I'm not trying to deny that technological evolution has an impact on society, of course it was. But is is widely overrated. Steam would revolutionize the world. Chemicals would revolutionize the world. Nuclear power would revolutionize the world. AI would revolutionize the world. Oh it didn't. But it will. But it didn't again. But it will, the singularity is just there, I have to live forever.
It turned into a religion.
Thinking of religion and having written a comment in another thread, it is worth saying here also: there are choices about how any new technology will be used. The idea of technology as a driver of inevitable change usually comes together with the idea that change is pre-determined by the technology, a denial of choice. It is not true, but if people believe it then the few who happen to be in leading with that new technology set their way alone. It has been the cause of numerous problems we have suffered and suffer from.
penicilin, vaccination and modern medicine in general sure as hell changed absolutely everything. overpopulation (of the world, not of cities) is caused almost entirely thanks to that, especially if you consider that we actually breed less now than we did a few hundred years ago. it changed completely the economic dynamic, city life, our approach/view of life and death (death is something to be prevented, postponed), and so on. some technologies really did turn the world upside down.
of course oil and coal is another example. without fossil fuels the climate change we are witnessing now simply never would have happened. computing, algorhythms and the creation of a second reality.. we are experiencing their effects now, but we will only understand their true dangers later on.
I said what I said in my post, and that is explaining enough.
Our culture is the lagging behind amalgame of techs and our human nature.
Exchange of knowledge, techs and trade secrets were besides essential minerals, the biggest direct benefit of trade routes. The CIV's alongside. The more connections, the more effect. And calling those far away connections globalisation in hindsight seems pretty much ok to me. Not because of empires, but because of the network of exchange.
no offense, but this is a fundamental misunderstanding.
technology is merely a part of culture. it is created only in its specific environment, with its specific circumstances, specific predecessor models (no technology comes from a vacuum), specific ideas that came before it, people and their time investment, their funding, their reach, and so forth. technology is (part of) the amalgam of all that we humans do and think every day. and what we do and think, is called culture. however, technologies are not only used, but also actively change us, our expectations, our habitus, creating a weird feedback loop where we are indeed subject to the things we created.
"human nature" is a fallacy. maybe in 50 years there is significant scientific evidence so I can prove that epigenetics are significantly affected by culture, "human nature", so to speak, is as much natural as it is artificial. it's everchanging. sure, I'll give you this, from an evolutionary pov not so much has happened in the recent 10,000 years, but that's not all there is to human nature. we barely understand how the brain functions yet every decade someone comes along claiming he has "figured it all out" and reduces human intellect and agency to some reductionist model that "makes sense" (appeals to common sense, aka bull dung).
the Gutenbergian printing press is such a decidedly German, decidedly Christian invention. the development of the atomic bomb (an idea they more or less stole from Germans, another thing characteristic of Americans) is a pure manifestation of American will and mentality. the way the employed it, using it on Japan even though they knew for a fact that the Japanese would surrender, such a decidedly American tactic.
But wasn't it inevitable, given their economic advantage, that the puny farmers were eventually gonna develop something that would put paid to the horse archers? I hate to cite strategy games as a predictor of world events, but since this is a Civ game forum we all know that population cures all ills. Research too slow? More population. Military too expensive, too weak, or both? More population. No matter the game, early rapid population growth is the surest path to victory..and the farmers locked up the faster population growth. Game was over before it got started good.
we simply haven't waited long enough. population growth seems to be the best, even the only viable strategy, to us now, because we're at it's absolute peak in a few decades. however what will happen once we've eached critical mass I'm not so sure about. I doubt it'll be space utopia. I bet it will be more like a Hieronymus Bosch tryptichon, and not one of the nice ones..
Someone more competent wouldn't have gone on the sort of all-or-nothing genocidal rampage that Hitler did. WW2 was unwinnable for the Axis in just about every scenario. Remove Hitler before the NSDAP is even a major player in politics, and we get... something different, and probably not a total war like the one we got. Even if some revanchist fascistoid group ends up in control; someone more competent would have more realistic goals and probably not as repugnant methods, probably leave everyone better off in the long run.
that's just hindsight. you have no idea what information Hitler had access to. hint: it was probably very one-sided. Hitler also certainly wasn't the only German who thought WW2 would be winnable. nor was US intervention a certainty, especially considering the fact that the US willingly supported all kinds of fascist regimes, like how they supported Franco in the Spanish Civil War. if you rely entirely on German intelligence, German strategists, German politicians and so on, no wonder you think such a huge undertaking as Hitler's WW2 plans possible. I bet more than half of the German population believed WW2 to be winnable until 1943. it's easy to be wise about the war more than 70 years later and being aware of all factors, yeah.
