Greatest invention in history?

[vi edit]

The heated seats now come with an air-conditioned option too

And heated steering wheels round out the comfort trifecta.

 

[Kaido]

Printing press. Without question.

I was just watching the Book of Eli on TV the other day, and I'd have to say yeah, the printing press is a pretty big deal in history. Like in that case, with the Bible, you had to rely on a preacher before that for religious information, or teachers for secular information. And applying that to technology, you get stuff like Twitter, which is basically a realtime printing press...social media is helping foster communication, which is helping to topple regimes across the world. People have a voice now, which weakens the power of countries with dictators & stuff. Look at all of the countries trying to ban social media. But all of that pretty much started with the printing press, which made words available to the mass population.

 

[Gooberlx2]

It was language that made the printing press possible. Language drives everything else, without the ability to communicate ideas we'd still be living in caves.

Language is more of an evolutionary change than an invention. There wasn't some caveman who one day decided to assign meaning to specific words.

 

[GagHalfrunt]

Language is more of an evolutionary change than an invention. There wasn't some caveman who one day decided to assign meaning to specific words.

Couldn't the same be said of any invention? There have been very few eureka moments in human history. Most inventions were tiny incremental evolutionary changes in other things that preceded them until they finally reached a tipping point to become useful. The ideas behind the printing press were in use for more than 1000 years before Gutenburg. His was the evolutionary change that was viewed as the most important, but there were a long line of evolutionary changes all leading in the same direction.

 

[JulesMaximus]

Patrick Bateman

Do you remember where you were when he was invented?

 

[MomentsofSanity]

Couldn't the same be said of any invention? There have been very few eureka moments in human history. Most inventions were tiny incremental evolutionary changes in other things that preceded them until they finally reached a tipping point to become useful. The ideas behind the printing press were in use for more than 1000 years before Gutenburg. His was the evolutionary change that was viewed as the most important, but there were a long line of evolutionary changes all leading in the same direction.

Language, in whatever form, has been around for millenia. What the printing press did was allow accurate and consistent mass dissemination of information. Prior to that the church had pretty much all say on what the masses would learn.

With the printing press, the people were finally able to learn for themselves. The advancements that it allowed in science are really immeasurable. The ability to accurately communicate findings and method allowed civilization to advance by leaps and bounds in a short time. The same can not be said of language in itself.

 

[Exophase]

The transistor.

 

[dr150]

Plumbing

Paper (formulas, books & shit).........toilet paper.

Without it, you'd be wiping your ass with your hand.
.
.
.
In other parts of the world, people handshake with their non-wiping, non-smelly hand. That's pretty fucked up.

 

[gorcorps]

Beer

That was on Neflix at one point (maybe still is) and a buddy and I thought it would be fun to try and drink every time they said "beer"

don't be like Brandon, Brandon made a poor choice

 

[purbeast0]

Really? And the reason being?

without it i wouldn't be able to travel to parts of the world on such a short trip.

 

[Jeff7]

Language, in whatever form, has been around for millenia. What the printing press did was allow accurate and consistent mass dissemination of information. Prior to that the church had pretty much all say on what the masses would learn.

With the printing press, the people were finally able to learn for themselves. The advancements that it allowed in science are really immeasurable. The ability to accurately communicate findings and method allowed civilization to advance by leaps and bounds in a short time. The same can not be said of language in itself.

Symbolic written language is our cheat code around a major limitation of nature: To convey information from one animal to another, the two have to 1) be alive at the same time, 2) be physically near to one another.
To retain information across generations, the only way nature provided was to encode it in the brains of other animals, which had to be done by conveying information directly, whether it be through demonstrating a behavior, or through a rudimentary language of vocalizations. These methods are inherently lossy, like recompressing a JPEG over and over again. Critical details can be missed, forgotten, or misunderstood.

We cheated. We were able to retain information in a fairly lossless and repeatable format which could be distributed efficiently, bypassing the limitations of organic brains and direct interaction. Big brains allowed us to figure out and remember systems of symbols as a way of encoding information efficiently.

 

[slag]

Everyone knows it's sliced bread.

Came here to post that. Sliced bread it is.

 

[Gooberlx2]

Couldn't the same be said of any invention? There have been very few eureka moments in human history. Most inventions were tiny incremental evolutionary changes in other things that preceded them until they finally reached a tipping point to become useful. The ideas behind the printing press were in use for more than 1000 years before Gutenburg. His was the evolutionary change that was viewed as the most important, but there were a long line of evolutionary changes all leading in the same direction.

Sure, the printing press was an amalgamation and refinement of existing concepts, but the day the first press rolled out was, essentially, the day the middle ages ended. Like with vaccines, you can measure a dramatic affect before and after the implementation of the invention.

Also Gutenburg had the specific intention of designing the printing press for the purpose of mass production of printed materials. There was a conscious decision of "We need A, and current methods are poor. I'll design tool B to better fulfill that need". Language continues to evolve over time without specific direction other than where current culture and social norms drive it.

 

[Vdubchaos]

This show will give you a completely different perspective on greatest inventions and people that actually made it happen......

How we got to now with Stephen Johnson
http://www.pbs.org/show/how-we-got-now/

It's on Netflix as well. Great for kids too!

I would probably say Glass. Without it our life would be much much different. We would still think earth is flat....no high speed internet....no windows....no TV/Phone screens...and on and on

 

[ultimatebob]

Funny, I was going to post boobs. Not sure if they were really invented, but they are very much appreciated.

Hey... without Hot Chicks, humanity would have stopped repopulating itself and died out ages ago! That makes them more important than most of the stuff mentioned in this topic.

 

[bryanW1995]

It was language that made the printing press possible. Language drives everything else, without the ability to communicate ideas we'd still be living in caves.

30m Chinese still live in caves, yet I assume that they have "language". Caves can be super neat, you know.

I'd say the mass availability of either internet porn or bacon. Either of them makes everything else in life just...better.

 

[Ns1]

My vote is on running hot water.

 

[Vdubchaos]

Hey... without Hot Chicks, humanity would have stopped repopulating itself and died out ages ago! That makes them more important than most of the stuff mentioned in this topic.

IF you include evolution into "inventions" than one can say "earth" was the greatest invention no?

 

[Ferzerp]

Language and written language don't really count. These things developed in how many places independently? Whens something comes to be in so many different places, it's more of an inevitability than really an "invention".

 

[Guurn]

I'd say the washing machine. It freed up almost half the adult population from 3-4 day a week washing, enabling them to do other things like reading.

 

[Red Squirrel]

Parachutes. That way if my Kerbals survive reentry through the atmosphere, they can survive the landing too!

On serious note, I can't decide between the washing machine or dishwasher. I can't imagine having to do any of those tasks by hand.

Vehicles like cars and planes are great inventions too, but if they did not exist I imagine cities would just be better optimized for walking such as how things are zoned.

 

[Schmide]

Fart jokes

 

[Scarpozzi]

I'd probably argue that one of the greatest inventions is the sewer. Without a sewer system, sanitation wouldn't be what it is and many of us wouldn't be here because our ancestors would have died (not to mention, I'm sure at least half of you were toilet babies)....no joke.

 

[Brian Stirling]

Well, it's either the Stradivarius or the Bikini or the Dog.


Brian

 

[Ferzerp]

Parachutes. That way if my Kerbals survive reentry through the atmosphere, they can survive the landing too!

I agree on the parachute thing. Without them, I would not have survived even my first skydive...