Whether it's works of fiction where the United States territory is made up of more than 1 nation, or other tweaks on what we consider "normal" -- there is something especially fascinating about this.
Or imagine a modern world like ours -- but where the different technologies had a COMPLETELY DIFFERENT balance. Imagine if radio/communication wasn't nearly as advanced, but transportation was much more advanced? There are so many variables, elements of chance, that go into how our modern world was formed. Imagine if this inventor hadn't been born, or that one -- or a third inventor HAD been born instead of his father dying of ____ when he did?
Watch any sci-fi movie at all from the 70's or before. They all thought AI would be no problem, space travel to other planets would certainly happen, but display technology? Can't get much better than a green-on-black heavy CRT! NO ONE saw thin-film, brilliant color, cheap LCD monitors coming!
Or super-powerful smartphones, again with brilliant, true-color, thin screens. The communications network as well as the screens took *everyone* by surprise. Even the tablets on Star Trek:TNG (a series from 1987 - 1994) didn't foresee how advanced tablet computers would be. I'd rather have a Samsung tablet than any of the tablets on Star Trek:TNG, which is supposed to be the 24th century! They have warp drive and transporter beams, for crying out loud.
Medicine, building technology, data storage, communications, education -- all of these things could have gone differently in a previous advanced civilization -- or a future one (after the Chastisement, for example).
What will the Internet be like when it's built back after the Chastisement, during those 40 years before the Antichrist?