How has the imperium really changed in 10,000 years

[Iron_Adam]

Starting out as reading from the 40k universe and then getting into the heresy era series, I noticed that a lot of the imperium has remained static. The basic technology has basically remained the same save for a few improvements on armour and knowledge of the warp. It's a bit hard to accept that a blunt instrument like the bolter hasn't been wholly replaced with something far more advanced in every way. Especially when you consider that during the time where the emperor unified terra to his battle with Horus, all of a few hundred years, the imperium saw massive improvements on everything.

 

Is the technology in 40k at it's cap, does it not get better than what they achieved 10,000 years earlier. And I know there's a lot of change in the psyker field, and demon control, but those fall more in the field of magic than tech.

 

And also, what was completely lost in the age of technology that you think will come to exist again, or remain hidden forever?

[Justin Kase]

The main issue appears to be "This is the model that the Emperor last approved" and we're sticking to it.

 

After having to deal with the AIs going out of control back prior to the Great Crusade, they became more careful about computerized technology. This led to superstition, because people were taught the tasks, but not the underpinings of how something works. Think about it today, everyone knows how to operate a Gun (well most people), but how many people do you know that can actually repair a gun? Now, think about that same scenario from 200 years ago. Anyone who owned a gun could most likely fix it... and they had to make their own ammunition.

 

Not the best analogy, but hardly anyone (outside of someone whose live depends on that gun) gives the workings of a gun any real thought. Now, think about that applied to all manners of technology, along wiht a terminator style revolution that occured where the machines rose up against man kind and caused the dark age of technology.

 

People are a bit hesitant to make the same mistakes.

 

Unfortunately, with the Emperor ascending to his Golden Throne, the Imperium has gone into a sort of stasis with him.

 

Don't fix it if it ain't broke. Though I wish they'd finally fix their damned plasma guns...

[Valkyrion]

The same as modern society, where the people with the power make decisions for the people without power but without the pretence of morality and ethics.

 

When the Emperor was in charge it was more like a worldwide ancient empire - different cultures either embraced the new way, beaten into submission or were annihilated.

[SanguineSon]

In the lore you often hear of the knowledge to replicate certain pieces of technology being lost to most ie: plasma weapons, advanced laser weapons like the laser destroyer cannon, many vehicles, and the knowledge necessary to completely build new dreadnoughts. I think Justin Kase made a good point that people want to just stick with what the Emperor approved. After all they do revere him as a god and what mortal would dream of tampering with a god's work? I think most of the the advances made in the last 10k years were completely new things that weren't around when the Emperor was which supports that his internment has a lot to do with the technological limbo.

[Culebras]

Dan Abnett, the author of Prospero Burns, wrote in the January issue of White Dwarf something I would like to point to. He said:

 

"One of the fundamental traits of 40k is that nothing changes. Everything is static and set, and has been that way for untold lifetimes. Though decaying, the Imperium of 40k is like a fly set in amber...the citizens of the Imperium in the 31st millennium are more adventurous and imaginative, more ambitious and questing, more individual. They can see possibilities and embrace them. They strive for change where 40k citizens struggle to keep things the same."

 

In my opinion, Mr. Abnett had the right idea. The 40k setting is based on a siege mentality where the citizens believe they are under constant assualt, both from overt sources like chaos and xenos and etc., and from internal sources like corruption, heresy, psykers, scientists experimenting with unsanctioned technology. On the other hand, the Heresy era was one where alot of the structures of the imperium were still being set up and things were still fresh and new. The inhabitants had an expansionist mind set, with the idea that there was literally nothing they couldn't achieve. Science was making a comeback, worlds were being united, these new super soldiers called space marines were winning impossible battles. And no one knew how long the marines were going to be around. Some may have though they would be phased out or replaced in the same way the emperor replaced the warriors that fought for him when he united Terra under his rule. Others, perhaps thought they would be given their own empires like Ultramar. who knows.

 

I think a telling example from a technological standpoint is that, in the roughly two centuries of the crusade and the following Heresy (based on the timeline give in A thousand Sons) the Marines went through marks 2-6 in their armor, but in the ten thousand years since the end, only two versions of armor have come out since. That fact shows that the heresy really did bring invention to a screeching halt. While there were discoveries since, (the land speeder and the razorback for instance), the culture just isn't there to support it.

[Iron_Adam]

I would argue that the land speeder and the razorback are hardly innovations at all, it's just bigger versions of everything already In existence. I am also a firm believer that being human is fundamentally built on the constant need to do something better, for example, why destroy the eldar tech when you can reverse engineer it to better yourself, it's inhuman to ignore it completely. I think genetically the imperium will have to have something happen to set them into a new age of technology, or be doomed to fall out of existence like a non evolving species

[Justin Kase]

The Land Speeder was STC technology, which was rediscovered post HH. Though I do seem to recall pictures of marines in LandSpeeders in the HH art books.

 

The Razorback was discovered much later, and was once again a STC design.

 

I'm pretty sure that anything from STC is considered to have the seal of the Emperor on it (after testing at the Mechanicum), as it is former human technology.

 

The STC brings up another reason why things are static - some stuff is jsut made based on pre-programmed information, once again, without the people operating it knowing how it works.

 

Another current day example, My friend has a CNC machine, my son doesn't know how to program the software to make the designs, but sure as heck can hit the GO button for the stuff already programmed into it.

[Morollan]

Reading "Mechanicum" will give a fairly good indication of why technology has stagnated over the 10k years since the heresy. Even back then the Ad Mech treated technology as something sacred and viewed innovation with suspicion or outright hostility. This has only gotten worse over the intervening period. The Emperor's xenocidal tendencies also didn't help much as alien technology was forbidden, despite often being superior to human stuff.