Technology in the background

When I was five years old, the object that most epitomized the grownup life I wanted to live was this:

This is a Western Electric circa 1965 Princess phone in its dial configuration (I thought touch-tone was so ugly). For some of you, many of you in fact, "Western Electric", "Princess phone", and "touch-tone" are terms you've never heard, and the term "land-line" is a term you've heard of and consider an archaic technology.

This was the phone I got:

My first cell phone looked like this:

No putting it in a pocket like I'm used to now.

Technology anchors the story in time and place -- a protagonist can call someone on the phone, but describing the phone ever so briefly reminds the reader of when the story takes place. Describing can be succinct, like "She called on the bag phone", or more interactive, like "she unzipped the vinyl bag, raised the antenna, and put the headset to her ear."  To a reader who has never seen a bag phone, the description will give them pause.

In actuality, there is no era without technology, no matter how primitive that technology is.  Technology is simply "the collection of techniques, skills, methods, and processes used in the production of goods and services or in the accomplishment of objectives" (Wikipedia, 2017). Therefore, fire, torches, Betty lamps, tallow candles, lanterns, gaslight, incandescent bulbs, fluroescent bulbs, halogen bulbs, and LEDs are all light technologies depending on the era.

My current work in progress is set 15 years in the future after a national economic and governmental collapse. The country, now countries, have lost electricity, gasoline (petrol), and long-distance trucking of food and supplies. Their technologies, therefore, have been created from knowledge, ingenuity, and scavenging. The main fuel used is bio-diesels made from rendering of dead cattle, plant matter, and sewage. Wood, of course, still work, as do scavenged stores of gasoline and kerosene, but these are rare. Solar installations and wind turbines supply power until parts need to be replaced, because machining has not yet converted to diesel-generated power.  People have developed diesel generators and kerosene/diesel refrigerators. They have begun to pick up old arts like weaving, hand-sewing, and preserving food by smoking. Economies are very localized, and trade is done by barter.

That is their level of technology. It's not as advanced as ours, but it may help them crawl upward to their own technologies, developed from the available materials, mimicry of the scavenged goods, ingenuity, and need.  Without me writing about it, however, nobody will understand how different their world is than ours.

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I'm writing pretty fast -- my goal today is 32,000 words total, or 3000 additional words for today. If I have to take a break, I have a wide cushion.