All The Significant Inventions/Discoveries Were Long Ago

All the truly significant inventions/discoveries were many, many years ago. If I had to make a list of the top five [well, six] of all time, my list might look like this...
1. Mastery of fire
2. Agriculture and raising of animals
3. Metallurgy
4. The wheel through trains, planes, and automobiles
5. Sanitation technology
6. Language/Books/Telegraph/telephone

Although one might be tempted to put things like computers, antibiotics, space travel and the like in this group, none of these had anywhere near the effect on human life as did the six listed.

I would be curious to know how others see our own epoch as compared to previous ones [in that many see ourselves as living in such an amazing time of discovery]. After all, which would you rather have [if you could only have one], a toilet or a smartphone?

 

Living conditions have radically altered for the developed world. A medieval peasant, a Roman one, or a Sumerian one probably lived lives that were not that dissimilar. Since the beginning of the industrial age just about every data point in human development has shot up like a rocket.

 

There have been some more recent discoveries and technological developments, but none of those have resulted in anything of any real technological significance.

It seems the lower hanging fruit was already plucked long ago, in the early Twentieth Century. That is about 90 or 100 years ago.

There was lasers that became commercialized beginning in the late 1970s, which have not really had a huge economic impact (outside of a few very specialized areas). There was the computer revolution that really took off in the 1990s. And the latest big one, LED lighting, which is still not really a huge economic breakthrough like automobiles or electricity was.

 

One problem here is that you need to figure out methods of measuring change and impact on our economy, the world economy, on society, etc.

Computers were WWII era, not 1990's. And, the impact includes the automation we see everywhere we look - in factories that now hire far fewer humans and turn out WAY more product, in grocery stores which don't have to hire so many tellers, in the internet, in the fact that one can order just about everything from prepared food, groceries, and everything else without going to any stores anymore.

The impact of these changes includes that our kids need college educations. Working in an auto factory is no longer a career. The new sectors of information, automation, clean energy, etc., all require education.

Look at agriculture, where advances in satellite based measurement of weather and GPS is combined with facts on the ground to direct automated fertilizer spreaders, planters and harvesting to make optimal use of the land.

Look at clean energy, which is hiring more people than the oil industry and is producing the amount of additional energy we need each year.

Look at cars, where advances in batteries and motors are starting to take a bite out of the sales of cars that burn gas - leading to what will surely be a huge change, since legacy auto needs those sales to survive in their current form.

There are rapidly advancing huge changes that are impacting our society pretty much everywhere you look.

Advancement and change have NEVER moved at the rate they are moving today.

As for society, these changes all require more education. You can't work in an automated factory without a college degree. And, that's even more true in other emerging sectors. Yet, we're not really working toward college being available to everyone and we're not providing the continuing education that allows people to deal with the rapidly changing job market.

This IS an issue. China has four times as many brains as we have. The EU has more brains than we have. India WILL emerge. We are NOT going to maintain our standard of living while choosing not to fully enable every brain we have.

 

And many of these new jobs that now require years of education pay less than what auto factory workers were once paid (when adjusted for inflation and cost of housing).

 

Computers did not really have a huge impact on the economy until the 1990s.

 

No, I think you are very wrong. That is an over-generalization.

You are lazily seeking to ascribe the need for these college educations to increasing technology.

That's just stupid.

Only a very small part of this increased need for education is due to that.

I hope no one believes statements like the one you just made.

 

Another partial lie. Don't buy the propaganda.

I'll debate that statement with you in another thread, if you want to leave the link here.

 

Yes, but how much has that really improved agricultural efficiency? Not much. Only tiny little incremental improvements.

 

If that was really the case, then government would not need all these heavy subsidies and mandates.
Electric cars would begin taking over in the marketplace based on their own merits.

We all know the Progressive Left is very afraid electric cars can't do that. Well, at least the true intellectuals and not all the stupid idiots who unquestionably swallow up all the propaganda.

 

True. The only solution I know to that is that there has to be continuing education.

The days when you could get a good auto manufacturing job, raise a family, etc., and count on retiring are just gone.

 

Yes, that's the only solution most Progressives know of: Just more and more education.

(Oh, that and minimum wage, which doesn't really do anything for 70% of society)

 

The gating issue today is in manufacturing.

Demand for EVs is far outstripping supply. Wait times for receiving the car you buy can be a year.

As for government, it's just a fact that even the cost to health of gas cars in populated areas is substantial. Cities (and individuals in those cities) win by moving to EVs, due to lower health care expenditures.

Plus, the rebates available do not make up for the cost differential between equivalent EV and gas cars. The EV will win over time, as fuel and maintenance for an EV are lower. But, today one pays a premium for buying an EV.

 

Doesn't that apply to all cars?

I agree there is a stronger argument for electric cars in big city areas like NYC.

So, when will NYC force all its residents to buy electric cars? Or will that get the mayor kicked out by special referendum?

 

Minimum wage isn't intended to do anything for 70% of society. So, that's a bogus measure.

What it is intended to do is ensure that working Americans can pay their own way - without federal and state tax dollars going to support them.

Your comment on progressives and education makes NO sense.

It is employers who demand more education. Progressives don't get to choose who businesses hire. And, the new emerging economic sectors DO require more education.

 

No, there are acres of gas cars available for immediate sale. You don't have to wait a year to get the gas car you purchased - unless you ordered a Lambo or ??

I don't know whether any of the ideas of demanding EVs are really going to happen. For one thing, technology prognostications that are 10 years out should be used with care in understanding how they were made and what decision you need to make.

There are various use patterns that could well be better answered by gas, at least within the 2020's.

Are you worried?

 

Moreover what is meant by the category "significant invention/discovery"

Computers, as a category is filled with myriad important benchmarks that have taken place over decades. Bell labs made the first transistor in '47. Integrated circuits didn't come along until Texas instruments made one in '58. The first microprocessor IC was in the 70's. The difference between the design and function of what was available in the 70's vs the design and function of current technology is vast. If you tried to show a graphene capacitor to someone in the WWII era they wouldn't even have the technology to see it.

 

i noticed that Mass Media hadn't been recognized yet. The ability to mold and shape the minds of the supplicants. This, perhaps beyond all others..

How does one move today without being influenced in one way or another?

 

Not true.

I can get you to work as an automation technician in 2 semesters. No degree. Just a cert. Local manufacturers are offering over $25 to walk in the door. I've heard as high as $34. They are desperate and the available cash for boosting American manufacturing is lush right now. Want to specialize? Get your cert and the employer will pay for the rest of your education. Hell, they're paying students $15 to $20 just for internship.

The guys that know how all this stuff works are old engineers. The old techs are aging out and they are (on average) scared of digital controls. New guys are good at playing Fortnite, but they have no clue what relay logic is or how to turn a wrench. LOTS of money available for people standing in the gap between those two groups.

The impact is that they need to develop skills. But that does not mean dumping $200k into the university system. A 14 year old kid playing with Lego in 2016 is now responsible for a huge innovation in robotic prosthetics. He took the cost of an artificial arm from $200k to $500 bucks using skills he learned for free on his own. We're in the information age. The universities are no longer the gatekeepers of knowledge.

 

What do you think lasers are used for?
What do you think light emitting diodes are used for?

 

Have lasers really allowed us to do anything or produce anything we were not able to do before?

I'd argue the overall economic importance has been relatively limited.

Lights, big and small, and display screens existed before light emitting diodes.

 

Yes. Lasers are integral to the manufacture of things that could not exist without them. They are the most widely used tool in manufacturing today.

It wouldn't be wise to argue that. You'd lose.

Do you think that's all they are used for?

Do you know how they make the billions of transistors that are integrated into your CPU?
Ever hear of:

Laser deposition?
Laser welding
Laser metrology
Laser surgery
Fiber optic communication
LiDar

Your TV remote? It communicates to the TV through an IR LED.
Do you know what an ssr or an optoisolator is?
Factories are full of LED limit switches.
Motor encoders use LEDs to determine speed and position of the motor's rotor.

 

I don't think you are appreciating the more modern inventions.

Some of those on your list aren't really a single invention.

They didn't just wake up one day and say, oh agriculture. it was a thousands years long process.

We could be in the middle of one of those processes right now, and just not realize it. Imagine how different life is going to be in 1000 years because of computing, AI, and the internet.

 

All those things could be manufactured without lasers, and without too much trouble.

If you were asked to describe things that could only be manufactured with lasers, I think you'd be hard-pressed to find many examples. Lasers have only made some things a little bit easier. It's a tiny little incremental economic improvement in manufacturing.

 

I just have to go back to this. This logic.

It's like comparing two Dixie cups and a string to the communication bandwidth of the NSA data center in Utah.