Yeah, except the technology has been available since the '90s for what the Oatmeal says "need to go from here", and yet it took a Steve Jobs to herd the labels -- I expect it'll take Jesus to herd the artists.
The problem with the concept of a "middle class" is that there's more than one definition of it. One might define "middle class" as defined here, i.e. from an economic/arithmetic point of view. But most people don't.
Most people define "middle class" from a socio-economic point of view ("the broad group of people in contemporary society who fall socio-economically between the working class and upper class", per Wikipedia). But the term "middle class" also has such strong connotations that I've seen analysts define it based on what people in the middle class SHOULD be able to afford (i.e. exactly what Mr. Milanovic says the true global middle class CAN'T afford) -- by which definition there is no such thing as a middle class in many African countries, for instance.
Mr. Milanovic is an economist, so it makes sense for him to analyze this from a strictly economical point of view (and the results are genuinely interesting regardless of anything else), but don't let this change your definition of the middle class, because most people don't use a strictly economic definition anyway.
Every neatoramaut worth their salt knows that in Russia, the test fails you. Well, in this case, this is almost precisely what's happening. I live in Romania, which unfortunately happens to be located behind what used to be the Iron Curtain a couple of decades ago. Yes, we were communists -- as such, we ended up hating our Russian neighbor more than you Americans ever did. Anyway, one of the more interesting ideological imports from the USSR was punishments for teachers who failed students: you see, it's not the student's fault for not studying -- it's the teacher's fault for not teaching right. And yes, the outcome is precisely what you'd expect: students not giving a crap about any of it, because they ended up being promoted anyway.
Amazingly, things are even worse now. Don't ask, I don't know.
This is a nice hobby project, but I doubt it has anything to do with improving control. Digital on/off buttons will never provide better control than good old analog knobs. That said, he should plug in a Bluetooth shield and plot out drawings directly from the PC -- now that would be totally cool.
The most interesting thing I found in that entire chart was the very last (foot)note: roughly 60% of the entire economic production of the human race throughout all time happened since 1980. Yes, that's not 1900 -- it's 1980. I don't know the source for that statement, but if true, I find that amazing.
What VR said. Plus, this cost $2.6 million; the Titanic would cost around $400 million to make today (Google it). It's like writing a piece about a broken office calculator with the title "Chinese 'iPad' doesn't work!".
The fact that appalling video games are being made should be no surprise -- more or less talented people try their hand at anything, from art to buildings, so as long as we have awful art, awful food, awful clothes, awful cars and awful buildings it would actually be quite surprising if there were no awful video games. In fact, it should be noted that the basic initial investment into creating video games is rather small compared to other products -- you could (and some people actually do) create video games using their own two hands and a computer. Compare that to gadgets for instance (of which quite a lot are dreadful), where you need access to the resources of a factory (e.g. in order to build the gadget's case/keyboard/whatnot). That doesn't come cheap, so you'd think people put a lot of thought into their product before investing into execution -- and yet terrible products are built every day. By comparison, the small initial investment into video games is a reasonable justification for the lack of planning and research.
However, what I do find interesting is the corollary of your observation: being a teenager, I was green with envy thinking about the guys whose day job was reviewing video games. I felt somewhat vindicated reading through the review on Gamespot: the poor reviewer had to actually play through this terrible game in order to describe its shortcomings in detail (and it's obvious that he did play the game -- he describes gameplay details you can't know by reading the manual, e.g. how an undercarriage roller you can purchase at some point during the "campaign" is useless in the game). So yeah, your job can suck even if you're a game reviewer.
Most people define "middle class" from a socio-economic point of view ("the broad group of people in contemporary society who fall socio-economically between the working class and upper class", per Wikipedia). But the term "middle class" also has such strong connotations that I've seen analysts define it based on what people in the middle class SHOULD be able to afford (i.e. exactly what Mr. Milanovic says the true global middle class CAN'T afford) -- by which definition there is no such thing as a middle class in many African countries, for instance.
Mr. Milanovic is an economist, so it makes sense for him to analyze this from a strictly economical point of view (and the results are genuinely interesting regardless of anything else), but don't let this change your definition of the middle class, because most people don't use a strictly economic definition anyway.
Amazingly, things are even worse now. Don't ask, I don't know.
However, what I do find interesting is the corollary of your observation: being a teenager, I was green with envy thinking about the guys whose day job was reviewing video games. I felt somewhat vindicated reading through the review on Gamespot: the poor reviewer had to actually play through this terrible game in order to describe its shortcomings in detail (and it's obvious that he did play the game -- he describes gameplay details you can't know by reading the manual, e.g. how an undercarriage roller you can purchase at some point during the "campaign" is useless in the game). So yeah, your job can suck even if you're a game reviewer.