Many of these problems you mention are due to empires past imposing borders that don't correspond to natural nations. Most of Europe's borders are pretty natural equilibriums settled after centuries of wars. They are not perfect though so we are now seeing secessionist movements across the continent. Demographic changes and migrations flows threaten to upset these equilibriums. Africa and Middle East have different problems since their borders are more artificial and imposed from the outside. Most of these regions of the world can barely hold together a cohesive government without outside help.
Global city-states need to become independent with open immigration, separate from the Nations which should enforce strong immigration controls to maintain the native population & culture.
Moore's law has not been an exponential increase in technological capability in general. It has only been an exponential increase in one particular technology - more of the same. I see no evidence that the development of novel technology in general has sped up in any way.
No technology has ever extended life. The so-called gains in life expectancy have only come about by reducing the causes of early mortality and slowing down the diseases of ageing.
It's funny watching techno-religious belief systems emerge in the West as Christianity recedes. This is literally the replacement of the afterlife. Sorry guys, this ain't gonna happen. One day you will die, get over it and start praying.
It's not really a laptop, really a portable all-in-one desktop with a battery, unless you're talking about that very expensive wood & cork thing. Nice that it's not Intel but you will take a speed hit for that.
This is why I don't buy laptop computers... they are still overpriced toys. I mean, on a theoretical level, the idea of a mobile computer is appealing, but in practice they all suck very badly.
Chinese people have amassed a lot of wealth but their investment options are very limited. Hence the Chinese stock market bubble, property-building bubble and Ponzi schemes.
Anything for more GDP growth! I wonder if the insane over-provisioning is a genius scheme to monopolise worldwide manufacturing for a century (even at massive cost to their population) or just a drive to keep up unsustainable growth statistics. Either way the game will be up eventually...
I would say games are probably where Japan has most excelled in software, at least in the 80s and 90s. But the code is probably very bad practice by modern standards (hand coded assembly hacks, all game state in global variables). When you only have a few KB of RAM/ROM there is a lot less scope to mess up (although I have come across bugs in cartridge games myself).
The problem is, you actually need an all-seeing surveillance state if you're going to mass-import millions of Muslims in to a non-Muslim country. The violence will keep getting worse as their numbers in Western countries grow and the spineless dhimmis continue to apologise for them. Unfortunately beyond a certain point (which we seem to have already passed) it is simply impossible to stop, no matter how efficient the state is at foiling their plots.