I’m now ripping off Ron and Fez bits wholesale. In a gripping discussion today, the radio show debated the following question that’s 100 percent relevant to our interests here at CrunchGear: what invention has changed the most since its inception?
The question is not “which invention has changed mankind the most,” but what invention today looks or works totally different than Version One did.
The airplane. Version one was basically a glorified kite, yet today we’ve got double decker aircraft that can cross the oceans on a single tank of gas, albeit a big one.
The tank. The design is basically the same—a mobile, armored personnel thing—but compare that to today’s mad fast vehicle with laser sights.
The computer. Back in the day, computers filled entire rooms. Today, you’ve got people typing their fingers off on a netbook. (The computer is even smaller if you consider mobile phones to be computers.)
The pen. You had to kill a bird, then constantly refill the quill with ink. Today, you can go to the store and buy a perfectly acceptable six-inch piece of plastic from Bic that’ll last for weeks on end.
Your thoughts? (Be sure to check the gallery, too. It took a hot five minutes to put together.)
Photo Gallery by Picturesurf
My vote is for the idea of government, or women’s underwear. I sure know that I wouldn’t want to wear pantaloons 1.0 :-)
I’d actually say tanks were one of the more stagnant design paradigms out there. They’ve gotten bigger engines, bigger guns, bigger armor, and more fancy sights, but other than that the concept hasn’t changed at all since it’s inception, and any design improvements over time have basically been for the simple purpose of outdoing the other guy’s tank. It’s still a steel (even the fancy composite armors still have steel involved) box with treads powered by a diesel engine (only the Abrams and a limited-production Russian tank run turbines) with a turret on top containing a direct-fire gun shooting either high-explosive or armor-piercing rounds. It’s right up there with the gun (in the 20th century) and the land mine for lack of real innovation in the past 100 years.
But look at how warships have changed, from the age of sail, to the dreadnought/battleship, to guided missiles, to aircraft carriers. And then there’s the submarine, which in and of itself has evolved from merchant shipping raiders to strategic weapons.
How about telecommunication? From one-way, point-to-point, line-of-sight (radio) to satellites and mesh networks with everyone connected to everyone else.
How about books? Once only written by monks, and then could be published by anyone but still fixed once printed, and now you’ve got things like Wikipedia that are constant living documents.
1. Radio communication. From first transmission over the Atlantic to micro wireless networks and a sea of radio waves that has engulfed the earth today.
2. External backup of thoughts (includes writing, drawing etc)
It has gone from scribbling on stones to preserving those in bits and bytes using electrons.
My first thought was the Nintendo. I’m pretty sure that makes me a nerd. lol
Religion. It used to be that people would gather in a building to worship. Now, fire up your iPhone Bible and log on to the online church, while writing your prayers on the online prayer wall, while wearing your Jesus t-shirt (or whatever religion you are from).
There are just too many things to list which have dramatically changed from inception:
Automobiles,
Airplanes,
Computers,
Telephones,
Video Games,
Recorded Music,
Earth,
http://www.thessayist.com
Soup.