Born in 1890, my great-grandfather had great-uncles who fought in the Civil War. He saw the invention of the automobile, the airplane, two world wars, and saw the Apollo 11 moon landing a month before he died.
I was born in the 80s, I have been trying to take stock of how much life has changed since then. Cable television? Satellite television? Cell phones to smartphones? The internet? Life hasn’t seemed to have made much progress. When we get down to it life isn’t radically different now than it was in 80s. Just hoping there is more that I’m simply not noticing
If you remember navigating with a compass and map, GPS is goddamned magical.
mRNA vaccines do it for me at the moment.
https://www.genome.gov/about-genomics/fact-sheets/Understanding-COVID-19-mRNA-Vaccines
All the more reason to despise RFKjr.
Montana is banning those. Expect a nationwide ban to come soon.
I recall having vaccines in the 80s, probably what saved me from polio
The commenter said mRNA vaccines.
I agree, they most certainly did say mRNA
Are you familiar with the differences between traditional vaccines and mRNA vaccines in terms of production?
If the innovation is the airplane then it doesn’t matter if it’s an old timey biplane or or a next generation stealth fighter
If the the innovation is the vaccine then it doesn’t matter if it’s a smallpox vaccine or an mRNA vaccine
But that’s an arbitrary distinction. You could also argue, “what’s the difference between a vaccine and medicine?” Or “what’s the difference between medicine and physical medical treatment?” mRNA vaccines involve more innovation and impact than bloodletting via leeches.
But I won’t respond to that line of thought anymore because you didn’t answer my question.
You can choose to answer my question or just not reply. Do you know what the differences are between traditional vaccines and mRNA vaccines?
I kinda thought using the first vaccine and the most current vaccine in my explanation would infer that I am aware of the difference
The question is meant to be more conceptually overarching and abstract
I’m not the original poster, but I’d like to say I don’t know but am now curious to know what’s the difference and what makes it more innovative
Every so often I hold a microsd card and I think about how much storage is on that pinky-nailed sized $20 device. Compared to ancient hard drives it is one of the few things that makes me remember “oh shit I live in the future”.
Couldn’t agree more. I put a 128GB card into my action camera last night, then remembered that my first computer had a 170MB hard drive. That’s close to a thousand times more storage, and according to t’internet, it’s physically more than two thousand times smaller :o
The first hard drive I used was a whooping 5megs and the CP/M machine couldn’t handle it so it was partitioned as a million floppies.
I have a 512GB card in my steam deck, seen listings for them upwards of 2 TB, reliability scares me a bit with that much data but still, it’s impressive how far flash memory has come. I remember being excited about a 64MB thumbdrive and buying my first 1GB one.
The internet has totally changed how humanity works, learns, socialises, and plays. I cannot think of a more dramatic social upheaval, aside from possibly the industrial revolution, or the taming of the horse.
The first information revolution, is somewhat equivalent. With the invention of the printing press, distribution of information became an order of magnitude cheaper.
Literal months of work to produce a single copy, became a few hours to setup the movable type, then produce as many copies as you want.
Daily gazettes became a thing that was possible to do.
I agree. I suspect the internet will retrospectively eventually even be looked at as an “information revolution” on par with the industrial one. I know that sounds like an enormous claim but there is a long road yet, so I don’t think it will turn out to sound so crazy. Each revolution (and its increase in power) comes along with responsibilities and potential dark sides, though. I think similarly to how the industrial revolution opened the door to industrial war, we are already seeing the pain brought by various (distributed, automated) information war techniques. I love how we live in an age now where a person with internet access and enough tenacity can eventually learn almost anything, and contribute back, but at the same time I worry deeply about the rolling waves of belligerence, disinformation & selective amnesia coercion, gatekeeping, and fraud that have come with it. I hope humanity can get those under some degree of control soon.
that was eventually for the worse though, because of the megacorps who control it now.
Honestly if you’re not putting the internet and the general proliferation of personal computers and then smartphones in the “truly innovative” category, then I’m not sure anything will make the cut—I’d make the argument that both are more innovative than flight which is something we can observe in nature.
I don’t see very many humans naturally flapping their arms flying around very often
There was that one guy, but I’d say it was more falling with style than flying
… and he didn’t stick the landing
I’m a software guy, so I’m gonna go with ‘free compilers.’ Back when every company was keeping their secret sauce close to their chest, RMS turned around and released gcc for free. That was… new, to say the least. It paved the way for much of the software you see eating the world today.
After reading the comments here, I see the problem: You judge past things by what they have become, and new things by what they are. Nothing will ever be “truly innovative” by those standards.
The automobile was for a long time just a more expensive carriage. The airplane was a pass time for the ultra rich, while anyone else got by with hot air balloons if they wanted to fly. The soviets got to space first by pointing a ballistic missile upwards.
We have CRISPR and can alter the Genes of any living organism to match our needs, but oh well, it’s only used by labs right now and anyone else got by perfectly fine by selective breeding, can’t call that innovative, can we?
… The automobile was for a long time just a more expensive carriage…
100%. To add:
Automobile was actually slower than the horse for good many decades.A good horse is like 3 horsepower at least :)
The Internet has changed almost every aspect of daily life, I don’t see why you don’t think it is as innovative as the invention of the car.
The internet had niche use for enthusiast nerds. An internet connected handheld device was the game changer.
I think that is downplaying it, while mobile devices caused the major boom in access, the Internet was already prolific before
The internet was well established before the mobile web really took off. It looked different (most of us would say better), but it was already a mature part of everyday life. The dot-com “bubble” around Y2K predates the iPhone by years.
Gene Editting with CRISPR and other techniques. Eventually this will be truly personalized medicine at an affordable fee.
Fusion with more power output than input will become a game changer. Currently we have done fusion but the energy to do the demonstration was in total more than the output
Accurate and repeatable motion systems.
Born too late to say that semiconductors are the thing for me, but the use has made closed loop control systems viable. Along with stepper, servo, and now new to me piezoelectric motors and linear stages.
If you think that the internet is not revolutionary, what right do you have to claim that automobile ever was?
Well, I disagree with the premise.
But perhaps one of the more obvious physical examples are Blue and White LEDs (1992). Small gadgets used to always have red LEDs, maybe green ones, or an unlit 7 segment display, everything else was too expensive or too energy consuming for battery powered devices. And not only that, RGB Diodes also saw the end of pretty much all cathode-ray tubes.
You see kids, back in the olden days before white LEDs, the only way to get blue light was to throw high energy electron ray on a phosphor coating. So anything blue or white before the 90s was made with that technology, from car radios to TV screens.
I’d personally also keep an eye out what the cheap electric motor will do next. From “hoverboards”, civilian drones, e-scooters and the modern e-bike, it’s only a matter of time before the new use case will emerge.
Life is vastly different than in the 80s. You can literally know anything you want right now, simply by asking an artificially intelligent handheld computer that has access to every discovery known to man. We’re on the cusp of being able to cure almost any disease and live forever. We can blow the planet up 10x over and still have ammo left. Scientists can see so far away that they can almost see the beginning of time. Nothing your great grandfather saw in his life will compare to what you will see in yours, have already seen.
“Um, yeah, but we could have already known everything thousands of years ago if we had just made any effort. AI is just a worse version of what evolution already made between my ears. We could have already blown the planet up 70 years ago. The beginning of time is sooooo 13.8 billion years ago, YAWN!” - OP probably
Just not paying attention. We advancing too quickly imo. Not mature enough as a species to control this kinda stuff
Medicines and medical care have improved significantly
Same could be said about everything we have though couldn’t it?
Cars, aircraft, boats… All improved significantly…
But is any of it truly innovative?
If my son was born when I was born, he wouldn’t be alive and my wife may not have survived the birth. If he was born 5-10 years ago, he’d have brain damage. Today, because we know what to look for and how to treat and prevent many pregnancy problems and early childhood problems he’s alive, healthy and thriving. There are a million innovations that are super niche, so we don’t know about them.
Yes, we’ve certainly progressed in nearly every field
But are they truly innovative or are they a natural evolution of something that already existed?
Yeah. I think it is.
I am also thankful that my children were born in this era as well
There has been significant progress in the treatment of cystic fibrosis
Still not the kind of innovation I am talking about
Yes. Taking an existing thing and improving upon it is the literal definition of innovation.
Not the definition I am referring to
- introducing new ideas; original and creative in thinking.
Conceptually, improving upon something isn’t entirely original
It can be hard to grasp. We can’t imagine what life and the mindset of people were before a concept existed because we have always had it.
Yes, we can imagine the difficulty of travel before the invention of aircraft
But it’s hard for us to understand the profound difference to life and everyone’s worldview at the time
People fantasized about human flight for what seemed like forever to them, so long that it became a fantasy that many believed would never be realized
Then suddenly it was
What have we experienced collectively since the 80s that is like that?
I disagree. Improving an existing concept and changing it to make it more practical or easier to produce for example is innovation.
The examples you gave in the introduction are examples of that: The parts that make an automobile existed when it was invented and you could argue again that it wasn’t a completely novel idea but an improvement of the steam engine and horse-drawn vehicles.
The airplane massively relied on improvements in engine and material design.
Your assessment that innovations used to be completely original in their design and are not any more is a fallacy.
I also disagree
Your reply in of itself is a fallacy
An airplane relying upon improvements engine and material design does not negate the very real revelation of human flight to the world
Nor does your oversimplified and ultimately incorrect explanation steam engines and evolution of horse drawn vehicles
Especially considering the first automobiles were steam powered
It completely misses the point
The horseless carriage itself was the innovation
I apologize for not explaining the question more thoroughly
I am talking about innovation in a fully realized concept
I always thought that flying cars would be the next major leap in innovation, but it’s still in its fledgling stages
I understand your question wanting to know about New big shit. But if you say all inventions in medince in the past decades is “just” a little improvement of existing medicine but not Innovation, then your examples oft cars and airplanes are not invention either but just a little improvemenrt of mobility. Bikes and trains existed before wie had mobility it just got faster, and a few nore wheels and wings.
Ill think the Problem why medicine and science Innovation in General is not perceived as that dramatifc is because you need to be a scientist (or really read yourself Into it) to understand. The incredible steps forward wee make are so complex it cannot be explained to the General public anymore.
You See the big obvious stuff (Gravitation, electricity) wie know now. You cannot write a PhD thesis anymore discovering electricity or evolution.
Nowadays PhD thesis are about inventing nanoparticless in a way they only go to a very specific tissue type (cancerous) to destroy it there locally. Anymore Detail Into this requirees extensive research. But its still super innovative.
It doesn’t seem like you’re understanding what I’m saying much at all.
By your definition everything is innovative
Maybe that in of itself is the problem here, equating the words innovative and invention.
Try replacing innovative with groundbreaking or original perhaps
But saying that advent of aviation and automobiles is just bikes and trains with wings or more wheels kinda goes to prove a lack of arguing in good faith here
Katamari Damacy
Naaa.
Na na na na na na na, na naa naa na na na
