General Technics
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
General Technics is an informal organization started in the mid-1970s by a handful of Midwestern college students with a common interest in hard science fiction, the hard sciences, and engineering. Since its founding, General Technics has grown to have an active globally-distributed membership.
The name is used with kind permission by John Brunner (novelist), the author of Stand on Zanzibar, in which General Technics features prominently as a globe-spanning high-tech corporation.
Members of GT include:
- animators, astronomers, astrophysicists, and attorneys
- biochemists, bookkeepers, and biotechnology researchers
- cartographers, celestial mechanics, certified mining engineers, computer scientists, and cryptographers
- engineers and entrepreneurs
- homemakers
- librarians and linguists
- oceanographers and open source evangelists
- physicians, physicists, programming language experts, psychologists, and pyrotechnicians
- race car drivers and radiology technicians
- spacecraft propulsion experts and students
- veterinarians and videographers
Membership in General Technics was augmented by recognition of mutual interests with Michigan Technological University's Permanent Floating Riot Club, a name taken from a Larry Niven hard-SF short story about Flash Crowds.
The "GT List" (by invitation) serves as a means for ongoing communication and to foster a sense of community.
In addition to academic credentials and academic or business careers, most GTers are known by their willingness and enthusiasm to reduce their interests to practice through hands-on work. Some notable accomplishments of GT members include:
- Holding "Build a Blinky" outreach events
- Voting on whether Pluto should remain a planet
- Two members were mentioned in Dan Brown's "Da Vinci Code"
- Designing and building remotely-piloted and autonomous submarines
- Developing autonomous navigation systems for interplanetary spacecraft
- Organizing, running, and competing in Midwestern robotics competitions
- Steering and colliding particle beams in the world's most energetic particle accelerator
- Building kitchen-oil - based diesel vehicle on The Learning Channel's "Escape from Experiment Island"
