Quote:: Darwithe.
Another thing to mull over about the tech levels in Naruto, they have both power poles and vending machines.
I think I got this one. The answer military tech. Today's Earth is mechanized heavily in warfare... Naruto's world is heavy of ninja. Ninja-Tech in stead of Mecha-Techs the reason.
Why? Lets do a reverse history of today's 'I can see your face a tenth of a second before you go BOOM' missiles. Black and white is the image, but they could do color if they really wanted to. Camera tipped computer guided missiles were proceeded by heat seeking missiles and laser guided missiles. These missiles were great because it takes far less effort to hit moving objects than those wire guided missiles of WWII. Literally you shot a dart from your plane at theirs with a wire string attached to it that your missile rode like a zip line. Which were great because they hit the intended target better than rockets.
Rockets are dumb fire or Point and Shoot missiles. Rockets existed during the American Revolution (and long before hand), so theyre not exactly new weapons. In WWI, a new incredible super weapon came around. This thing was devastatingly effective and expensive. To stop these annoyingly effective weapons without the incredibly expensive method of bashing them against each other they make easily aimable man sized weapons. The super weapon was the tank. The cheap counter weapon was the bazooka or shoulder-mounted rocket launch or Panzer Faust, etc.
So the question is where did the tank come from? Answer: WWI's battles were mostly fought under the conditions of the ecological nightmare known as trench warfare (TW). The idea behind TW is that someone finally caught on that literally standing out in the open and shooting at each other from a few feat away in some cases. Now snipers had a bad habit of being banned from armies for political correctness issues, even though they kept proving there effectiveness... but then those people though that 'wall of lead' and 'hail of arrow' were honorable so that actually bothering to aim at a target was too mean or something s that made snipers worse during peace time. Ah, political correctness getting your own troops killed so you can feel nicer about killling people.
Anyway, the idea of TW is Like this. Getting shot sucks. Lets not get shot. How? Lets hide in a hole in the ground. Now I'm getting shot less, but this hole is crowded. Lets make it bigger. Well now I've dug into the other guy's hole and he shot me. Okay, lets make the hole really, really long instead. So your sitting around in a long hole and want to kill the other guys, but can't dig to them. So a bunch of your guys climb out of your hole and run across the area between your hole and the other guy's hole. Hey, we made it to the other guys hole, wee! Yeah, but we got shot when we to got out of our hole. But we got in their hole. The other guy's shoot at your guys when they are running across from one hole to the other hole they shoot at your guys not in the hole, going both ways.
Then some jerk adds a machine gun or 12 to his really long hole and then 4-6 of every ten guy that get out of the hole get shot (not necessarily killed, but still shot). Both sides helpfully play loud music to announce when they are getting out of their hole and when they are going to run back to there hole. If your really lucky you get to get out of your hole and drag guy not in your hole back in (dead guys so the stop stinking up the place and live guys so the can get help), and yes your getting shot at. Then some joker put up barbed wire and now if running around not shooting at people til you get to their hole, as they shot at you with machine guns was bad enough, now you get stuck to the field and then get shot. Retrieval takes longer so you spend more time getting shot at). Which made the idea of staying in the hole to not get shot far less effective. To the tune of none of the guys outside the hole getting back. Not that this stopped you from having to leave the hole.
Strangely, when people fired rockets at the other hole you got happier. Rockets that missed their hole made smaller holes that you could not get shot in on the way across the kind of battlefield TW was designed to avoid. Didn't that work well!
So taking that idea of not getting shot further they decided on making portable cover (not personally getting shot was a high priority of the guys involved) that had treads (tires popping makes it not so mobile cover) and put a gun on top of it. So then they could go from one hole to the other (not the target other guys really long hole) faster and safer without getting stuck to the ground and getting shot. Which was nice until the other guys did the same thing and now they are coming into your hole.
So shooting the tank didn't work so well with bullets, so they made a rocket launcher that shot the rockets in straight lines instead of arching over head. That or the leave explody things to let the get blown up without coming out of your hole... lets call them 'mines'.
Trench warfare is in short... Tying to games of Whack-A-Mole and giving the moles in question guns.
The point of that mess is that technology is primarily driven by coming up with a way to kill people without getting killed as often yourself. The other guy does the same thing.
So why do the have such a different tech level and many of the same things? Military evolution. The ultimate weapon is one that kills the other guy in a way they can't do anything about.
For instance say the other guys have muskets. So you come up with the great idea of not getting shot trying to off the other guy. Only instead of hiding behind something you counter by getting fast enough to move out of the way, at least for long enough those guys to miss, then poking him with a pointy metal sticks until they dies of it. I mean its really hard to aim while moving fast enough to not get shot so your not going to use muskets yourself. Loading a musket at that speed is asking to new black powder eye-drops. Now with extra BURNing sensation.
So then the other guy does the same thing and now your poking each other with pointy bits of metal really, really fast is the preferred method of killing each other, as opposed to flinging little metal and lead rocks at each other. Those come later with less gunpowder and more muscle power. Then someone gets the idea of killing him before the other guy knows your there to poke him with pointy metal things until he dies.
Basically, but thats why. Seeing at night is good. So power lines mean lit streets without the fire hazard of oil lamps. Vending machines? You have people that run around all night, looking for other guys trying to poke little pieces of metal into your guys with giving proper notice and doing moves like 'meat tank'. Vending machine mean your not stuck staying up all night selling food to those guys. That and running around and roof jumping its easier to eat a candy bar than say a bowl of hot soup. Take the vending machines as mechanical in nature rather than computer controlled and the work.
Mass goods transfers and caravans make sense. Focused public transpiration make sense, the weekly inter city bus for example. Note if your stupid enough to want to travel around alone you can hire ninja to protect you or die or just stay home. Hidden villages arent exactly near anything and the ninjas can move fast enough so they dont care about your average grunts traveling about. That may lead to frequent travel which means that info moves around more and the grunts and peons may learn to read. No, not a literate populous!
Literate populous lead to things like in Iran the incumbent party banned every member of the opposition from running for public office for transparent reasoning. This lead to a dramatically low turnout in the elections. Note something like 2/3s of the population is under 25 and people over 25 voted the most often. The president and his party claim confusion on how that happened Then went on to claim he was pursuing nuclear power for strictly peaceful purposes followed by a raving ant about how the holocaust is a lie and then slavering rant involving how Israel must BURN! BURN! For the COLONY err I mean for ALLA!
I say that not to be political, but to show what happens when the Internet got to Iran. Islamic extremists arent normal for Victoria Secret opening public stores in the capital cities or even their countries. In Iran they let them in as part of the keep us from getting lynched campaign. The Internet has the 25 and under crowd more in the We dont like the US at all, but would rather just ignore them and leave each other alone so please stop provoking them camp.
A good example of how useful an uninformed populous can be was during the first Gulf War, after they surrendered American troops let the captured Iraqis walk up to a tank and feel its armor. The general response Went like this:
Iraqi: This feels strangely unlike the cardboard and plywood your tanks had in our briefings.
American: Thats, because its made of steel and depleted uranium.
The Iraqi response was between shellshock and things best left unprinted about their superiors.
See earlier parts of the tread for more on this subject. Does that help answer your niggling questions?