March 4, 2005
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You know, something to which I’ve had a hard time adjusting is realizing the USA is not the most technologically up-to-date country in absolutely everything under the sun.
Take the new video-enabled cell phones. Turns out this is old hat in Europe and Asia. Apparently they’ve had this capability for years now (lamentably, one of the most popular uses of it is for so-called “adult” material).
When I was growing up it was a truism that the rest of the world lagged far behind us in technology. We were the world’s “Kansas City”, where everything was more up to date.
[wistfully] Those were the days. Now it’s commonplace to read that a new game system has been released in Japan, and is expected to hit our shores several months later. Or that some keen technological feature is currently only available in Europe.
I wonder if the glory days are gone for good, or if someday we’ll regain our position as the leader in all things technological?
Comments (2)
The people coming up with all this technology were all trained in the US, which still has the best universities in the world (yes, that does include Oxford and Cambridge.) And if they weren’t trained in the US, then they were trained by professors who were trained in the US. I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. Most of today’s grad students in the sciences are foreign born. Americans can’t cut it.
Chris was travelin to Japan a lot for a while, and often mentioned how far ahead of us they are with their cel phones and cameras and computer stuff. I can’t even manage to change the ring tone on the cel phone, I’d probably never be able to figure out pictures!