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Culture War Roundup for the week of November 28, 2022

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When it comes to technological/product innovation, I think it's cars and gaming consoles that are the anomalies/outliers--it's probably normal for most technologies to improve in ways so incremental, irrespective of time intervals, that you'd have to check serial numbers in some cases (I think Teslas are an example of this).

Speaking of serial numbers, firearms are a good example of a technological field that doesn't quite sort into generations (I mean, it kinda does (percussion, metallic cartridges, breechloaders, smokeless powder, automatic rifles), but it seems like there's very much an unevenly-distributed-future effect in many parts of the history, and wars were pretty much the only thing that pushed people to seek improvement there).

As a PC gamer, it upsets me a tiny bit that the history of PC gaming hardware is harder to divvy up like with consoles (after all, once you're into the era of DOS PCs (which already ran concurrently with more fixed-spec computers like the C64 and, later, the Amiga), it gets messy distinguishing between OG IBMs, Turbo XTs, Pentiums and so on), but that's just part of the price paid for being able to stay on the cutting edge on your own terms.

I think trying to revolutionize banking would result in a lot of headache/heartache, it's very constrained and regulated for good reasons. Shipping is also hard, because it requires fundamental technological revolutions that would change a hell of a lot of other things (better drones, easier supersonic flight, subterranian cross-continental hyperloop tunnels, teleportation??).