According to you, what is the greatest invention?

[ADee]

Please explain too.
My first thought was that it's obviously the wheel, it helped us carry so many more things faster and easier. But then, when I started thinking it became less clear to me.
Controlling fire made us get much more energy out of food, which made our brains grow by alot and made it easier to get even more food.
Irrigation and aggriculture is obvious, thanks to that we got the society where people could support others.
Internet gave us the ability to have the whole world cooperate much easier, that person across the world is no longer more than a day away.
Toilet and plumbing gave us a way to get rid of the waste in the cities which heavily reduced illnesses.
Pencillin made pandemics go extinct, well atleast pandemics caused by bacteria.

There is so many more inventions which is very important, like writing (continuing the work across generations), math, printing press and so much more.
So what do you think is the most important thing humans have invented?

 

[cursed knowledge]

it was the smartphone

 

[ElectricBlanketFire]

Air conditioning.

I like to sleep comfortably.

 

[Knight in Shining Armani]

Porn.

 

[Doctor_Thomas]

The microprocessor.

 

[robot]

I remember at some point hearing it was containers and I think I agree with that. Gaining the ability to carry and preserve more than we can hold in our hands or on our back is necessary to basically any other advancement. Things like irrigation and penicillin are huge, but don't affect everyone's lives so immediately even in the modern age as containers.

 

[Orb]

Depends on what you consider an invention. Is language an invention? If so that's gotta be it. There's so much stuff you can't have without it.

 

[Forerunner]

Airplanes. They are just badass.

 

[Lord Moriarty007]

The printing press expanded literacy around the western world.

 

[KingBrave]

Insulin, because I want to make it to my 60's.

 

[Mekanos]

The printing press expanded literacy around the world and stopped religious institutions to control the masses.

Click to shrink...

Yeah I think it's this. I was tempted to say internet and that's probably in the top ten but this has got to be #1.

 

[signal]

language

 

[GungHo]

3D toilets.

Because it's this or a hole.

 

[captive]

for health, plumbing

for comfort, electricity

overall, the internet.

 

[nofuckinidea]

Printing press by Gutenberg

Edit: And toilets

 

[CrankyJay]

Probably indoor plumbing. It's about as advanced as it's going to get.

 

[shnurgleton]

charcuterie

Airplanes. They are just badass.

Click to shrink...

airplanes are just weird fast boats that go in air instead of water

 

[Aaronrules380]

Technology is a cumulitive effort, so the best answer is probably the first stone tools ancient human ancestors fashioned for themselves in a deliberate manner (as opposed to just grabbing an existing stick and using it for a novel purpose) since that's pretty much the basis for everything that follows.

 

[Green]

Hard to say... top 3 I'd say
-Piezoelectric transducer
-Transistor
-Compass

 

[RGV_Rage]

Electricity. So many things would be impossible without it.

 

[Stinkles]

Fire.

it makes water potable, food edible, massively multiplied available calories, sharpens spears, creates arable land, fends off predators, leaves behind discoveries, makes More environments survivable, inspires the discovery of science and the scientific method by encouraging experimentation, signals for help, lights darkness, is the tipping point between matter and energy and underlies everything from the Apollo missions to Egyptian civilization.

Fire is the most pivotal invention/discovery of all time.

Mayan civilization reached sophisticated imperial grandeur without the wheel. No civilization existed without fire.

If you were trapped in any wilderness- from jungle to arctic to desert to cavern- fire would make it survivable.

 

[Forerunner]

airplanes are just weird fast boats that go in air instead of water

Click to shrink...

hell yeah

 

[Violence Jack]

Air Conditioning and wireless technologies.

 

[T002 Tyrant]

Medication.

 

[Camwi]

A taco you can eat without making a mess everywhere in the car:

 

[StrayDog]

electricity

 

[Stalker]

 

[ArkhamFantasy]

Air conditioning.

I like to sleep comfortably.

Click to shrink...

Always the first thing that comes to mind, there's never a summer day that i take it for granted.

 

[hinryu]

Air conditioning. I live in Southern California.

 

[nrtn]

language -> electricity -> internet

 

[Soliloquy of a Dogge]

Dildo.

 

[low-G]

Language, written (If you do not consider language an invention, written language definitely is)

 

[MrHedin]

Cookie Dough Ice Cream.

Real answer, the ability to make flint tools.

 

[Deleted member 4346]

The written word, allows preservation of ideas and history beyond simple face-to-face communication.

 

[JohnsonUT]

Printing press - allowed such a rapid acceleration in knowledge and learning
Vaccination - Saved billions of people from disease and death

Edit:
Lenses - Glasses give so many people quality of life and allow smart people to work much longer. Microscopes have led to germ theory and medicine, nuclear power, understanding our place in the world and the universe.

 

[Forerunner]

A taco you can eat without making a mess everywhere in the car:

Click to shrink...

Click to shrink...

 

[NCR Ranger]

Electricity. So many things would be impossible without it.

Click to shrink...

That's my vote. Hell, some of the things listed in this thread would be worthless garbage without it.

All the things that make modern life liveable for me depend on a steady constant supply of electricity.

Sure human civilization would and has existed without it, but I am too soft for that life. I would off myself in a second if an apocalypse came.

 

[Dan-o]

HVAC as a whole, although this depends on another greatest invention ever, electricity.
Hot summers are dumb.
Cold winters are dumb.
HVAC solves both.

I hope Ms. Jennifer Hvac Jr. is filthy rich.

 

[TheDestructiveSquirrel]

Microchips

 

[Doggg]

Sharp sticks

 

[nny]

Language: a system to transmit thoughts, instructions, stories from someone's head to another...it's like a superpower.

 

[hordak]

fire > language > axe > wheel > air conditioning > internet

we've only been using the internet for 30ish years. We've been using fire since 2 millions years ago.

2 million fucking years.

 

[lt519]

Evolutionary was the ability to communicate through language. Society probably the printing press, the world would look very different and worse off without it.

I don't think we can properly assess computer/internet yet though. The way the internet has connected the world and spreads information and the way it will evolve will reshape our species and the way the world functions is going to be massive. Computing power will soon give us superintelligence and at that point we've forever changed.

I think one day it'll be as evolutionary to the species as fire/language/wheel/etc were.

From the perspective of both society and human evolution it's going to be seismic.

 

[Eoin]

Controlling fire made us get much more energy out of food, which made our brains grow by alot and made it easier to get even more food.

Click to shrink...

This is considerably understating how important the control of fire was.

Control of fire gave humans:

- the ability to cook food, making it safer - killing germs and parasites
- control over something that animals were afraid of. Humans were never good targets for predators, but fire would have made human groupings virtually untouchable to predator animals
- the ability to light up any darkened areas, meaning humans could go more places, and go to those places for more time
- a social centre space. People in a group would naturally gravitate towards a fire, pulling that group closer together
- the first method of quickly changing an environment. The first humans to control fire wouldn't have been farming much, but would have used fire for hunting, clearing large areas of grasslands and bushlands in doing so.
- warmth. That allowed humans to live in more places, eventually allowing human migrations around the planet
- the ability to make better weapons. Early humans had no real clue about metalworking, but they did eventually figure out that some woods could be hardened by exposure to fire (which removed the moisture from it).
- dogs. Possibly. Eventually. There's no clear understanding of exactly how wolves and humans started socialising, but one guess is that it happened some time during the last major period of glaciation, when weather was much colder and food scarcity would have been an ongoing problem for most predator animals. Human settlements (even temporary ones) with their warm fires and their obvious smells of food, would have been unmissable for wolves. It's not unimaginable that domestication of the wolf began with scraps of food from a campsite being thrown to some hungry wolves.

That's a single piece of knowledge that had effects on health, living spaces, societal integration, the way food was obtained, prepared and consumed, weaponry, and the way humans interacted with the environment and with other animals. Nothing's had a bigger impact, before or since.

 

[Tahnit]

The internet.

All information everywhere accessed instantly. Yes there are some downsides but we shouldn't take this invention for granted. It has changed the world.

 

[Alecs27]

Pc

 

[RestEerie]

You all jest but it's the compass

 

[tangeu]

Irrigation and Farming, without it humanity as a whole would be on a completely different trajectory as hunter/gatherers instead of forming settlements.

 

[kaiush]

Vaccines are being unrepresented in this thread.

This is hard to say because you can't have the internet or ac or smartphones without electricity. You can have electricity without the scientific method. You can you much without language. We wouldn't have been successful early on without fire. So it all builds. I'd say as far as changing the lives of people (for better or worse), agriculture would be high on the list. Stone tools, too, and you couldn't have agriculture without those really.

So, I dunno. I'm going with agriculture for its impact. Electricity for its brilliance.

 

[Patryn]

Agriculture. Farming transformed us from hunter/gathers and a migratory species to one that settled in one place.