4 ms·

Some tech giants of the US are legitimate technology giants, others are just land grabbers that do something simple at scale(i.e. sharing status updates with pe

by mrtksn 3y ago

Some tech giants of the US are legitimate technology giants, others are just land grabbers that do something simple at scale(i.e. sharing status updates with peers). EU lacks on the second one, also its the one that has all the controversy. Yet, I wouldn't downplay the USA's hard tech capabilities and talent pool. IMHO the US is special, as it doesn't have the baggage from the history that spans thousands of years on the record. EU is the old neighbourhood that once had all the cool new stuff but now is focused on preserving what they accumulated, life is good there but not much is happening. The USA is the newly built neighbourhood that got hip and trendy and has all the new cool stuff. China is this neighbourhood that once was great, lost its lure but lately it is up and coming with some of the coolest new stuff being there.

denton-scratch 3y ago
> IMHO the US is special, as it doesn't have the baggage from the history that spans thousands of years on the record. Interestingly, there were civilizations in America thousands of years ago, as there were in Europe. The USA was founded a coupla hundred years before the EU.
- dukeyukey 3y ago
  Sure, the the EU has _massive_ cultural baggage because it's comprised of civilisation whic, by-and-large, have thousands of years of history with each other, on the same (limited) land. The US is vastly more culturally homogenous, with more land, and a unified government.
  - denton-scratch 3y ago
    > have thousands of years of history with each other Not really. In many parts of what is now Germany, people spoke dialects that were incomprehensible even to people in the next valley; this was as recently as the 19thC. In the 20thC, a British leader could speak of Czeckoslovakia as "a faraway country of which we know little". Modern Frenchmen would regard their countrymen from 2K years ago as completely alien. Modern Greeks speak a language that is recognizably derived from ancient Greek, but in other cultural respects, modern and ancient Greeks are very different. Those ancient societies regarded their neighbours as barbarian enemies, not as neighbours they shared a culture with. It's only since (say) the 5thC AD that European culture began to become more homogenous. BTW, the idea that the US government is "unified" looks like a sick joke, from my perspective.
- bluGill 3y ago
  The EU didn't conquer and replace the old society, most of the governments in the EU predate the EU. The US did take many concepts from Europe (common law, republic government), but threw away many others. The EU looks a lot like the US articles of confederation which the US scrapped after about 10 years for the current constitution because the articles were not powerful enough. (though I personally think the articles only needed some minor tweaks - that is a different debate not worth getting into). The EU's is seeing the same problems those who wanted to replace the articles with the constitution were seeing - but are the worth replacing/fixing is an open question that the EU should be debating.
mensetmanusman 3y ago
And China was just about to grab the reigns, but they turned inward and their population and prognosis is collapsing.

by mrtksn 3y ago

denton-scratch 3y ago

> IMHO the US is special, as it doesn't have the baggage from the history that spans thousands of years on the record. Interestingly, there were civilizations in America thousands of years ago, as there were in Europe. The USA was founded a coupla hundred years before the EU.

dukeyukey 3y ago
Sure, the the EU has _massive_ cultural baggage because it's comprised of civilisation whic, by-and-large, have thousands of years of history with each other, on the same (limited) land. The US is vastly more culturally homogenous, with more land, and a unified government.
- denton-scratch 3y ago
  > have thousands of years of history with each other Not really. In many parts of what is now Germany, people spoke dialects that were incomprehensible even to people in the next valley; this was as recently as the 19thC. In the 20thC, a British leader could speak of Czeckoslovakia as "a faraway country of which we know little". Modern Frenchmen would regard their countrymen from 2K years ago as completely alien. Modern Greeks speak a language that is recognizably derived from ancient Greek, but in other cultural respects, modern and ancient Greeks are very different. Those ancient societies regarded their neighbours as barbarian enemies, not as neighbours they shared a culture with. It's only since (say) the 5thC AD that European culture began to become more homogenous. BTW, the idea that the US government is "unified" looks like a sick joke, from my perspective.
bluGill 3y ago
The EU didn't conquer and replace the old society, most of the governments in the EU predate the EU. The US did take many concepts from Europe (common law, republic government), but threw away many others. The EU looks a lot like the US articles of confederation which the US scrapped after about 10 years for the current constitution because the articles were not powerful enough. (though I personally think the articles only needed some minor tweaks - that is a different debate not worth getting into). The EU's is seeing the same problems those who wanted to replace the articles with the constitution were seeing - but are the worth replacing/fixing is an open question that the EU should be debating.

mensetmanusman 3y ago

And China was just about to grab the reigns, but they turned inward and their population and prognosis is collapsing.