Low Culture, High Tech: Difference between revisions

 

{{examples}}

== [[Anime]] and [[Manga]] ==

* The nations of Dissith and Anatore in ''[[Last Exile]]'' qualify by virtue of not having anti-gravity technology which they lease from the Guild. The best they've developed is small fighter planes.

* In [[David Drake]]'s ''Northworld'' trilogy, "Smiths" used their link with ... '''something''' referred to as the Matrix ... to create ultra-tech [[Power Armor]]—in an otherwise medieval culture. Hero Nils Hansen, who came from a star-traveling civilization, got into one of these suits of armor and reasoned that it had to include an [[Artificial Intelligence]] capable of, for instance, giving him advanced sensor displays. The warriors he was partnered with, who had years more experience with the suits than he did, were stunned to discover what their visuals could show once they spoke the commands Hansen told them to speak. IFF, night vision, targeting, maps, communication (including video) at greater than shouting distance ... apparently no one, until Hansen showed up, was using these capabilities.

 

* ''[[Doctor Who]]'' has a variation of this: A Sontaran [[Giving Radio to the Romans|gives rifles to a 17th century English warlord]]. Another episode has the boss of a mining rig hire an arms dealer to sell defective weapons to the natives of a moon that orbits his planet. This is to justify removing said natives because his [[Mega Corp|company]] wants that moon.

* The alien invaders in one ''[[Saturday Night Live]]'' sketch apparently had this problem. After landing and threatening the people of Earth with destruction, they overplay their hand, as the Earthlings do not, in fact, tremble before the power of their mighty flintlock muskets. It seems all their technology ''other'' than starships was woefully behind that of 1990s Earth.

* On ''[[Earth 2]]'', the Terrians (underground-dwelling humanoids who share a symbiotic relationship with their homeworld) appear to be tribes of Hunter-Gatherers, but due to [[Green Rocks|the green rock-like properties of their planet]], wield [[Energy Weapons|staffs that shoot lightning bolts]]. It's implied several times in the series that the Terrians used to be much more like humans, and may even have had more conventional, industrial technology, before they evolved into a species of benevolent symbiotes.

 

* ''[[Warhammer 40,000]]'':

** This is pretty much the [[Planet of Hats|hat]] that the orks wear. Some of their tech is either extremely basic, looted, or [[Clap Your Hands If You Believe|only works because they think it's supposed to]]. Other technological knowledge is carried genetically in Meks.

* ''[[Fallout]]'':

** Every game is like this, with only a few of the most advanced factions (Brotherhood of Steel, Enclave) actually understanding any technology more complicated than basic firearms and explosives, although other factions do utilise them, thanks to it being a [[Scavenger World]].

* The Skedar from ''[[Perfect Dark]]'', who have spaceships and cloning technology but no culture to speak of besides warfare and violence.

* ''Somewhat'' the case involving the Pieces of Eden in ''[[Assassin's Creed]]'', although by the time of ''Revelations'' (the fourth main game) the Abstergo Industries articles given to Abstergo Industries' secret insiders reveal that they knew a lot more about the Pieces than was let on in the first game.

** Many contemporary authors lampshaded the irony of European slave-traders being forced to accept the terms of trade dictated to them by African slave-traders; the latter were just as well if not better-armed (not to mention vastly more numerous) than the former, so they largely had to accept what the latter had to offer. There are also many instances of European would-be settlers being repelled by natives armed with European weapons. The Great Plains of central north America - the heartland of the modern USA - was one such region, with Argentina and New Zealand being others. The way things worked out, the Europeans who sold them the weapons and the Europeans who tried to settle their lands [[Hoist by His Own Petard|were often countrymen.]] This all changed in the 19th Century with the advent of the repeating rifle, of course.

* Averted in Japan. Portuguese traders brought firearms to Japan, thinking that the Japanese would need them to keep supplying the technology. Within a few years, Japanese smiths had taken them apart and were building even better ones. It's been argued that if the Tokugawa Shoguns (working through the Emperor) hadn't deliberately suppressed firearms manufacture, Japan would have been one of the world's best armed countries up until the nineteenth century and the advent of sophisticated, largely machine-produced repeating rifles &c. - all things which require an industrial base, something which we have no reason to suppose the permission of firearms would result in, as the trends of general economic development in Japan were not conducive to the economic aberration which is industrialisation.

* In Mexico, the Spanish settlers thought it would be safe to sell horses to the Indians as long as they didn't sell them guns. Likewise in (what would later become) USA, British settlers thought it would be safe to sell guns to the Indians as long as they didn't sell horses.

* In William Kamkwamba's autobiography ''The Boy Who Harnessed The Wind'', it is mentioned repeatedly that many people in the African nation of Malawi often don't have electricity or running water, but nonetheless own cell phones. Of course, they have to go into town to charge them.

 

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