I'm thinking of making it easy to "teleport" to any location within the cage
Imagine typing in coordinates or picking a location on a map, and then suddenly your phone or any other device is at that location inside the cage, by a combination of GPS, cellular and WiFi spoofing
Good idea! They wouldn't have been able to do any applications without a voltaic cell, and it would have been a novelty. Like gunpowder in ancient China.
The Chinese invented cannons about the time they invented gun power. However by coincidence their forts used stone walls thick enough to resist cannon fire and so it was not really better than the various catapult systems they also had (which also couldn't breach their fort walls).
The introduction of counterweight trebuchet from the Mongol empire in Persia for the seige of the Southern Sung city of Xiangyang is well documented here:
I like the idea of pausing a seige in China to send a message to some experts in Mosul, wait for them to ride back, then build their novel device, and win.
You have to know it’s possible, and be able to aim at useful internal targets despite this being well before aerial surveillance photographs and calculus.
My guess is there’s probably a whole bunch of neat things we could build with existing manufacturing tools, that we don’t yet know are even possible, and which the future will have similar discussions about.
The force of tradition is amazing. Imagine centuries knowing how to make something that explodes violently, and using it for entertainment instead of weapons.
Just like how Mesoamerican civilizations invented the wheel, but only used it on children toys and not for transportation. There were no draft animals in the region, but they didn't even make wheelbarrows.
Keep in mind, the Chinese were using bombs, granades, and rockets in warfare. Cannons were slowly being incorporated during the Ming.
It’s just that, the Chinese also had standardized crossbows capable of punching through armor, and allowed for long range sniping, centuries before gunpowder. The Manchus who founded the Qing dynasty valued archery, and were slower to adopt firearms. The mid and late Qing period saw firearm military units, with bows and arrows evolved for powerful short range attacks, ceding long range to firearms.
Even so, it looks like Chinese generals were interested in fielding firearms, and found them effective.
As far as Mesoamericans and wheels, I’m not sure the hilly terrain and dense jungle would make wheeled transports that easy. They seemed to be able to create step pyramids with stone just fine.
The Mesoamerican civilizations did not have copper, bronze, or iron metallurgy which is a prerequisite for making the metal rims needed for transportation wheels. A wooden wheel without a metal rim is too fragile for transportation.
Without the wheel, humans are actually relatively comparable to other pack animals in carrying efficiency. It is the wheel that makes moving larger loads more efficient which makes it advantageous to domesticate pack animals that can exert greater force.
Bronze was extremely common in Mesoamerica for household goods like needles and fishhooks. Copper was also common, but mainly for ceremonial and ornamental objects like bells.
As for wooden wheels being too fragile, you can build a perfectly good wheel without metal bands. It's simply going to be heavy and annoying if you're trying to run a wagon to Oregon.
Another example that I read about once and have never been able to verify (or it may be completely made up) is that the because the Chinese invented porcelain first (which was more sturdy than glass or something) they never bothered with glass, which meant they missed out on all the cool astronomical discoveries (which then has implications on their development of mathematics and physics).
Again, no idea if there is any validity to this or just something completely made up.
I always call this a "local maximum" problem. Once you've optimized the crap out of your tech, any change makes it worse (e.g., replacing crossbows with primitive guns). But if you do switch, then optimizing that technology takes you to an even higher maximum.
The problem is that you have to go backwards to go forwards, and you can't always predict (or convince the powers-that-be) that the end result will be better.
Extremely relevant to electric cars. Looks like we are close to electric > ICE, (or past that point, whatever), but it was a long painful time of hyping subpar cars by those who believed in the potential of the technology.
Agreed! I also believe that once we flip (EV > ICE) the momentum goes the other way.
For example, let's say that 50% of cars on the road are EVs. Now gas stations have a problem. You can't survive with half your customers gone, so maybe half the gas stations go out of business. But that means your nearest gas station is much further away, so now the incentive for EV goes up.
In California (and the Bay Area, particularly), I bet we'll see this relatively soon.
I like this description of the problem and the suggestion:
> Today on Twitter, as on most social media, justice works in a roughly Stalinist style. The normal penalty is permanent execution. There is no transparent explanation for why an account is executed, before or after the execution. It has simply “violated the Twitter rules.” The public rules are extremely abstract and could theoretically justify almost any execution. The private rulebook by which the secret police, or “Ministry of Trust and Safety,” operates, is of course as secret as everything about the secret police.
> Of course, it is easy to observe that a two-day-old spam account does not deserve a six-month trial, with lawyers, before getting the bullet it needs in the back of the neck. Due process in this context must not be a clone of the IRL judicial system, which is more broken than anyone can possibly imagine.
> And there is a simple solution to the problem of scaling due process: *scale the level of due process to the size of the account*. An account with a million (real) followers might well deserve a six-week public trial, perhaps even with some kind of counsel. The spammer with 20 followers? Any cop can shoot him, as at present, and leave the body by the side of the road as a warning to others.
> There is a use for online Stalinist justice—it is only an injustice when it is disproportional to the user’s investment in the service. When Twitter is your career and any cop can just shoot you, an eerie atmosphere of terror pervades everything.
Was your society any less market-driven during your parents' generation, when the factory worker could support a family with a single income?
On the other hand, are societies like India or China becoming less capitalistic, where many of these trends are broadly moving in the opposite direction?
My sense for WhatsApp's dominance is peripheral contacts. I can convince close friends and family to move to Signal, but not distant friends, especially the large groups I'm in.
I'm pretty bearish on Signal for this reason. (even though I use it personally)
The playbook for unlocking adoption would be via a 'minority rule' where Signal users refuse to talk to people on WA, but I don't see that happening anytime soon.
I actually did just that. Changed my status to “only reachable by signal app” also same message on my profile pic.
Just got around 5 people who talk to me on whatsapp already writing me on signal without problem. And funny thing 3/5 have also done same to their whatsapp now
Imagine typing in coordinates or picking a location on a map, and then suddenly your phone or any other device is at that location inside the cage, by a combination of GPS, cellular and WiFi spoofing
My former manager called it a portal haha: https://x.com/masadfrost/status/1856467695606345756