Is Chinese technological capability starting to worry you?
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Why would it worry me? Are other countries not allowed to prosper or something?
But they still can’t provide decent lavatorial facilities, that’s what get’s me every time this discussion comes up, they are definitely the most innovative country when it comes to torture though.
Me neither. I don’t understand why people feel like America has to be best at everything. I mean, it would be nice. We’d have a better standard of living. But we’re just not set up very efficiently to accomplish much. Either we’re not caring enough of our fellow citizens or we’re not competitive enough or both. Either way, we are losing talent. Shooting ourselves in our collective foot.
Americans don’t look at the long term. So when some other nation appears who has looked at the long term and then acted on it, some of us freak out. But the people who freak out don’t know where we went wrong and they usually do exactly the wrong things to deal with it. Typical.
They’re going to dominate the world, but I don’t really care, it’s not like the American-dominated world was all that lovely…
Besides, the Chinese have more right to supremacy than anyone else.
Also, so what? A computer? Fast trains? Americans built The H-Bomb!
Isn’t it better to live in a country that focuses its technological advances based upon the needs of the population versus keeping up with the Jones? Or Lees in this case?
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There has been a change in attitude in this country. When the Russians put up the first satellite, the feeling was that we had to and would catch up to them. There now seems to be this sense that we are in an inescapable decline. This may become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
No.
Not until there are a billion Chines running down my street with tasers in their hands.
Not in the slightest.
Some of the greatest technological achievements were teh result of competition. Look at how fast our space program grew, spinning off all sorts of technologies when we were trying to beat Russia.
The US is all about competition… until we start to lose. Then we blow shit up!
@LostInParadise Not exactly. It’s just that there are many people in power than want to prosper from the status quo and there isn’t much the average voter thinks they can do about it. Of course, it might help if more people actually understood technology a bit better; at least well enough to use more than 10% of the capabilities of the electronics they have. Look at how many people were/are confused and misled about Net Neutrality!
I think that it is more accurate to say that we want to be the best but don’t want to have to learn how or have to do anything; we want greatness at no cost with no effort and then get disappointed when our willful ignorance and lack of effort don’t net us the results we want.
Yes – but not in the way you mean.
I’m worried if this desire for speed and technology (more cars! more spaceflights! more glory!) in terms of its environmental and cultural toll. It’s making us intolerant of people who choose more simple ways of living—the protest against the high speed rail earlier this year in Hong Kong is a case in point (scroll down to the middle of the entry here)
Thoughtless rampant progress x 1.3 billion = bad news for our planet
The Chinese should be condemned for what they do wrong, and praised for what they do right. I think they deserve Congratulations on their high speed trains, their supercomputers, their beautiful subways, and thousands of other good things.
Eventually their advancements, and our advancements will connect together like mycelium, making a better future for everyone. The retired intellectual elite of China is pushing for more liberty. While America slips in the wrong direction, China is slowly heading into a better direction. This does not worry me in the competitive sense. I just think the world’s nations should strive for all the things they want, except anything authoritarian in nature. Technological advancements are good for humanity, despite the dark side of all good things.
We need all the innovation we can get. Was America worried when Germans invented the car? Of course not. America invented the assembly line. Was Switzerland worried when this happened? Of course not. The Swiss invented the turbocharger. Later, the first production turbocharged automobile engines came from General Motors.
This is how progress works on a global level.
American should be worried about the strong climate change denial movement in their country slowing down innovation in green technology.
@mattbrowne “American should be worried about the strong climate change denial movement in their country slowing down innovation in green technology.”
This includes battery technology that may trickle down to other applications. I mean, the battery in the average cell phone is a tiny thing but packs more power than a pack ten times the size from a few years ago. And would we have the iPad if it required a five pound battery pack to run for three hours?
Of course, at this rate, Zimbabwe will surpass us in technological achievement in a couple of decades.
@jerv – I don’t think lithium is the longer term answer. It’s too rare on Earth and will soon become very expensive. We need more ideas.
Chinese capability does not worry me.
American dumbassery does worry me.
If you want to build a large-scale solar or wind energy plant, you pretty much have to buy Chinese hardware.
China is laughing at our energy investment, the decade-long (so far) Iraq war.
@mattbrowne Think of Lithium-based batteries as an interim step. They are better than what we had, and it will take research to find something better.
No. Competition is good for America. It will make America better in the long-run. Sometimes you need “someone” who is better than you are to get you going, and to make you pull up “your socks”. Besides, Chinese technological capability will benefit everyone, adding to the technological progression of the entire world.
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