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Many of these were not invented after 1971, or are very specific "inventions" - is Hubble Space Telescope an invention, but "space telescopes" generally are not

Many of these were not invented after 1971, or are very specific "inventions" - is Hubble Space Telescope an invention, but "space telescopes" generally are not? Surprising how many of them fall to googling "history of X" and going to the Wikipedia link. Sure a lot of them have been commercialised big style in recent years, but for a list of things trying to show that invention hasn't stopped in the decades since 1971, many of them barely squeak after 1971 purely because you chose things based on computers. Out of 53 things on your list, I'd say that ~10 of them unquestionably pass as "large technical inventions, long after 1971". Maybe ~5 such as "online streaming/dating" pass the timeframe but are wishy washy and don't fit the spirit of it for me. * Cell phones - no, cells proposed for vehicle phones in 1947, mobile phones for vehicles launched in Sweden in 1956. And "n 1959 a private telephone company in Brewster, Kansas, USA, the S&T Telephone Company, (still in business today) with the use of Motorola Radio Telephone equipment and a private tower facility, offered to the public mobile telephone services in that local area of NW Kansas" - Wikipedia, history of mobile phones. * GPS - US Navy track submarine locations using Doppler shift from polar satellites in "the mid 1960s" - https://www.nasa.gov/directorates/heo/scan/communications/policy/GPS_History.html https://www.nasa.gov/directorates/heo/scan/communications/po... Not the modern GPS system, but is "The GPS system" an invention where "demonstrated location tracking from satellite signals" isn't? * Sequencing the human genome (and many others) - "The first method for determining DNA sequences involved a location-specific primer extension strategy established by Ray Wu at Cornell University in 1970". - Wikipedia, DNA sequencing. * Personal computers - no, IBM designed a computer for "personal automatic computer" in 1957 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_personal_computers#The_beginnings_of_the_personal_computer_industry https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_personal_computers#... * Drones - maybe if you count autonomous flying machines with Li-Ion batteries and cameras. Self-propelling, unmanned, or remote control machines (Torpedo, Lunar explorer prototype), no. * Lithium-ion batteries - yes! * The world-wide web - the WWW specifically yes, hypertext systems generally, no. Doug Englebart demonstrated a hypertext+mouse+monitor system in 1968 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NLS_%28computer_system%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NLS_%28computer_system%29 * Quantum computing - yes! * Video games - no, 1950s; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_history_of_video_games#Initial_games https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_history_of_video_games#I... * Bitcoin/blockchain - yes. * Cheap wind and solar energy - maybe. People have been using Windmills for work for years, and sun for heating water to wash in. Modern solar panels, invented a long time ago. Is there a specific "cheapening" invention since then? * Hybrid cars - nitpicky if you mean "commercial Li-Ion and Gasoline cars", but hybrid diesel-electric vehicles go back to ~1903 for ships, 1920s for submarines and trains. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diesel%E2%80%93electric_transmission#Ships https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diesel%E2%80%93electric_transm... Counting cars as a new invention post 1971 is dubious, I think. * The ISS (International Space Station) - Salyut 1, the first space station was built before 1971 and launched in 1971 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salyut_1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salyut_1. * Genetically engineered crops - yes. * SMS + instant messaging - SMS yes 1992, instant messaging maybe - what about pagers (1949), wireless telegraphy, or the "talk" command of realtime chat on multiuser systems going back to the 1960s? - http://web.archive.org/web/20110615131332/http://osdir.com/ml/culture.internet.history/2002-12/msg00026.html http://web.archive.org/web/20110615131332/http://osdir.com/m... * HDTV - "The term has been used since 1936" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-definition_television#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-definition_television#His... * Hubble space telescope - Hubble yes, space telescopes generally no - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_telescope https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_telescope * On-demand TV/streaming - probably. * Self-driving cars - they a) don't exist yet, or b) go back to the 1960s with the NASA prototype autonomous wheeled Lunar vehicle which could follow white lines around a track. * Video calling - no, public videophone system in Germany 1936-1940 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_videotelephony#World's_first_public_videophone_service:_Germany_1936%E2%80%931940 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_videotelephony#Worl... * Digital cameras - yes, depends too much on silicon process advances to argue. * Voice-controlled computers - voice recognition of anything no, Audrey in Bell Labs, 1952 - https://medium.com/@joshdotai/its-all-in-the-voice-fba7e5a032fa https://medium.com/@joshdotai/its-all-in-the-voice-fba7e5a03... * Touchscreens - no; "Historians consider the first touch screen to be a capacitive touch screen invented by E.A. Johnson at the Royal Radar Establishment, Malvern, UK, around 1965 - 1967." - https://www.thoughtco.com/who-invented-touch-screen-technology-1992535 https://www.thoughtco.com/who-invented-touch-screen-technolo... * Digital music - no. Electronic music, Theremin, 1920. Pulse Code Modulation 1928 patent. First computer audio recording, 1950s. First commercial digital audio recording Jan 1971. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_recording#Timeline https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_recording#Timeline First digital sampling on a pair of PDP-8s in 1969 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sampler_(musical_instrument)#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sampler_(musical_instrument)#H... * Social media - vague, depends a lot on microcomputing. Did Ceefax/Teletext and the letters pages count? That's "early 1970s" tech. * Kepler space telescope, discovering 2662 exoplanets - comes under "space telescopes", and no, for me. * LED lighting + indoor farming - no; LEDs and Infra-Red LEDs, 1962 - http://www.historyoflighting.net/light-bulb-history/history-of-led/ http://www.historyoflighting.net/light-bulb-history/history-... * Gene editing (Crispr) - yes, 1987. * Atomic-force microscopy - yes, 1982. * Magnetic-resonance imaging (MRI) - no, 1971 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetic_resonance_imaging#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetic_resonance_imaging#His... . Nuclear magnetic resonance itself, 1940s - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_magnetic_resonance#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_magnetic_resonance#His... * Reusable rockets - created yes. * 3D printers - yes. * MOOCs/online education - Hypertext was educational. Arguable depending on "the internet" or not. * Ebooks - too close to "text on a computer" for comfort. * Online marketplaces - requiring the itnernet yes, but remote ordering - catalogue, telephone, was not particularly new. * Ridesharing - no? Taxi cabs, rickshaws. * Micromobility (e-scooters) - battery scooter no, 1915, otherwise another way of saying Lithium Ion batteries. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/motorized-scooter-boom-hit-century-dockless-scooters-180971989/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/motorized-scooter-boo... * Biodegradable plastics - mass production of them yes, invention/discovery of them, no - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biodegradable_plastic#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biodegradable_plastic#History * Automated translators - no, Logos Machine Translation (MT) system translated military manuals into Vietnamese during the Vietnam war 1950 - before a 1972 report, and the first experimental system was demonstrated in 1951 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machine_translation#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machine_translation#History * Optical character recognition - nope, GISMO 1951 - http://www.historyofinformation.com/detail.php?entryid=885 http://www.historyofinformation.com/detail.php?entryid=885 * Asymmetric key cryptography - right on the border; conceived in 1970, implemented by 1973. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public-key_cryptography#Classified_discovery https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public-key_cryptography#Classi... * RFID - no, "Russian physicist Leon Theremin is commonly attributed as having created the first RFID device in 1946 (Scanlon, 2003)" - http://www.u.arizona.edu/~obaca/rfid/history.html http://www.u.arizona.edu/~obaca/rfid/history.html * Electronic payments - no, "Electronic payments have their roots in the 1870s, when Western Union debuted the electronic fund transfer (EFT) in 1871." - https://blog.forte.net/electronic-payments-history/ https://blog.forte.net/electronic-payments-history/ * Online dating - yes, because "online". Telephone dating (remote, technological), probably not. * High-temperature superconductors - yes, 1986 or so. * Soft lithography - yes. * Machine learning + deep learning - Neural Networks first demonstrated in 1959 and put to commercial use - https://cs.stanford.edu/people/eroberts/courses/soco/projects/neural-networks/History/history1.html https://cs.stanford.edu/people/eroberts/courses/soco/project... . Deep learning, is there a specific invention there apart from "really big GPUs"? * Cloud computing - "invention" is what, specifically? Centralised computing, no, that was mainframes. * Immunotherapy for cancer treatment - no, dates back to 1891 - https://www.targetedonc.com/publications/special-reports/2014/immunotherapy-issue3/A-Brief-History-of-Immunotherapy https://www.targetedonc.com/publications/special-reports/201... * Stealth technology (F-117, B2 etc.) - no; "Development of modern stealth technologies in the United States began in 1958" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stealth_technology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stealth_technology * Mars rovers: Spirit, Opportunity + Curiosity - those two yes, planetary rovers as an invention, no. * Voyagers I & II probes - Maybe, they launched in 1977 so they must have been invented some years before that. The general concept of space probes such as Russian Venera probes to Venus goes back to 1960s, and the calculations for the Voyager mission lineup with the outer planets does too. Are the specific Voyager probes in the 1970-1975 timeframe strong enough inventions to make the article "absolute nonsense"? * Cassini-Huygens probe to Saturn + moons - under space probes, so no for me.

Areading314 7y ago
For this article, it is less about invention in the academic "I got there first" sense, but when the concept became mature enough to deliver a generally usable product.
- jodrellblank 7y ago
  That is the opposite way I read it; the term used in the article "breakthrough" says to me "the very beginnings of a completely new thing"; not focused on who got there first but about demonstrating that a thing is possible, when it had not been possible for all of human history until that time. The article talks about "a new discovery to shatter old paradigms completely". It is hard to judge and in many ways arbitrary - there must be a lot of inventions along the way to making something mature enough to be generally available and useful, and improving things gradually does open doors to new ways of using them. Inventing a way to increase LiIon battery density 10% by new factory processes, is valuable and useful, and doing that several times makes for a sea change in the kind of devices which can be economically viable. I'm hoping for room temperature superconductivity to be discovered in my lifetime, and think it will be a breakthrough if it is; but temperatures of superconductors have increased over the years and I have no reason (layperson) to think there is an arbitrary universe cutoff around 273Kelvin, so if we keep progressing and trying, it will eventually appear. The time when Onnes discovered superconductivity at all, was much more breakthrough into new realm, even if room temperature superconductors sounds like crossing a significant threshhold. The article to me is about the feeling of novelty and new discovery missing from post-1971 life, rather than saying no economic growth in useful mature technology is happening. I was absolutely certain the article said "we've forgotten what it feels like to have a breakthrough" in more or less exactly words. And it says nothing like that, at all. This bothers me.
  - Areading314 7y ago
    This is just a no true scotsman fallacy. You have defined away the feeling because you deride all modern technology as derivative, even if in fact it is extremely innovative.

Areading314 7y ago

For this article, it is less about invention in the academic "I got there first" sense, but when the concept became mature enough to deliver a generally usable product.

jodrellblank 7y ago
That is the opposite way I read it; the term used in the article "breakthrough" says to me "the very beginnings of a completely new thing"; not focused on who got there first but about demonstrating that a thing is possible, when it had not been possible for all of human history until that time. The article talks about "a new discovery to shatter old paradigms completely". It is hard to judge and in many ways arbitrary - there must be a lot of inventions along the way to making something mature enough to be generally available and useful, and improving things gradually does open doors to new ways of using them. Inventing a way to increase LiIon battery density 10% by new factory processes, is valuable and useful, and doing that several times makes for a sea change in the kind of devices which can be economically viable. I'm hoping for room temperature superconductivity to be discovered in my lifetime, and think it will be a breakthrough if it is; but temperatures of superconductors have increased over the years and I have no reason (layperson) to think there is an arbitrary universe cutoff around 273Kelvin, so if we keep progressing and trying, it will eventually appear. The time when Onnes discovered superconductivity at all, was much more breakthrough into new realm, even if room temperature superconductors sounds like crossing a significant threshhold. The article to me is about the feeling of novelty and new discovery missing from post-1971 life, rather than saying no economic growth in useful mature technology is happening. I was absolutely certain the article said "we've forgotten what it feels like to have a breakthrough" in more or less exactly words. And it says nothing like that, at all. This bothers me.
- Areading314 7y ago
  This is just a no true scotsman fallacy. You have defined away the feeling because you deride all modern technology as derivative, even if in fact it is extremely innovative.