Wonders biased towards the U.S.?

[King Flevance]

ROFL @ CNN and FOX

WW is actually up in the US right now though. And alot of it has to do with those two. Not to mention a certain pompous in charge of the show. Although there is an irony in that joke I find hillarious. Keep shoving news of war in our ears until we just dont care anymore seems to be the media tactic.

 

[Desert-Fox]

Stock Exchange will be English UB.

 

[HypnosTene]

Also, I thought the great lighthouse was in Greece.

Both the Great Lighthouse and the Great Library were Greek wonders built in Alexandria by the Ptolemaic state in the Hellenistic period.

Hagia Sophia - Turkey

That's like saying that the Colosseum is Italian. The Hagia Sophia was built in the VI century by the Byzantine empire, then still quite Roman. It's as Turkish as most of the works of art in the Hermitage are Russian (ie, by rights of conquest)

 

[AvianAvenger]

The wonders are definately chosen by someones baised opinion.

I dont see no Sydney Opera House or Syndey Harbour Bridge in there... yea sure they are not the most well known around the world but their is not a single person in australia who doesn't know them or seen them.

a national wonder that is needed is a Centerpoint Tower/Space Needle ... alot of major cities have them.

 

[King Flevance]

The wonders are definately chosen by someones baised opinion.

I dont see no Sydney Opera House or Syndey Harbour Bridge in there... yea sure they are not the most well known around the world but their is not a single person in australia who doesn't know them or seen them.

a national wonder that is needed is a Centerpoint Tower/Space Needle ... alot of major cities have them.

Actually I would love to see this come in as a national wonder. Must be build in a coastal city. I love the look of that place.

 

[kevjm]

OK, the internet. I'm pretty sure that was developed in central Europe by a Brit (who in fact doesn't consider himself a Brit, but a 'citizen of the world', but that's beside the point).

It was developed by physicists working at CERN (one of the largest if not the largest partical accelerater on the planet) so that they could exchange information and results with each other more easilly.

I don't think it counts as American, despite the American flag shown on it's icon.

 

[King Flevance]

Toldj00.

I agree that the internet should be a technology and not a wonder though. It should work similar to Liberalism as well.

 

[Fruit Pie Jones]

OK, the internet. I'm pretty sure that was developed in central Europe by a Brit (who in fact doesn't consider himself a Brit, but a 'citizen of the world', but that's beside the point).

It was developed by physicists working at CERN (one of the largest if not the largest partical accelerater on the planet) so that they could exchange information and results with each other more easilly.

I don't think it counts as American, despite the American flag shown on it's icon.

You're thinking of the World Wide Web, not the Internet. They are not the same thing.

EDIT: And the American flag shown on the icon, as well as the portrait there, are a poke at Al "I Invented the Internet" Gore.

 

[Mon Mauler]

I'm pretty sure the first detailed discussion of the use of packets for information transfer through a network of computers was put together by an American named Licklider (not sure of the spelling and don't know his first name).

Anyway, his vision was eventually employed by the military, who first created DARPA, which, in turn, created the IPTO (not sure of that). This group eventually built the world's first computer network, named ARPANET, which connected computers at UCLA with those at Stanford.

That is why I said in my original list that the Internet was based primarily on technology developed in the US.

Just wanted to clarify...
MM

Also, Fruit Pie Jones is right, CERN created the WWW. That sentence was only added so that I could use the words Fruit Pie Jones in succession. That's twice...

 

[caitlinm]

The idea of the internet was developed by the U.S. military -- that what I heard.

So, cool wonders that need to be added to the game:

Sydney Opera House -- this is a great idea, AvianAvenger
Big Ben -- Wasn't this in a previous version? Bring it back!
Great Wall -- This is too bad-ass to be skipped

P.S. Conqueror Worm, good post.

 

[gunkulator]

CERN's inventive leap was to combine the concept of hypertext with the internet. Hypertext had been around for many years prior. Still even though the World Wide Web was invented in 1989, by 1993 there were still fewer than 500 webservers worldwide and the whole thing seemed doomed to be nothing more than a small academic curiosity. The thing that caused the explosion of websites throughout the world was the Mosaic web browser. Initially it only ran on X Window Systems which meant it was very "windows" like and not limited to be text based Finally, later things like Javascript and Java have given the web its multimedia, interactive feel.

So the internet we know and love today is really the result of the synergy from many groups and many inventions.

 

[kevjm]

EDIT: And the American flag shown on the icon, as well as the portrait there, are a poke at Al "I Invented the Internet" Gore.

Ahh, I wasn't sure if it was Al or Bush who made the claim, it was only mentioned in passing however many years ago on the news in Britain, if I recall- in fact it might've been a documentary of some kind, not the news...

But yeah, that makes sense now

 

[Skirmisher]

Berlin Wall
Eureka technology bourse
Cern super collider
Baikonur Cosmodrome
Al-Jazeera network
Echelon surveillance system
Palatul Poporului

 

[sgrig]

MAD - Mutually Assured Destruction - Country of ownership may succesfully prevent so-called rogue states from developing nuclear arsonal by threatening to nuke them. Drawback - .001 percent chance per turn that the game suddenly ends without warning for all civs on planet.

Last time I checked this feature was already in! However it's far more likely than 0.001 percent chance per turn, and goes under the acronym CTD.

 

[Smidlee]

Look at the wonders towards the end of the game:
Hollywood
Broadway
Rock N' Roll
The Internet
Wall Street
Mt. Rushmore

Yet most of these are almost totally worthless. When going for a culture victory it's not worth spending the research to get these USA culture wonders.
I have yet to build the internet.
Out of all of these I find only two worth building; Mt. Rushmore and Wall Street. When the others come around, I too busy running the space race to bother building.

 

[Yarmoss]

Bollywood would be my pick for a replacement for Hollywood. It is the 2nd biggest film making conglomerate in the world (behind Hollywood of coarse), and its Indian... its not like India is well represented in WWs.

 

[Dr Vella]

How about Eurovision? lol joke

 

[Sisiutil]

The late game wonders reflect the reality of the 20th century, which is that it has been dominated by western culture in general and by America in particular. For better or for worse.

Granted, equivalent wonders exist in other countries, but name them--not the ones in YOUR country, but in others. Name another country's military headquarters. Name another country's monument to its greatest leaders. Name another country's centre of film production.

Not easy is it?

On another note, I've noticed another discrepancy with the wonders. Of those generally regarded as the "Seven Wonders of the Ancient World", only four are included in the game:

• The Great Pyramid of Giza
• The Hanging Gardens of Babylon
• The Colossus of Rhodes
• The Lighthouse of Alexandria

The three missing ancient wonders:

• The Statue of Zeus at Olympia
• The Temple of Artemis at Ephesus
• The Mausoleum at Halicarnassus

Instead we have the following ancient "replacement" wonders:

• Stonehenge
• The Parthenon
• The Oracle

Granted, the three replacements are generally more famous than the three canonical wonders, probably because they still exist. If you've been to Olympia, Ephesus, or Bodrum (modern-day Halicarnassus), you've seen that little more than the foundations of those ancient wonders still exist. Then again, the same could be said of the Colossus, the Lighthouse, and the Hanging Gardens. Of the seven ancient wonders, only the Pyramids endure.

I think there's an ancient Egyptian proverb that says, "All men fear time, but time fears only the Pyramids".

 

[BearMan]

Granted, equivalent wonders exist in other countries, but name them--not the ones in YOUR country, but in others.

Not easy is it?

Sydney Opera House
WestEnd
Red Square.
Big Ben.

I've heared of all these way before I heared of "broadway", "mt rushmore" etc, Pentagon is kinda leveled with them.
Wall Street is a joke, compared to the wonders mention above.

This should be the stock Exhange in the game:

The Amsterdam Stock Exchange

It is biased, I live in Sweden.

More that comes to mind...
First Man in Space.
Trans-Siberian Railway.
CERN.
VLT.

 

[BadHorsie]

I dont see no Sydney Opera House or Syndey Harbour Bridge in there... yea sure they are not the most well known around the world but their is not a single person in australia who doesn't know them or seen them.

Maybe Syndey Opera House, as it's a pretty famous icon (although I don't think it's 'wonder' material), but not the Syndney Harbour Bridge. The world has hundreds of cool bridges. I think the point of wonders in the game would be that most people in the world know them, regardless of what country they're from. That's why it's irrelevant if everyone in Australia knows the Sydney Harbour Bridge.