Alien cetaceans

[gfish]

I've always felt bad for the intelligent waterbound species that must dot the universe. All those intelligences that had the bad luck to evolve where it is inherently hostile to basically all forms of technology. No way to use fire, an environment corrosive for most forms of metal, so conductive that any form of electrical usage would be seriously tricky. What a trap to be born into. It's the kind of thing I worry about sometimes.

But the other day, I realized something wonderful: hydraulics would work better for them! Their hydraulics would be more like pneumatics are for us: cheap and easy to set up, because the working fluid can vent to the atmosphere. No need for return lines! Except hydraulics are much safer and more powerful than pneumatics. They can handle much higher pressures, and because water/oil doesn't compress, the systems don't store (much) energy when pressurized. Air is a spring, in contrast, and a pressurized pneumatics system has a whole lot of energy coiled up in it. The pressure doesn't immediately drop to zero when they have a leak, it keeps on blasting out in ways that tend to make the problem even worse. Hydraulics pressure vessels crack and make a big mess, pneumatic pressure vessels explode.

Water-bound aliens would have the best of both worlds. The power and safety of hydraulics with the ease and cheapness of pneumatics. I'm not sure how they would get to that level of technology in the first place, of course, but I still felt a genuine sense of relief when I realized this. At least something is better for them!

Comments

[juli]

What about a path to chemical computing, or similar? There seem like there are maybe more barriers to some kinds of chemistry in an under-water environment, but not absolute ones any more than our atmosphere is. Also, what about fluids other than water?

It seems interesting to explore the space you're sort touching on with hydraulics, too, to identify what's easier/better in that setting, and consider what science is doable early on in that setting.

I guess I mean to say: I find those sorts of thoughts a sort of comfort, too, and I wonder about other ways to achieve a similar level of development, but with different concentrations.

[randomdreams]

We managed to make very low oxygen environments thousands of years ago, well before we knew what it was, so I can easily imagine them making vacuum or gas filled smelters, or using undersea thermal vents for smelting.
There's so much more inertia in water, imagine wearable computing devices based on valves, and using pitot pressure to drive them.
(Less educated dolphins being consigned to the swim farms where they push calculators through the water for 10 hours a day, bringing them back to the managers, who tabulate the results...)

[sistawendy]

I've read about a pneumatic computer. A hydraulic one could work well, too. I can just imagine their SCOBA gear.

[corvi]

I hope bubble-net feeding would be, somehow, technology that could be improved upon, but I've never been able to think of what else you could do with it.