Decade Dissonance: Difference between revisions

{{quote|'''Not Invented Here:''' ''Trade of technology will not exist. One place in the world will have all the techno-gadgets while all the others will be harvesting dirt.''|''[[The Grand List of Console Role Playing Game Cliches]]'' }}

 

 

Every country is different thanks to culture and geography, and no two cities in any one country are alike either. However some worlds can take this to extremes, making two side by side cities as different as night and day. The differences can be purely cosmetic or go all the way to lifestyle, architecture, and even technology. You can have a [[Utopia]] city made of [[Crystal Spires and Togas]] sitting smack dab next to a ghetto...sorry, "quaint hamlet" that [[Medieval Stasis|never left]] [[The Middle Ages]].

== Anime & Manga ==

* In ''Windaria'', the coastal city-state of Itha runs on windmills and admittedly sophisticated dams and waterwheels, and its military has hot-air balloons, crossbows, Molotov cocktails, and some kind of unarmoured hovercraft. The nearby mountain kingdom of Paro is a dieselpunk dystopia with monoplanes, assault rifles, and tanks. Somehow they fight a war on equal terms.

* In ''[[One Piece (Manga)|One Piece]]'', Vivi explains that the difficulties of mass travel among the islands Grand Line, which include sea monsters, needing place-specific compasses, and dealing with extremely unpredictable weather, means that culture and technology can vary widely from island to island. The end result are islands that range from existing in a [[Medieval Stasis|Pre-Historical Stasis]] to a sprawling desert kingdom to a city of shipbuilders that was able to build a [[Cool Train]] that could run on the ocean to a society where bionic technology is common and most animals are cyborgs. The only people shown regularly traveling from island to island are pirates who acknowledge the risks and take them anyway, and government officials such as the Marines who possess the technology to mitigate the hazards.

 

* ''[[Ravenloft]]'' can be bad for this, with domains ranging from the Classical Era to Psuedo-Victorian era. Granted it makes more sense when you realize each domain is snatched up from a different world, and some of the [[Dark Lord|Dark Lords]] tend to isolate their populations from the influence for multiple reasons.

** The Hollow World CD&D setting has a similar patchwork feel to it, for pretty much the same reason: it was designed by the Immortals to preserve favorite cultures which were dying out on the planet's surface, and they used really powerful magic to make sure these cultures [[Status Quo Is God|would neither mix nor change]].

** This tropes makes sense because travel on Rifts Earth is extremely dangerous. The vast majority of people from low tech/low magic communities never travel more than a mile or two from their home town. In a lot of cases, they probably don't even ''know'' there's a massive city full of magical and/or technological marvels only 50 miles away, and vice versa.

 

** One group of Andaman natives, the Sentinelese, actively ''refuse'' any contact with the outside world, even resorting to violence sometimes. Nowadays Indian authorities just leave them alone and look around so that everyone else does the same.

* During the Middle Ages, Constantinople embodied this trope (and to a lesser extent, the rest of the Byzantine Empire) with regards to Europe. At a time when Western Europe was still recovering from the fall of Rome and the resulting collapse of infrastructure, they had a teeming cosmopolitan city that maintained and improved on most of the old Roman building traditions. Add in fairly high literacy rates, a university system, a mature legal system, and a stable bureaucracy, and then compare it to just about any other European country at the time. Europe got better ''eventually'' - i.e. the mid-to-late late nineteenth century. By then, of course, Constantinople had long-since been raided by marauding crusaders and taken over by the Ottomans, under whom it continued to be rather well-kept relative to Europe until the 'Great Divergence' we mentioned earlier.

*** Amish acceptance of technology is based on the effect it has on their community, particularly if the device would prevent them from being self-sufficient. Running a compressor using purchased fuel and using air power (aka "Amish Electricity") for appliances is fine, but paying a monthly bill for electricity is not. Some tech like solar panels and pay-as-you-go cell phones are accepted on these grounds, while many Amish are happy to pay for a ride to work in a car.

** Another rather blatant example is the differences between South Korea and its neighbor North Korea. North Korea is sandwiched between South Korea and China, two industrial nations with healthy economies. In comparison, North Korea has literally zero electricity usage and infrastructure, and outside the capital, you'll only find farmland and military bases. To put things in perspective, [http://tizona.files.wordpress.com/2008/03/north-korea-is-dark.jpg this is what North Korea looks like at night compared to its wealthier neighbors].

[[Category:Truth in Television]]

[[Category:Decade Dissonance]]