I was going to post this as a response in another thread, but it got so long that I decided to copy it down here instead of have it be a response. It kind of turned into a rambling effortpost as I thought of more and more examples. This isn't meant to "pwn" the person I was responding to, rather just point out some of my thoughts on the issue.
Based and Asuka-AVI pilled. But in response to your quote: IS the west good at technology? What has the west achieved technologically that isn't just dressing up technology that's already there? I'm genuinely curious. Everything seems to be in the digital world anyways, and that is what is often meant by "technology". We're starting to run into the limits of Moore's law, and exponential time algorithms seem to put a dent in the view that doubling processor speed in linear time is some sort of huge breakthrough. For end-users, tons of people are starting to realize that old 2010 ThinkPads do whatever they want with Linux, sans specialists that need to use Windows/Mac for some unicorn proprietary software. This just exposes the fact that the main difference between a laptop of yesterday and a laptop of today is basically the GPU and the ability to run photorealistic graphical games. But how much progress is that really? And some of the progress with computers, like encryption mathematics and cipher system cracking are just state secrets. The fucking British gov knew about RSA in 1975, and when RSA came out like a year or two later because MIT nerds independently rediscovered it.
Free software and privacy is getting absolutely BTFO'd, and the people who update the Linux kernel already put DRM faggotry in it and nobody gave a shit, because forking a new kernel is too inconvenient and too hard. People aren't even willing to fork the kernel to modify the obviously shitty DRM stuff out even though they have the full fucking kernel. Meanwhile, in 1990, some guy was willing to just make it from scratch when there was NOTHING for it and when an operating system running on it wouldn't be able to run 1% of the programs of big companies, they just had the will to do it. Stallman made an entire fucking operating system with jack shit when there was literally almost NO proprietary software, but now his efforts are starting to be in vain. The only distro taking a stand against it seems to be the hyper-autist Hyperbola distro, but at that point you might as well switch to BSD, which has it's own problems. Nobody is even willing to use Hyperbola or Parabola autistic distros because 1) their precious internet cards will stop working because those distros are so autistic that they don't even allow proprietary blobs to be loaded and 2) it doesn't matter if you have a non-free BIOS in the first place, so you have to be fucked to go through a shitload of trouble to buy a raspberry pi, rip open the computer, and try to follow the convoluted directions for flashing a coreboot BIOS onto your computer. Nobody has the will to do that anymore, let alone start something from scratch in the name of fundamental freedom. Terry Davis is considered a hero for being one of the last guys left who really made something from scratch even though it didn't have all of the gay programs that everybody loves, but there used to be tons of guys like him. But if you keep having to start from scratch to avoid corporate hegemony ruining freedoms, is that "progress"?
The US Gov's largest computer-tech branch is devoted to having huge data centers in Utah that gather people's communications, and NASA hasn't done fucking jack shit for years. Elon Musk's reusable rockets aren't even novel, NASA did it already (
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=39cjZTCay24
) back when NASA actually used to be based. The last human to walk on the moon is probably going to be gone within a decade. No manned missions to Mars, just stupid probes faffing around and collecting dust samples and everybody coping and pretending that it's important. NASA used to be based because it took a "safety third" philosophy, they knew that their mission was fucking SPACE TRAVEL, and that sometimes people DIE in pursuit of that mission. Now everybody is a pussy. Nobody will go to Mars because the first men on Mars may very, very well not come back.
And returning to my point about "technology" meaning "digital computer stuff". OK, if you went outside without your computer and just looked around, how would you tell it wasn't 1986? The differences in tech use are actually more superficial than they might appear. Different car designs maybe? How about this: what's the difference from 2010? Now it's REALLY hard to tell, because people from 2010 ALSO spent inordinate amounts of time in front of their computer. All of the "advances" seem to be related to some gadget being connected to the internet. Surprise surprise, the "advance" is just connecting more of your shit to the internet (which is the ACTUAL advance, but that achievement was already done, in about 1985, and everything on top of it is frankly trivial). But is this an "advance"? Now there's tons of things that can't be configured in a closed-circuit, local way, AND some evil government has tons of data, not just about what sites you browse, but about when you open your fucking fridge and where you drive in your car and how long you ran on your treadmill and when you turned your heater on, etc, etc.
Another funny example of an "advance" is streaming services for content. We used to have something way better: it was called torrenting the fucking music and movies for free. It took 1 minute and you could have a full HD copy of a movie. But it gets even worse: when you bought a DVD (or even a fucking VHS) you HAD that movie for life, it was your physical copy. When you torrented something, you had a local copy of it on your physical hard drive, which was in your possession. Now normaloids are content to pay tons of money for access to movies on a server they don't control, that can just take down whatever the fuck movies or music they want. JFL at thinking this is unambiguous progress just because of the amount available. So if I'm getting scammed by Spotify, now if my internet is down and I can't connect to some server 100 miles away, I can't play the music I'm paying for. WTF? Meanwhile, back in 2006 I could pull out my mp3 player (which also didn't send my data to the NSA because it was separate from my phone, another thing I'll talk about) and listen to my music on that. Normaloids are also blissfully unaware of how viciously large media companies fought to end torrenting. People who ran torrent sites literally had to go on the run to avoid prosecution by these assholes and people have been thrown into the Government Rape Camps (""Prisons"") for torrenting some faggot's 50 year old art project.
Also: cell phones in general. Are they some great prize? Cell phones are just shitty computers, and the most popular phones don't even allow you to login as some sort of root user that has actual control over the phone. And they send your shit to the NSA, and they allow mass, pathological harassment by tons of different entities (spammers and employers), they're notorious for planned obsolescence, and everything you can do on your phone can be done ten times more conveniently on a (sometimes a lot cheaper) laptop. JFL at phones. WTF is the fucking point of them except for getting harassed and spied on. WTF?
TL;DR Tech stuff goes backwards, sometimes a lot.
Based and Asuka-AVI pilled. But in response to your quote: IS the west good at technology? What has the west achieved technologically that isn't just dressing up technology that's already there? I'm genuinely curious. Everything seems to be in the digital world anyways, and that is what is often meant by "technology". We're starting to run into the limits of Moore's law, and exponential time algorithms seem to put a dent in the view that doubling processor speed in linear time is some sort of huge breakthrough. For end-users, tons of people are starting to realize that old 2010 ThinkPads do whatever they want with Linux, sans specialists that need to use Windows/Mac for some unicorn proprietary software. This just exposes the fact that the main difference between a laptop of yesterday and a laptop of today is basically the GPU and the ability to run photorealistic graphical games. But how much progress is that really? And some of the progress with computers, like encryption mathematics and cipher system cracking are just state secrets. The fucking British gov knew about RSA in 1975, and when RSA came out like a year or two later because MIT nerds independently rediscovered it.
Free software and privacy is getting absolutely BTFO'd, and the people who update the Linux kernel already put DRM faggotry in it and nobody gave a shit, because forking a new kernel is too inconvenient and too hard. People aren't even willing to fork the kernel to modify the obviously shitty DRM stuff out even though they have the full fucking kernel. Meanwhile, in 1990, some guy was willing to just make it from scratch when there was NOTHING for it and when an operating system running on it wouldn't be able to run 1% of the programs of big companies, they just had the will to do it. Stallman made an entire fucking operating system with jack shit when there was literally almost NO proprietary software, but now his efforts are starting to be in vain. The only distro taking a stand against it seems to be the hyper-autist Hyperbola distro, but at that point you might as well switch to BSD, which has it's own problems. Nobody is even willing to use Hyperbola or Parabola autistic distros because 1) their precious internet cards will stop working because those distros are so autistic that they don't even allow proprietary blobs to be loaded and 2) it doesn't matter if you have a non-free BIOS in the first place, so you have to be fucked to go through a shitload of trouble to buy a raspberry pi, rip open the computer, and try to follow the convoluted directions for flashing a coreboot BIOS onto your computer. Nobody has the will to do that anymore, let alone start something from scratch in the name of fundamental freedom. Terry Davis is considered a hero for being one of the last guys left who really made something from scratch even though it didn't have all of the gay programs that everybody loves, but there used to be tons of guys like him. But if you keep having to start from scratch to avoid corporate hegemony ruining freedoms, is that "progress"?
The US Gov's largest computer-tech branch is devoted to having huge data centers in Utah that gather people's communications, and NASA hasn't done fucking jack shit for years. Elon Musk's reusable rockets aren't even novel, NASA did it already (
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=39cjZTCay24
) back when NASA actually used to be based. The last human to walk on the moon is probably going to be gone within a decade. No manned missions to Mars, just stupid probes faffing around and collecting dust samples and everybody coping and pretending that it's important. NASA used to be based because it took a "safety third" philosophy, they knew that their mission was fucking SPACE TRAVEL, and that sometimes people DIE in pursuit of that mission. Now everybody is a pussy. Nobody will go to Mars because the first men on Mars may very, very well not come back.
And returning to my point about "technology" meaning "digital computer stuff". OK, if you went outside without your computer and just looked around, how would you tell it wasn't 1986? The differences in tech use are actually more superficial than they might appear. Different car designs maybe? How about this: what's the difference from 2010? Now it's REALLY hard to tell, because people from 2010 ALSO spent inordinate amounts of time in front of their computer. All of the "advances" seem to be related to some gadget being connected to the internet. Surprise surprise, the "advance" is just connecting more of your shit to the internet (which is the ACTUAL advance, but that achievement was already done, in about 1985, and everything on top of it is frankly trivial). But is this an "advance"? Now there's tons of things that can't be configured in a closed-circuit, local way, AND some evil government has tons of data, not just about what sites you browse, but about when you open your fucking fridge and where you drive in your car and how long you ran on your treadmill and when you turned your heater on, etc, etc.
Another funny example of an "advance" is streaming services for content. We used to have something way better: it was called torrenting the fucking music and movies for free. It took 1 minute and you could have a full HD copy of a movie. But it gets even worse: when you bought a DVD (or even a fucking VHS) you HAD that movie for life, it was your physical copy. When you torrented something, you had a local copy of it on your physical hard drive, which was in your possession. Now normaloids are content to pay tons of money for access to movies on a server they don't control, that can just take down whatever the fuck movies or music they want. JFL at thinking this is unambiguous progress just because of the amount available. So if I'm getting scammed by Spotify, now if my internet is down and I can't connect to some server 100 miles away, I can't play the music I'm paying for. WTF? Meanwhile, back in 2006 I could pull out my mp3 player (which also didn't send my data to the NSA because it was separate from my phone, another thing I'll talk about) and listen to my music on that. Normaloids are also blissfully unaware of how viciously large media companies fought to end torrenting. People who ran torrent sites literally had to go on the run to avoid prosecution by these assholes and people have been thrown into the Government Rape Camps (""Prisons"") for torrenting some faggot's 50 year old art project.
Also: cell phones in general. Are they some great prize? Cell phones are just shitty computers, and the most popular phones don't even allow you to login as some sort of root user that has actual control over the phone. And they send your shit to the NSA, and they allow mass, pathological harassment by tons of different entities (spammers and employers), they're notorious for planned obsolescence, and everything you can do on your phone can be done ten times more conveniently on a (sometimes a lot cheaper) laptop. JFL at phones. WTF is the fucking point of them except for getting harassed and spied on. WTF?
TL;DR Tech stuff goes backwards, sometimes a lot.
