting it.

I think of technology in the broadest sense, here; agriculture is a technology; armies are a technology, and so on. A combination of social organization and tools, combined to produce novel outcomes.

Ta, L.

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Sandy This puts me in mind of things I have noticed in my genealogical research, such as how what information is recorded and how, changes over time. A cent This puts me in mind of things I have noticed in my genealogical research, such as how what information is recorded and how, changes over time. A century ago a musically talented branch of my family was often noted in their local newspaper. Snippets of where and for whom they were performing, who they visited, accomplishments (such as my grandmother getting first place in a state wide high school singing competition) and so forth. They often offer fascinating glimpses into people's daily lives with information that a century earlier would never or rarely get recorded. Then today the local sections of newspapers are eviscerated and those types of information are instead shared and recorded through social medias. But now you can record reactions to stories as well as the stories themselves. How many people read about it, how many commented and what they said, and so forth. An ever growing fount of information. Along with that though the digital format is more malleable, with the potential for things to be edited and changed over time in ways that couldn't happen with newspapers. Looking forward it is interesting to imagine the various ways information might be recorded. Illyan's chip is such a great speculation on that. Especially considering the level of technology that existed at the time it was first imagined. These days, with CRISPR and various micro technologies I wonder if they could really come up with a way to create a memory cloning technology (And who would really want it). The brain is so complex, they would probably have to inject some micro bot/DNA/virus substance that was attracted to the electrical impulses in the brain, and would follow and grow along them in order to clone all the various 'inputs' and feed that information to some kind of accessible storage. Illyan's chip had sight and sound, but not smell for instance. But what if a programmable virus grew in a developing brain to create cloned connections to record memories. Then on the flip side, if such a viral program could then create new 'bridges' to help a brain work more efficiently, eliminating or reducing intellectual disabilities. Ah, this answer was very thought-provoking. It will take a while to ponder over it all. ...more
Jun 24, 2025 06:38AM · flag