Disscussion: Innovation(technology) that changed the world.

[CryptopreneurBrainboss]

Few days back I was having a discussion that turned into a debate with my peers.  We were arguing on the innovations that changed our planet as we have today. Some suggested improvements on healthcare others suggested, improvement on transportation (faster transportations)etc but the three suggestions that was gaining ground were electricity, radio frequency and the internet. The debate didn't come to a conclusion to produce a winner because we all got exaulted  and decided to call it a day.  I have decided to seek the suggestions of the ivory tower users because this is a very serious disscussion. So what do you guys think,  which technology (innovation) changed our world the most?

[bitmover]

We were arguing on the innovations that changed our planet as we have today.
-snip-
So what do you guys think,  which technology (innovation) changed our world the most?

It is very hard to think of one technology without setting specific parameters, such as last 30 years, 100 years, 1000 years...

Recently the most recent innovation that changed our lives was the smartphone.

Yesterday I was thinking that I spend too much time using my smartphone, so I would try to keep it at home tomorrow. But I use my smartphone to unlock a public bike that I have been using daily, so I cannot leave my house without my smartphone! The whole mankind is just staring at smartphones now.... that´s so crazy.

Smartphone wouldn't be anything without the internet, so I believe internet is really the "innovation" behind smartphones.

And of course, there would not be internet without electricity....


Certainly electricity changed humanity a lot, it even changed our sleeping habits, as people were then able to easily stay awake at night.

[Jet Cash]

Farming was the invention that had the greatest effect. Without farming man would have remained a hunter/gather, and would never have had the time to reflect on potential changes, discuss them, and then implement them.

[bitmover]

Farming was the invention that had the greatest effect. Without farming man would have remained a hunter/gather, and would never have had the time to reflect on potential changes, discuss them, and then implement them.

Certainly. I was talking about this book, Sapiens,  where the authors talks about history of mankind since before Homo Sapiens.
He talks in much detail about the Agriculture Revolution. It changed mankind forever, as we were nomadic before that (hunters and gathers).

the agricultural revolution is what allowed the humanity form towns and cities. Having houses and a fixed location allowed us to develop lots of different tools, technologies, philosophy, political institutions...

however at the same time plagues became more common and our diet changed a lot. Hunters and gathers had a more diversified diet, with different fruits, seed, cereals, meat, fish, etc... 
with the advent of agriculture humanity began to consume little variety of food (too much corn for example). And plagues became more common.

Before the agriculture revolution, he talks about other revolution: The Cognitive revolution. When mankind began to form larger groups of people and some kind of organization, different from the other homo species.

[BitBustah]

Farming was the invention that had the greatest effect. Without farming man would have remained a hunter/gather, and would never have had the time to reflect on potential changes, discuss them, and then implement them.

Agree, agriculture has had the greatest effect on humanity.  Before farming humans only lived in small tribes and were hunter gatherers.  We didn't have large civilizations until humans were able to harvest and store grains in mass quantities. 

[CryptopreneurBrainboss]

Lets fast forward to the 70's, 80's and 90's looking at the innovations that shaped our world as we have it today. We all know farming was a major motivation but it doesn't stop there, what other innovation or technology changed the world more?.

[_Miracle]

Fire
agriculture
----Money---
shelter (homes)
 channeling water (from aqueducts to toilets)
The Printing Press
   electricity (and of course then A/C)---    lol ---also  air conditioning :-)
telecommunications
Automobiles

Computers ---> networked information  --->  world wide connectivity and shared information

Us talking to each other right now

[Jet Cash]

The unicorn is one invention that is changing the world as we know it today. Unicorns were created to lead free spirited wild horses into slavery and captivity. If you take a domestically bred stallion, and fit a horn on its head, and then you release it close to a herd of wild horses, it will join the herd, and become the alha male. Then you can return to the herd and summon the alpha male, who will then lead the whole herd into captivity. It beats spending days trying to catch the horses individually.

Most of the world politicians are unicorns in modern society. They are leading nations into captivity, and stripping their savings and national assets.

[MakeMoneyBtc]

In my opinion electricity is one of the most important innovation ever created and that's because since it was created and until the end of humanity, people are always going to use it in almost anything they do. Lets think about this seriously, if electricity wouldn't have been invented could we live the same life we are living today? Obviously not. So much things have changed because of electricity that you can't even make a list of it.

[vapourminer]

not the most important but optics changed the way we view things, opening the world to the very small and the very distant. as well as correcting peoples vision.

[CristianOff]

Problem is that innovation is reliant on previous innovation.

Smartphones changed the way we interact, we think, etc. but smartphones could not exist without electricity. Does that
make electricity the most important innovation?

In my opinion, the technology that changed the world most is tomorrow's technology

[Pmalek]

It doesn't fit into the technology sphere but don't forget medicine. My grandmother is over 90 years old. Two of her brothers died as infants after getting a cold. There was no medicine, drugs or doctors nearby to help them. 90 years ago isn't that long if you think about it. We went from that to body part transplants and in 50 years or less those who can afford it will probably be able to grow there own body parts in a lab.   

[TeQuiero]

We were arguing on the innovations that changed our planet as we have today.
-snip-
So what do you guys think,  which technology (innovation) changed our world the most?

It is very hard to think of one technology without setting specific parameters, such as last 30 years, 100 years, 1000 years...

Recently the most recent innovation that changed our lives was the smartphone.

IMO, smartphone is not exactly a "technology innovation" as the OP stated. It's just a product behind a lot of other innovation, including "Semiconductor Technology". Semiconductor has a lot of irreplaceable application in producing flash memories, DRAM, sensor, OLED panel and the most important: chipsets. Virtually all of our daily life used devices contain those things, from smartphones, tablets, smart TVs, laptops to cars. Imagine, if we didn't achieve many important advancement in semiconductor technology, a smartphone would be as big as a brick and a smart TV would be as thick as a ball...

Economics wise, semiconductor technology helped transform South Korea, leading by Samsung Electronics - the world's largest semiconductor supplier, from a war zone to a sub top 10 economy.

[MakeMoneyBtc]

It doesn't fit into the technology sphere but don't forget medicine. My grandmother is over 90 years old. Two of her brothers died as infants after getting a cold. There was no medicine, drugs or doctors nearby to help them. 90 years ago isn't that long if you think about it. We went from that to body part transplants and in 50 years or less those who can afford it will probably be able to grow there own body parts in a lab.   

That's right, medicine is probably in top 3 most important innovation. In the past people were dying from a simple flu, because there was literally no cure for that and our body could not fight with the viruses alone. At the end if you think every innovation was extremely important for us and we couldn't live without any of it so it is useless to talk about wich is better.