The list of technologies that have not become a front for consolidation of resources and power appears below:
For instance, we still use steel - and for 99% of humanity's existence nobody knew how to make it. It turns out it's really easy, and it's just one amongst countless other techs along a similar lines. A human who spent a year dedicating himself to consuming freely accessible information, who was then warped back into the past, could send humanity forward by tens of thousands of years - all by himself.
We're all free to use these technologies in any way we see fit, but somehow we've created this weird society where we have all the potential in the world, but instead we spend inordinate amounts of time doing pointless things like shit posting on the internet and mostly being upset about what we can't do and/or have, even though even if we had access to such in all probability we'd again take it for granted and find something else to complain about.
This isn't really a condemnation of humanity. Probably this sort of eternal discontent we have is precisely what drove us to discover all of these great things. Like I mean who in their right mind would have left the basic oasis of Africa to go freeze their ass off and struggle just to live in the inhospitable areas up north? There's something wrong with that guy, and that guy is all of us, for the most part.
I don't know that this is the correct characterization of how out-of-Africa migrations progressed. Youth (and people with the influence to shield themselves from danger) are expeditious, families and societies head where living looks to be easier and away from where living looks to be hard, whatever the pressure may be.
Only recently in my life have I developed an appreciation for fiction, because it contains deep insights into human behavior. I often fantasize about traveling back to the past, and explaining to folks that we've been to the moon, explored the planets, etc. It's a fun thought exercize, but I think the "reality" of such an experience would be more like this:
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/11870/11870-h/11870-h.htm#li...
>this weird society where ... we spend inordinate amounts of time ... shit posting
human life is a strange business that has come about as a fleeting side effect of eons of DNA reproduction. I think things could maybe be improved there.
Wow! That's a great many indeed. Can you just name 1 though? Just 1?
Let's start with fire, certainly making and controlling fire is a skill that uses knowledge, a "technology". Go from there, try to find one technology that did not find itself in the service of power, for consolidating resources, etc..
Don't get me wrong, I think might, both intellectual and physical, should serve the purposes of benevolence and valour. I'm not complaining, I'm taking note of reality.
...PBS? Sesame Street has only ever been a boon to the common kid.
And printing presses themselves ended up being licensed by the state, e.g. this in England: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Licensing_of_the_Press_Act_166...
Summary of above: cool and useful!
Example based on the above: cool and insightful!
Slamming someone for using a european example because that's what they know: not cool, not insightful, not useful.
Please don't take out your embarrassment on me.
You know exactly why this in particular hits a nerve.
That was only true for a subset of polities. Not all had kings, and some had elected kings etc.
the wheel
bicycles
sewing machines
hand tools
musical instruments
open radio bands like CB and FRS
ham radio (licensing exists but not corporate control)
meshtastic
blacksmithing
glass blowing
garden tools
propane camp stoves
mechanical clocks and watches
open source software (the ecosystem overall, not specific projects)
email as a protocol
RSS
SMS as a protocol
USB storage devices
SIP based VOIP
mesh networking gear
3d printers in the hobby market
drones under 250g
amateur astronomy gear
microcontrollers like Arduino
LED strips and controllers
bicycles
composting tech
sourdough starter culture tech (yes really)bicycles --> police forces, see the Japanese in Malaya 1941
sewing machines --> factory labor, mass production of clothes
hand tools --> Guild systems
musical instruments --> organized religion, national anthems, cultural soft power
open radio bands --> policing, surveillance
blacksmithing --> weapons
etc. etc. we can do this all day :)
> The list of technologies that have not become a front for consolidation of resources and power _and which consumed capital investments equal to a significant portion of the entire market_ appears below
I love torrent, but it's legal used are cripple by corporate infra, so it's mostly florishing thanks to illegal stuff paid by shady ads.
What's the business model though? Most Russian torrents are about giving away copyrighted stuff for free.
UPD: I've checked what ads it shows me on Rutracker - it's VPN services and online gambling. Youtube and Facebook have shown me worse
If anything I have more sympathy for that mafia.
It's also of note that on Facebook I don't get many online casino ads, I get mostly reMarkable ads, there was one from Roli when they launched their new instrument, and others were mostly advertising stuff to me that I already bought elsewhere. I think it might be because I had banned the first dozen of such ads, and they stopped coming.
BTC itself can't do that: the transaction rate would be borderline even just for a low-ball estimate of all the once-a-month payments happening in just the city of Berlin.
The various proposals for layer-2 stuff makes it look like a bunch of banks using a funky currency without any of the controls that exist because weird currencies are bad for business, but AFAICT because of that, the BTC part itself works like interbank balancing transactions, and the BTC transaction rate isn't sufficient to cover once-a-day interbank balancing transactions.