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It would have been more convincing if you had given real past examples rather than speculative future ones :) Although I'm pretty sure there are plenty that ma
by someplaceguy 3y ago
It would have been more convincing if you had given real past examples rather than speculative future ones :)
Although I'm pretty sure there are plenty that many people can think of, so it doesn't really detract much from your point.
- ChuckMcM 3y agoFair point, I felt most people would have their own list. Powered flight, semiconductors, commercially competitive solar cells, antibiotics, sterile procedure. Etc.
- xorbax 3y agoDemocratization of the free internet, a more informed populace through free education, a generation of coders and computer adepts, robust journalism and investigation, a space that incentivizes knowledge rather than capital or status, society about the exchange of important ideas rather than flippant goods, ad infinitum
- TheSpiceIsLife 3y agoNuclear weapons. There hasn’t been a full scale war between major powers since.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- jchanimal 3y agoAs long as the people with the weapons act rationally. Which might be an anomaly.
- rvnx 3y ago350K+ reported casualties just in a year sounds already much https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/ukraine-war-already-with-up-354000-casualties-likely-drag-us-documents-2023-04-12/ https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/ukraine-war-already-wit...
- ayende 3y agoTo give some context, Battle of the Somme, lasted 4 months, total casualties: 1m+.
- rvnx 3y agoThis was before invention of Twitter, now with so many conflicts in the air, I'm sure we can beat that figure.
- ben_w 3y agoUkraine isn't a major power, and the fact that they've been able to hold back Russia so effectively, with so few resources, is mainly an indicator of how weak Russia is these days.
- justin66 3y agoIt's all fun and games until someone loses an eye.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- Ekaros 3y agoEntirely ruined by the reality that those having them are not bombed to ground by conventional weapons when they attack somewhere. So I would argue they are either neutral or massive negative.
- Sugimot0 3y agoThere's been plenty of war, and it could well be the first step on a path to the end of life on earth. I imagine this belief stems from all the "Hiroshima and Nagasaki were necessary/good" propaganda.
- urinotherapist 3y agoFull scale war between Russia and Ukraine (with help of NATO) progressing right now with constant threats to use nuclear weapons or blow up a nuclear power station.
- blitzar 3y ago> There hasn’t been a full scale war between major powers since. Yet all the major powers have launched multiple, lengthy full scale wars since.
- jzymbaluk 3y agoPenicillin has gotta be on that list. Just randomly happened to culture on a Petri dish left out on vacation, happened to be the worlds first antibiotic
- p-e-w 3y agoI can't imagine what it must have been like for people to hear about yet another "miracle drug" that cures most diseases – and then gradually realize that this one actually works.
- IG_Semmelweiss 3y agotake the word "disease" out... and you CAN imagine it : Viagra
- p-e-w 3y agoHa, true! I forgot that used to not be a thing, and people were trying everything from crushed beetles to insanely hot chili peppers to crazy dangerous poisons, and still nothing really worked.
- darkwater 3y agoThere is "antibiotics" already
- darkwater 3y agoI wonder why people downvote... GP said "Penicillin" as an addition to a list which had already "antibiotics" in it.
- MrYellowP 3y agoIt wasn't. "Stuff that kills bacteria" has been known for a long time, including times when nobody knew what bacteria were. Not every dirty wound was fatal, there's mixes of plants, applied to wounds, that do a good job. Penicillin was the first highly effective AND mass producible antibiotic, though.
- julianeon 3y agoA good one would be "productive AI." People forget, but a short while ago, AI was treated as something where being actually useful was perpetually 20 years away, and the real-world status of it was exemplified by a chatbot like Eliza.
- ben0x539 3y agoWhen AI was 20 years away, people seemed more optimistic about it than now when its inevitable transformative societal impact is seemingly right around the corner, are you sure this is the kind of example they were going for?
- someplaceguy 3y agoI think your point only demonstrates that useful AI was not something we could arrive at quickly like we thought we could, but rather over decades in a much more gradual process which slowly got people accustomed to its capabilities. Even then, when ChatGPT came out it was a pretty big deal, due to the surprisingly sudden jump in capabilities, at least from the point of view of someone who didn't work in AI and didn't closely watch its progress. According to Wikipedia, it was "the fastest-growing consumer software application in history, gaining over 100 million users" (in ~2 months).
- glompers 3y agoLarry Page and Sergey Brin will be so upset when AIs unionize...
- bhaak 3y agoThis is mostly due to "they're taking our jobs!". Which actually highlights a problem in our society that we have to work to be able to afford living instead of living to be able to work on something more meaningful than earning money.
- ben0x539 3y agoI wish people on this website were as enthusiastic about addressing this problem as they are about tech things.
- jliptzin 3y agoAntibiotics Electricity Internal combustion engine Flight Li-Ion batteries Radio communication
- jfoutz 3y agoPrinting press. broad access to clean water. transistor.
- XorNot 3y agoIndoor plumbing in general - municipal sewer systems were a huge change (though not really new technology).
- avereveard 3y agoYes but apart from that what have capitalists ever done for us
- XorNot 3y agoWell I've got bad news if you think capitalism built the sewer system...
- someplaceguy 3y ago[flagged]
- 6510 3y agoSewage systems are a requirement for properly factory farming the humans. You could do it without it to some extend but if the human laborer is to be specialized into a somewhat sharper tool it is rather inefficient to have them randomly die from diseases. Sewage systems are what allows cramping them together much tighter. Therefore we have sewage systems thanks to capitalism as much as we have cold winters thanks to chimneys.
- rockemsockem 3y agoRockets landing themselves back on Earth was looked at as really weird for quite a while.
- havnagiggle 3y agoEfficiency of food production
- RF_Savage 3y agoHaber Process for manufacturing fertilizers.
- paulddraper 3y agoCOVID 19 vaccine, plus better-than-feared virulence. Electric cars mainstream
- abtinf 3y agoThousands of breakthroughs had to happen for you to be able to post your comment.
- jaidhyani 3y agoSmallpox eradication
- shostack 3y agoWatch the Connections series.
- riffraff 3y agoFor those who have not seen it: it's old but it's one of the best productions on the Evolution of science and technology ever made.
- abulman 3y agoEver see the video of a guy walking past a Saturn V (lying in it's side), doing a piece to camera and pointing to the rocket behind him? 'Connections' (1978). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2WoDQBhJCVQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2WoDQBhJCVQ
- nindalf 3y agoAuctions, sanitary towels, retirement, banking, disposable razor, sewing machine, canned food, interchangeable parts, antibiotics, solar cells, postage stamp, light bulb, pencil, air conditioning, insurance, dwarf wheat, spreadsheet, cold chain, double entry book-keeping, S-bend, infant formula, clocks, public key cryptography, passports, batteries, printing press, video games, GPS, contraceptive pill, shipping container, Haeber-Bosch process, concrete, iPhone. Shoutout to 50 things that made the modern economy, a great podcast/book.
- cezart 3y agoThis reads like a list of technologies from the game civilization :)
- nindalf 3y agoI thought the same when I was listening to the podcast! Interchangeable parts especially! They’re so impactful, but they’re taken for granted outside of this podcast and Civ.
- dclowd9901 3y agoI’ll add some more: Language, standards, the internet, agriculture, glass, sunscreen, resilient rice, sterilization, human flight, spontaneous development of sentient life in the universe… When you think about it all, you start to appreciate how miraculous things actually are.
- tzs 3y agoSanitation, medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, fresh water system, and public health.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- ETH_start 3y agoSimilar to language, money, which Nick Szabo—the person who first conceptualized a decentralized blockchain—speculates may have increased the carrying capacity of the environment ten fold and allowed humans to outcompete Neanderthals. https://www.fon.hum.uva.nl/rob/Courses/InformationInSpeech/CDROM/Literature/LOTwinterschool2006/szabo.best.vwh.net/shell.html https://www.fon.hum.uva.nl/rob/Courses/InformationInSpeech/C...
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- konschubert 3y agoPenicillin. Vaccines.
- kzrdude 3y agoFall of the Berlin Wall should probably be on a list of black swan but good events.
- ant6n 3y agoThat’s my first thought as well.
- simias 3y agoIt's perhaps not as life-changing as some of the sibling replies but one thing that has really amazed me over the past few decades is how much lighting has progressed. When I was a kid in the 90's I already enjoyed electricity and electronics and I would play with those low power incandescent lightbulbs powered by 9V batteries. They would generate a lot of heat and very little light, to the point that it wasn't easy to tell if it was on when the sun was bright. With a modern LED and the same setup you could generate enough light to blind yourself.
- mrguyorama 3y agoI like to point this out in relation to Star Trek. In TNG, they had tablet computers, replicators, teleportation, voice command, all these things that we consider future magic or current awesome technology. And then an away team goes down to the surface and pulls out a flashlight using an incandescent bulb that can barely be seen. LEDs are genuinely revolutionary in a way everyone just kind of overlooks.