Technology in the Hub Universe

Aircars: It's "The Jetsons," or Back to the Future II. Using antigravity technology, aircars make it easy to quickly travel around a planet. Aircars aren't usually equipped to enter space, although some more expensive models can handle underwater. There are sometimes limits on aircar activity: parks and nature preserves on some planets impose speed limits on aircar traffic above their borders. Over cities there are well-defined aircar corridors, with safety fields to keep cars in line and to catch people who might accidentally fall from an aircar.
Anti-Espionage: Bug detectors, distorters and scramblers are mentioned. A distorter is a device which makes sounds indistinct beyond a certain distance, and a scrambler does a similar task with visual impressions.
Books: Technology levels vary greatly among the myriad planets of the Hub; paper books are still common on some, and unknown on others. Electronic reading is done either with a handheld device not unlike a large-screened PDA with the material stored in internal storage or in insertable chips, or by calling up the material on a ComWeb terminal.
Computers: There are many devices with computers in them, but it is rare to see a personal computer per se in the Hub, at least for average citizens. They would be used by scientists to crunch numbers, of course, or there might be a security computer controlling access on a spaceship, space station or installation. People might carry portable ComWeb devices or calculators. Keyboards are rather rare, since computers in the Hub universe can understand and produce speech with great accuracy.
ComWeb: Remarkably like the Internet, the ComWeb is used to call up information and to communicate with others. Live face-to-face two-dimensional video communication is the norm and is quite possible on the ComWeb when the parties are both on the same planet (or on ships in orbit). Between planets, though, communication becomes expensive. Instantaneous subspace messages can be sent but are quite costly. The most common way to send a message between planets is to record a video message and have it sent by the next ship. If you really want an instantaneous message sent by subspace, it is usually recorded, compressed (as well as encrypted) and sent in a burst, rather than being made a live two-way connection, which only the very wealthy can afford to do often. A plain text message (again, compressed and encrypted) is even more reasonable. Most ComWeb terminals support encryption, for situations where wiretapping is a concern. There are information servers on the ComWeb that can be used to look up just about any subject.
Espionage: For those who don't wish to have cosmetic surgery (see Medicine), "life masks" are available and can totally conceal one's true face while moving with one's features in a natural way, concealing even the fact that the mask is there.
Implants: Technological body implants are almost always taboo in the Federation. Extensive implantation of devices to augment brain function or physical prowess is considered forbidden technology of the sort that fueled the Cluster Wars and is not permitted by Federation law.
Medicine: Diseases and injuries are usually easily dealt with. Even a horribly mangled limb can be restructured, and if a limb is totally lost a new one can be grown from a tissue sample. Plastic and cosmetic surgery technology is extensive; a citizen with enough money can go to Fermilaur and be completely made over, looking totally different, even to the point of adding a movable tail and/or animal-like ears.
Portals: A portal is basically a teleportation device; it consists of two identical plane figures in space (two imaginary circular or rectangular surfaces, for example) that have been "clamped" together so that matter may continuously pass through in both directions. A portal, however, takes energy to maintain and may be switched off. Light and other forms of electromagnetic radiation do not pass through portals, and neither do psi impulses. Portals can be disguised as walls and in that case would not be recognizable for what they were without attempting to tap on them with a hand or an object. Most portals have a safety circuit built in that will not allow a portal to switch off or close while a solid object is intersecting it. It is possible, though, for one side of a portal to be vertically oriented while the other side is horizontal; attention would have to be paid to the direction of gravity on either side.; Portals can be locked; in this case it is impossible to pass through a portal unless that portal's key is in the immediate vicinity, defined as close enough that a person would have to be carrying or wearing the key device in order to use the portal.; Some planets in the Federation use portals extensively, such as Tinokti; others use them moderately or not at all. A series of portals that are related in some way (e.g. owned by the same company, and/or operated by the same key or set of keys) is called a portal circuit. Portals can only link points that are not approaching or receding from each other, and their range is about the average diameter of an Earthlike planet; hence, they could be used to link together two points on a planet or spacecraft in geosynchronous orbit, but other types of orbits would forbid portal use. Portal machinery has to be in place on both ends; they cannot be used to board an enemy spacecraft unless one has an undercover confederate with portal equipment.
Psionic Machines: Psi-blocks and mind shields are covered in the psi chapter.; Psi recorders are wristwatch-like devices that are capable of detecting psi impulses. However, as they are usually constructed by non-psis outside the Psychology Service who don't know all that much about psi energy, they cannot record very subtle psi signals, or impulses generated by a very skillful psi.; Health and Customs scanners are in operation at spaceports on many Hub worlds. They continuously scan all incoming travelers for contraband and illegal substances, as well as foreign contagious diseases. Those detected are whisked away by police or hospital robots. What is not known by anyone outside the Psychology Service is that these machines, provided and operated by Service personnel, scan for much more than advertised. They can detect a psi mind unless psi skills are employed to fool them; they appear also to be able to scan for illicit intentions and invade one's privacy in a thousand unpleasant and undetectable ways. The Service keeps files on everyone, and all scanners are connected to the Service's central correlating computers. But remember that the Service will only act if someone is actually a threat to civilization, and that action is usually taken by the scanner itself, which also has the ability to install compulsions (equivalent to the 3rd level Telehypnosis effect). Scanners may have other abilities as well.; Verifiers are similar devices, used in Federation courtrooms. They have the ability to scan a witness's mind and pronounce with authority whether a given statement made by the witness is true or false. The also have the ability to read a witness's memory while the witness relates a sequence of past events and project a reconstructed visual account on a screen for all in the courtroom to see. Of course, Verifiers are provided by the Psychology Service and scan for much more than advertised, and can probably install compulsions as well.
Spacecraft: In the Hub there exist spacecraft ranging from tiny, fast ships the size of a Learjet of today to enormous behemoths the size of small moons. ("That's no moon. That's a space station.") The key to any multiplanetary civilization is the ability to travel faster than light, and in the Hub universe this is accomplished by "diving" into subspace, "resurfacing" once you're near where you need to be. Subspace can be disconcerting to some people, but even those who are greatly disturbed at first get used to it in time. Subspace is an alternate dimension contiguous to normspace at every point which contains its own hazards, often but not always related to objects and phenomena in normspace: where there is a black hole or a neutron star in normspace, there may be destructive disturbances in subspace that spacecraft will want to avoid. Sometimes a supernova remnant will contain lingering subspace anomalies that make navigation difficult or impossible, and sometimes a distant supernova will send waves of disturbance roaring across subspace, causing a ship to "surface" until the "storm" has passed. Planets, especially heavily populated and highly technological ones, usually have defensive subspace webs around them that will utterly destroy any ship that approaches them while still in subspace, so ships will surface a good distance away and make the final approach in normspace.
Weapons: Melee weapons are rarely in the Hub, although of course this depends on the society and technological level of the planet. In Federation culture the handheld weapons of choice tend to be energy or projectile firearms of one kind or another. Energy weapons will be either beam, single-pulse or repeating-pulse weapons, and the type of energy they emit can vary from stunning to deadly to explosively destructive. Projectile weapons will throw damaging slugs of metal like the guns of today, some possibly loaded with explosive charges, or instead throw needles injecting chemicals or charged with energy; the rate of fire can range from single-shot to continuously repeating. Obviously I have my work cut out for me in terms of making weapon tables, but I would like to mention Trigger Argee's Denton ("the twin-barrelled sporting Denton which gunwise citizens of the Hub rated as a weapon for the precisionist and expert only"): not made absolutely clear in the stories, I'm going to say that, being quite small and concealable, it can fire single shots consisting of silent, invisible energy-charged needles and is loaded with two types: one type destructive and one type with adjustable stunning force. Despite its size the Denton pistol is quite accurate, and it is possible to become quite a marksman with one. Get yours today. Other weapons mentioned in the stories are the Yool (a larger pistol used for hunting; it has no stun setting) and Heslet Quillan's Miam Devil Special, a largish pistol also lacking a stun setting, though it is unclear whether it is a projectile or energy weapon. It's likely that the Denton, Yool and Miam companies produce more than one model of weapon in case you'd like to borrow their names for your gun.