Spicy thoughts

[gfish]

I've been thinking about Dune technology recently. Why didn't they just make Spice Harvesters that didn't involve rhythmic vibrations? Obviously industrial processes will always create vibrations, but do they have to be rhythmic? Stochastic Mechanical Engineering could be a major field of study at Arrakeen University.

Comments

[porysski.livejournal.com]

Would it be possible to do with only Butlerian Jihad-allowed mechanization, though? It's hard for me to imagine a way to do arrhythmic industrial processing without computers (otoh, I was raised an EE; it's often hard for me to imagine how to do anything without computers).

[hsifyppah.livejournal.com]

Maybe with a lengthy pre-set rhythm pattern, like a long spool of irregularly notched metal that determined the timing of the vibrate-y bits? You could make the repeating pattern long enough that a sandworm wouldn't twig to it.

Although really, thinking too hard about the technology in Herbert books just makes my head hurt. It takes a lot of handwaving to make his premises make sense. I prefer to experience them as like a music video of interesting ideas that don't have to make sense.

[porysski.livejournal.com]

But in order for actual stochastic action, you'd need some source of real randomness (e.g. radioactive decay timing) and a means of translating it into mechanical action. I'm really unsure that could be done within BJ restrictions. OTOH, you certainly have a point about the handwaving, so maybe I'm overthinking this.

[mdlbear]

I'm sure you could build a mechanical feedback shift register with a long enough period...

Whether that would be considered a computer in BJ terms is, of course, unclear. Probably not, since it doesn't have a stored program.

[dornbeast.livejournal.com]

I'm imagining something like a fishtank of oil (on Arrakis, that's probably cheaper than water) as a chaotic system to generate the inputs. The fishtank is set up so it isn't insulated from the vibrations of the centrifuge. Install some limiters so it doesn't run out of control, and there's the prototype.

(Now, since I don't have a Mentat, I'll have to switch it on and see what goes wrong.)