@DoomPony
It wouldn’t need to be a Turing-complete computer to do brain scanning. Just a bunch of amplifier and filter circuits could do a lot of the work.
The components of the brain scanning machine could probably be used in a COLOSSUS or ENIAC style computer. Just remember: those first computers were about the same price as a battleship. It may seem like a no brainer to us that computers are important, but back then there were many skeptics of the idea. The only reason ENIAC and COLOSSUS were even built was because they needed radical new ideas to beat the Axis’ codes.
Those arcade games also don’t have cords and are sitting outside.
Though that monitor that Twilight is picking up also doesn’t have a cord. Then again the world of EQG isn’t a straight copy of our world since no one really seemed to freak out when one of the students turned into a demon and was defeated by magic rainbows and a couple of the other students grew wings.
Also why did no one ask that the EEQG Rainbow Dash or Fluttershy had wings and the others didn’t?
@Background Pony Number 17
That isn’t a computer. That’s a calculating device. The difference is that computers can be programmed without rebuilding the hardware.
An abacus is only hardware; there’s no software that can be implemented.
The first picture has a device that was used in the 1980s and 1990s.
In the second image, the mouse keybord and even the flatscreen-computer its self are wireless.
Assumeing that the EG world as just as advanaced as Earth, thats a good 30 years further ahead. And by computer standards, 30 years is a very VERY long time. In fact going by Moore’s law the EG computer should be aproximately 524,288 times more powerful.
If someone handed a modern tablet or smartphone to one of the developers of the early arcade consoles I’m sure they’d react similar to Twilight. Fascination and confusion with this weird glowing piece of glass and metal. Hell, even science fiction from that era didn’t predict the miniaturisation and sophistication of modern computers.
The computers she probably would use would look more like this:
Where’s the screen? There isn’t one; the output is that strip of paper those guys are holding. You would probably program a machine like this using punchcards like these:
Maybe it’s just because pony can’t use keyboards so electronic devices in general look very different at least when it come to the user’s interface. An arcade game is fine cause there is only one big button and a stick he can hold.
@illuminati
Ok, perhaps simple ANALOG computers would be on part with arcade games. But these computers would have about the computing power as a pocket calculator, if not less. GUIs require quite a bit more hardware to even work.
The first computer terminal debuted in the early 1970s. These things basically used a paper tape as a display. Around the same time, you got the first arcade machine. It wasn’t until around the 80s that GUIs arrived.
The computers in EQG are at the latest 00s computers, but they are most likely newer.
Basically what I’m getting at is if Twilight has ever used a computer, it probably looked like this:
IIRC, the general rule they keep to in the show is that the ponies can have the technology the story requires them to have, like mixers or refrigerators, but to keep it as low-tech as is possible at all times. That’s why Photo Finish’s camera is one of those giant boxy tripod deals that needs to be carried in its own suitcase.
So it’s not out of the question for them to have very rudimentary game machines, while not having things like computers.
