Part of the problem is we know what is significant today, when we look back. 1904 to 1914? Heavier-than-air flight, cheap automobiles, rural electrification. 19

Part of the problem is we know what is significant today, when we look back. 1904 to 1914? Heavier-than-air flight, cheap automobiles, rural electrification. 1914-1924? Radio, airlines, diesel railroad engines, moving pictures. 1924-1934? Television, talkies, commercial radio. 1934-1944? Nuclear power, commercial TV, colour films, antibiotics. 1944-1954? Jet aircraft, nuclear weapons, commercial nuclear power. 1954-1964? Space travel, colour TV, bipolar junction transistors, vaccination programmes. 1964-1974? Lunar landing, commercial supersonic flight, microchips. 1974-1984? Microcomputers, modern medical imaging, minimally invasive surgery. 1984-1994? Internet, e-mail. 1994-2004? Commercial Internet. 2004-2014? Who knows? Ask me again in ten years. In 2004, in the wake of the .com crash, the future of the commercial Internet was not clear. Furthermore, the argument for slowing down of innovation is not entirely implausible. The big, foundational innovations like bipolar junction transistors, microchips, microcomputers and the Internet do seem to trail off in recent decades. For all the medical advances we have achieved nothing can touch anti-biotics and vaccines in terms of impact. They aren't even close to the same category. The transistor is an interesting case for people who claim there is nothing new under the sun: transistor ideas had been around since the '20's, but it wasn't 'til the late '40's that they were "invented" and it was the early '50's that Shockley's innovation made it possible for them to go mainstream. Shockley didn't "invent" "the transistor", but he did invent something that was such a great improvement on existing technology that when we use the word "transistor" we are generally referring to his invention, even though that is not the most general use of the word. It is perfectly likely that there was at least one world-changing invention in 2004-2014, but it'll be another decade before we can say with any certainty what it is.