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85 Big Ideas that Changed the World
ccnull writes "Forbes just put out its well thought-out list of 85 breakthroughs since 1917 (sneakers) that have revolutionized the way we live. This is interesting on a number of levels -- crazy trivia (the microprocessor and the answering machine invented in the same year!?), a reminder of the past (the modem: 1962), and a frightening realization that not much of interest has come out of the last 10 years (a whopping 4 of the 85 ideas). Easily digestible and worth discussing."
The reason that our more recent ideas aren't on the list is because we don't know which are the good ones yet. Hindsight is needed to appreciate what we've been doing.
The thing is that we don't have the perspective of history to indicate to us what will have long term relevance. I mean they listed Viagra on there. VIAGRA? I'm sorry, but the ability for an old man to get an erection is not one of the greatest innovations of the last 85 years.
One thing I didn't see on the list was nanotechnology, which is going to hugely impact the future. We're only seeing it in limited ways so far, but 10 or 20 years from now it's going to revolutionize a lot of things. Also, one thing I noticed was that, while a number of inventions like fiber optics were created some time ago, it's only recently that the implementations have borne practical fruit.
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Why isn't spandex on the list???? The person who invented that should get a few medals. Why, women actually WEAR the skintight stuff. Bless you, Mr. spandex.
All Troll + "offtopic" mods are meta moderated as "Unfair", because you abused the system.
I think the lack of recent good ideas has been explained best by Ben Stein.
QUOTE
1) Allow schools to fall into useless decay. Do not teach civics or history except to describe America as a hopelessly fascistic, reactionary pit. Do not expect students to know the basics of mathematics, chemistry and physics. Working closely with the teachers' unions, make sure that you dumb down standards so that children who make the most minimal effort still get by with flying colors. Destroy the knowledge base on which all of mankind's scientific progress has been built by guaranteeing that such learning is confined to only a few, and spread ignorance and complacency among the many. Watch America lose its scientific and competitive edge to other nations that make a comprehensive knowledge base a rule of the society.
2) Encourage the making of laws and rules by trial lawyers and sympathetic judges, especially through class actions. Bypass the legislative mechanisms that involve elected representatives and a president. This will stop--or at least greatly slow down--innovation, as corporations and individuals hesitate to explore new ideas for fear of getting punished (or regulated to death) by litigation for any misstep, no matter how slight, in the creation of new products and services. Make sure that lawsuits against drugmakers are especially encouraged so that the companies are afraid to develop new lifesaving drugs, lest they be sued for sums that will bankrupt them. Make trial lawyers and judges, not scientists, responsible for the flow of new products and services.
3) Create a culture that blames the other guy for everything and discourages any form of individual self-restraint or self-control. Promote litigation to punish tobacco companies on the theory that they compel innocent people to smoke. Make it second nature for someone who is overweight to blame the restaurant that served him fries. Encourage a legal process that can kill a drug company for any mistakes in self-medication. Make it a general rule that anyone with more money than a plaintiff is responsible for anything harmful that a plaintiff does. Promulgate the pitiful joke that Americans are hereby exempt from any responsibility for their own actions--so long as there are deep pockets around to be rifled.
4) Sneer at hard work and thrift. Encourage the belief that all true wealth comes from skillful manipulation and cunning, or from sudden, brilliant and lucky strokes that leave the plodding, ordinary worker and saver in the dust. Make sure that society's idols are men and women who got rich from being sexy in public or through gambling or playing tricks, not from hard work or patience. Make the citizenry permanently envious and bewildered about where real success comes from.
5) Hold the managers of corporations to extremely lax standards of conduct and allow them to get off with a slap on the wrist when they betray the trust of shareholders. This will discourage thrift and investment and ensure that Americans will have far less capital to work with than other societies, while simultaneously developing that contempt for law and social standards that is the hallmark of failing nations. Hold the management of labor unions to no ethical standards.
6) While you're at it, discourage respect for law in every possible way. This will dissolve the glue that holds the nation together, and dissuade any long-term thinking. Societies in which the law can be clearly seen to apply to some and not to others are doomed to decay, in terms of innovation and everything else.
7) Encourage a mass culture that spits on intelligence and study and instead elevates drug use, coolness through sex and violence, and contempt for school. As children learn to be stupid instead of smart, the national intelligence base needed for innovation will simply vanish into MTV-land.
8) Mock and belittle the family. Provide financial incentives to people willing to live an isolated existence, vulnerable and frightened. This guarantees that men and women of sufficient character to bring about innovation will be psychologically stifled from an early age.
9) Develop a suicidal immigration policy that keeps out educated, hardworking men and women from friendly nations and, instead, takes in vast numbers of angry, uneducated immigrants from nations that hate us. This, too, leads to the shrinking of our knowledge base and the eventual disappearance of social cohesion.
10) Enact a tax system that encourages class antagonism and punishes saving, while rewarding indebtedness, frivolity and consumption. Tax the fruits of labor many times:
First tax it as income. Then tax it as real or personal property. Then tax it as capital gains. Then tax it again, at a staggeringly high level, at death. This way, Americans are taught that only fools save, and that it is entirely proper for us to have the lowest savings rate in the developed world. This will deprive us of much-needed capital for new investment, for innovation and our own personal aspirations. It will compel us to ask foreigners for ever more capital and allow them to own more of America. It will also promote an attitude of carelessness about the future and, once again, encourage disrespect for law.
11) Have a socialized medical system that scrimps on badly needed drugs and procedures, resorts to only the cheapest practices and discourages drug companies from developing new drugs by not paying them enough to cover their costs of experimentation, trial and error.
12) Elevate mysticism, tribalism, shamanism and fundamentalism--and be sure to exclude educated, hardworking men and women--to an equal status with technology in the public mind. Make sure that, in order to pay proper (and politically correct) respect to all different ethnic groups in America, you act as if science were on an equal footing with voodoo and history with ethnic fable.
ENDQUOTE
Don't forget that the folks at Ma Bell saw little use for the transistor, so they licensed it cheap to Sony and other Japanese companies, who proceeded to get rich selling transistor radios. Anyone making a list in, say, 1955, might well have left the 1947 invention of the transistor off.
Also, some of Forbes' choices are strange: tetraethyl lead? This did not "change the way we live".
Forbes lists their top 85 *business* breakthroughs...which slants things so that sheetrock is listed whereas the theory of relativity is not.
New ideas are born out of necessity. The transistor was invented because vacuum tubes weren't going to cut it at any level with computers. They simply werent fast enough or reliable enough. So the transistor comes along and its one of the best inventions of the 20th century.
However we have been improving on this, and other ideas, for the last half century. Miniturization may not be a new idea or invention, but the continued process of improving an idea is just as important as the first step. Moores Law is starting to run out with computer chips, you can expect the search for quantum computing to become all the more critical when it does.
We haven't had many new ideas lately, maybe just because we are still working on the old ones?
In 20 years we may look back and decide that the free software movement represented a landmark shift in the way people view software, licensing and IP issues.
I'm not trying to imply that "everything has been invented", but I think it's reasonable to argue that the "easy" technological advances have happened.
The things that are left take either much more sophisticated science, or sophisticated materials, and therefore have longer development times.
If you were to graph true innovation (NOT incremental) innovation vs. time I think that the curve is starting to flatten out. We're starting to bump into fundamental physical limitations on a lot of things: IC devices which are subject to quantum effects, the earth's gravity well wrt space travel, high T superconductors.
There's still plenty of room for invention (!), but the time and effort between true invention is becoming greater.
Absolute statements are never true
Drop pants on TV.
Genius.
Umm... I didn't see the female thong on the list.
Since they don't index the crap for you, but their URL format is transparent, I made an index for everybody:
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#86 - The Beowulf cluster. .Net
#87 - The first post robot.
#88 - The last post robot.
#89 - Underpants gnomes (Phase 1, 2, 3, etc).
#90 - Microsoft Tablet PC.
#91 - Microsoft
Karma: The shiznight, mostly because I am the Drizzle.
For the record, this is a list of 85 business breakthroughs. People forget, especially in the gadget happy world of Slashdot, that some of the great historical inventions and innovations are theoretical and intellectual and first exist in the realm of ideas and aren't clearly profitable or worth, by objective measures, an investment of money. Forbes wants you to think about breakthrough because they have the potential to make profit, which is good because it spurs innovation. But there are other reasons to try to innovate and revolutionize that are outside of the world of consumer culture.
Fight the national One-strike law for public housing residents
Online citizen journalism from the inner city: The View From The Ground
The Cellphone Zapper
Clandestinely aim and jam any person's cell call from within 50 feet.
Disclaimer: Cellphone Zapper is not recommended for use near metal objects or pregnant women. Cellphone Zapper may get extremely hot during use. Cellphone Zapper, Inc. will not be liable for injuries resulting from altercations inspired by the use of Cellphone Zapper. Do not aim Cellphone Zapper at small pets; dangerous explosions could result. Use of 2 cellphone zappers within the same 50 foot radius may result in massive injury or death due to harmonic resonance effects.
That they'd left out one of the most significant advancements in the history of mankind...but they didn't
Viagra is on the list, whew!
I submit that the apparent lack of big ideas in recent times is instead cause for optimism: there are so many big ideas that they all seem to be small. The Internet, cell phones, genome sequencing, nanotechnology, Linux, and George Foreman's Lean Mean Fat Reducing Grilling Machine -- what a great time to be alive!
..."fast, free" website registration. Like the one Forbes used to run me off before reading the article.
Bet it didn't list microwave popcorn, did it? Now THAT is progress we can all get behind!
This is my post. There are many others like it. If you don't like what you read here, go try one of the others.
...or something like that. The fun thing about this list is its inherent subjectivity (like most any non-statistical lists). I would have put in Air conditioning (sometime in 1902), anti-lock brakes (mid 1920s), and possibly spam...
Sorry, got some "Filter Lame" message so I had to break it up into parts.
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"Thomas Midgely adds lead to gasoline to stop power-draining knocking."
As if burning fuel wasn't bad enough already add a toxic metal to it to really juice things up. It's already banned in many countries including the USA and UK.
This site has further commentary and also covers his discovery of Freons that later helped damage the ozone layer including how his final invention killed him.
Surely the whole idea of such an article is to choose the inventions with the benefit of hindsight.
[)amien
Why is this interesting, the article about Ben Stein's comments was on /. last weekend, please moderators, try to stay with the program...
Sure it did! It "lead" the way for all of those "Unleaded Fuel Only" stickers that almost all of us have on our dashboards. I dunno about you, but I sure sleep better at night knowing that's there.
Stupid Hannah, bad emacs!
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Amazon 1-click patent
Microsoft Win95 and all its inovations
and so on...
They list Ethernet as one of the 85. What I find funny - they show a picture of a phone line and plug.
The One Rule Of Chess You'll Ever Need: Don't play someone who carries a kit in their bookbag.
I find myself noticing the years most of these inventors had died. Their inventions and discoveries are astounding, but I was alive when a lot of them died and I can't even remember any news or information about these people when they died.
Almost if any announcements of such were simply a segue from national news to sports. Easy to forget.
Disclaimer 2.0: All your cellphone are belong to us. See stores for details. Offer void in MD, TX, CA, FL.
Karma: The shiznight, mostly because I am the Drizzle.
i was very pleasantly surprised by someone finally giving John Atanasoff the credit for inventing computers.
Hostes alienigieni me abduxerunt. Qui annus est?
The discovery that tetraethyl lead could prevent knock was huge leap forward; it was a huge boost to the automotive industry, since it allowed manufacturers to build safer/more reliable/more powerful/etc engines.
These days all we hear about are the health risks of tetraethyl lead (it's toxic as hell), but back in the early 1900's it was seen as a tremendous leap forward. Without it, cars, airplanes, etc would be very different today.
I dont see /. on the list , therefore IMHO the list is null and void. Lets have a /. public vote of the best inventions that changed the world in the past 10 years. I'm sure that there is more than is given credit.
One guy was responsible for leaded gasoline and freon. Thanks a lot dude!
link
It it just me or does it seem that all of the cool/major inovations came about the time of major wars. Nuclear power, transistors, early computers, etc. Seems like war drives our technological advancements. How sad is that?
and hasn't it changed the world?
It turns lousy programmers into smart-mouthed (but still lousy programmer) punks.
Clicking through each slide of that slideshow was PAINFUL. Does anyone have this in list form, or a link to an actual ARTICLE on Forbes website? I don't want others to have to sit through that same process. What a terrible design.
Did you see that? 1968, Douglas Engelbart demonstrates computer
windows and a wooden stylus he calls a mouse. 1968. Can you say
"Microsoft vs Lindows trademark lawsuit"? How about 1968, can you
say that? (I knew the concept was old, but I didn't know it was
that old.)
> To a packed house at a computer conference in San Francisco,
> Stanford Research Institute's Douglas Engelbart made a dramatic
> presentation that included first-time demonstrations of onscreen
> "windows," teleconferencing and a wooden stylus device he called
> a "mouse." Engelbart didn't see much value in the peripheral, and
> neither did Stanford Research, which owned the patent and later
> licensed it to companies like Apple Computer for a $45,000
> one-time fee. Two decades later, Engelbart's in-vention was the
> PC standard.
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
Anyone else notice how the ethernet slide has a picture of an rj-11?
Disconnect your television. Do your own research. Draw your own conclusions. They're probably lying. Don't be a sheep.
one-click web purchasing.
This is such a technological breakthrough that it deserves it's own patent. oh wait.
I'd rather be a conservative nutjob than a liberal with no nuts and no job.
Electing George W. Bush?
Oh, you meant for the better...
My
Limekiller
No mention of Microsoft.
My Ass hurts.
What they should have put on the list is the !@#!~ scrollbar! Why the hell did they put only one invention per page?!?!?
</rant>
Other than that, not a bad article....
For the slide show on the Forbes web page, you have to hit "next" like 3 or 4 times until it starts showing up. In other words, it does work.
The list's a little silly, but whatever. Steve Forbes's comments, however, are a good dose of absurdist techno-capitalist babble.
Exempli Gratia:
Ray Kroc, for instance, didn't invent the fast-food phenomenon back in the 1950s. But when he saw the facility run by the McDonald brothers, he quickly grasped--as they did not--the awesomely exciting implications of their techniques in a business that was notorious for failure. The idea of creating a chain of thousands of similar restaurants that spanned the globe was, before Kroc's vision, utterly preposterous.
Alternate reading -- Ray Kroc, shrewd businessman, stumbles upon small very profitable business. He proceeds to buy their franchising rights, eventually purchasing the business and taking legal control over the use of their own name, and makes a fortune. McDonald brothers are left in the dust.
Yet all too many academics, politicos, bureaucrats and even businesspeople don't understand that risk-taking is the wellspring of our progress.
Sure, Steve, because we know that none of the great innovations of the twentieth century have involved financial or institutional support from governments, universities, or big business. All garage tinkerers...
But the most potent fiscal incentive is reducing marginal tax rates--i.e., the tax you pay on each additional dollar you earn.
Ah yes, the Steve Forbes innovation. Surprised that wasn't number #86 on the list.
Trial lawyers have progressed too far in diffusing the stark difference between fraud and honest business mistakes.
Yeah, like the Ford Pinto. Just an honest business mistake...
The fundamental concept of limited liability--you can't lose more money than the amount you invested in an entity--is being eroded.
Fun fact -- our founding fathers viewed limited liability corporations with some concern. As a result, such corporations could only be chartered by state legislatures, and had to be renewed every few years. If a corporation didn't seem to be serving the public well, state legislatures would often decharter it.
Corporate directors with M.B.A.s and considerable experience in running businesses have been discovering that in the eyes of the Securities & Exchange Commission they are not qualified to sit on audit committees, because they are not certified public accountants.
Perhaps that could be because spending a few years learning management culture at Harvard doesn't qualify you to thoroughly analyze corporate finances.
Democratic capitalism is moral.
Democratic capitalism? Is that something like military intelligence?
You won't long succeed in business if you don't serve the needs or wants of others.
Yeah, that's why Ken Lay did so poorly...
Red All Over: Rambling Missives from an Aspiring Revolutionary
Maybe our problem is due to a lack of original thought.
Might as well blow some good karma here.
Why would you post a cut and paste from 4 days ago, then why do the moderators follow along as good little sheep and mod it up as interesting and insightful?
I hope that someday we will be able to put away our fears and prejudices and just laugh at people. - Jack Handey
I can recognise and sympathise with the sentiment, but:
I studied CS, and consider myself to have more of a leaning towards science than art/humanities/whatever, but who decided that only scientists are capable of designing new products or services?
Tim
However, the credit for the Multiplane Camera was given to Walt Disney, not to its true inventor, Ub Iwerks. That guy got ZERO respect from Disney. Walt also took credit for the final design for Mickey Mouse...guess what? Iwerks drew that. According to animation historians, Disney couldn't draw to save his own life. He relied on Iwerks to take his scribbles and scrawls and turn them into something that actually LOOKED GOOD.
"But you've already got a DVD. It lasts forever....In the digital world, we don't need back-ups..."
-- Jack Valenti
This Ben Stein essay originally in Forbes or somesuch is such tripe.
This is the same guy who hosts the pointless trivia
show on Comedy Central "Win Ben Stein's Money".
If that's not clearly exactly the sort of crap that he is saying has led to the decline of the US, then he's not reading his own essay.
The show is all about getting some $$$ for answering some pointless questions and winning something for nothing.
His essay clearly highlights a lot of important issues, but his life and lifestyle put him in the "part of the problem" side.
Forbes both characterizes Unix and C (1972) as "the original computer operating system and language," but also has FORTRAN (mid to late 50s) in its list of 85 big ideas--so not only are they wrong (Unix isn't even the first multitasking OS or the first OS written in a high-level language--we'll grant C high-level status in this context), they contradict themselves.
We've been trying to get controlled nuclear fusion going for decades (H-bombs are trivial by comparison), and still haven't managed it. This is what we really need: unlimited electrical energy to make hydrogen cars and all those other Good Things work. I'm not holding my breath though.
When I am king, you will be first against the wall.
We can probably safely judge the Chia Pet's, contribution to society today.
Here are some other "patently useless" inventions. These ones from Japan will certainly improve our lifestyle at some point!
TTFN
These people had been to movie theaters before...didn't they know how terrible of an idea a cell phone is?
ok . . . we don't usually think of it as an invention, but just think where we'd be without it?!?
Two things to consider:
1.) As other posters have written: Hindsight is needed to appreciate breakthroughs which "change...lives in a profound way." If there have been any such breakthroughs, recently (no, I'm not suggesting that Segway will qualify), they haven't yet had time to be fairly judged.
2.) I think it's also worth considering that recent years, more than the past, have seen our "technological progress" move more toward improving existing tools rather than inventing new ones. The obvious example is the internet -- now that its infrastructure is present, and it has been adopted into a large percentage of homes and businesses, we're seeing real and profound development occur. Amazon, eBay, Bibliofind -- hell, even pr0n -- aren't "inventions," per se, but they certainly represent new developments which I suspect may be seen as quite impactful.
Also, the past ten or fifteen years have seen a progressive slide in our economy from product-oriented business to service-oriented business. Maybe it is true that we're not pumping out wold-changing inventions (the Foreman grill and the Popeil pasta maker aside) at the same rate we were a century ago; but I think that it has to be acknowledged that we are also offering (and consuming) services which didn't exist in the past. It's worth considering whether the rate of decline in our production of "inventions" is perhaps matched by our rate of growth in providing "services."
Finally, although I think the above is more relevant, there's the obligatory shot at the Clinton generation: One of the notions held by that generation, I think, is the idea of "quick profit" -- and specifically, that it's quicker, cheaper and generally more efficient to improve upon an existing product, rather than produce something entirely new. I think that generation, as compared to the economic drivers of the 1940s, have been more interested in taking charge of what's around them than developing anew. So if we're seeing less inventions and more "version 2.4"...well, I'm not surprised.
crib
Please don't read my journal
theBubbler.com, a site that dedicated to Wisconsin, and only Wisconsin. You dont need hindsite to see that this is a great idea!!
Was *everything* invented in US?
The slideshow is very annoying so I didn't force myself to go beyond 30s, but everything seems to be invetned in the USA.
I passed the Turing test.
I'm gonna have to call BS on this onei onsli de_27.html?thisSpeed=20000
http://www.forbes.com/2002/12/02/cx_85invent
"Bell labs envisions a mobile phone service using a network of low-power transmitters"
"Envisions"? People envision deep space travel today, but I don't think we are ready to assign credit to an "inventor". As a designer of cell phone networks, I'm not buying this one.
here is a link of the top 10 scientific breakthus in the past 10 years. Notice the differences http://www.msnbc.com/news/849691.asp?0si=-
I don't see internet porn anywhere on that list!
This has got to be an amusing typo.
According to Forbes, in 1976, the personal computer chic was invented. They neglect to mention her name.
Pound! Bang! Bin! Bash! is this a shell script or a Batman comic?
Mentioning NANOtechnology and erection in the same post like that. That really hurt my feelings!
You're assuming the converse of the argument. The statement says that "not scientists" should be responsible for the flow of new products or services.
From a logic point of view, this statement assumes (correctly) that, currently, scientists are responsible for some to all new products or services. But it does not require "all" or "only". Just more than one. It allows the case that other people than scientists are currently responsible.
The argument says to remove scientists from the equation.
Number one on that list? Not the steam engine or the telegraph, the cotton gin or the McCormick reaper, or even newcomers like electric lights and the telephone. According to the New York Times, the most important invention of the previous century was chemical "frictionless" matches.
I suppose this decision makes a little more sense in a world where most homes and businesses are still heated by coal and lit by kerosene. (And yes, I know it is a bitch to light things with flint and steel.) But I wonder how much of this article will be considered laughable or just plain stupid in 100 years.
--Gondwanaland for Gondwanans!--
Doesn't matter how many times I click "Faster", it's still slooooow.
Here's an idea... How bout a plain text version of the list? Or am I just not seeing the link?
Since these are all business innovations and ideas (and everything is so slow), did anyone catch what number "Patent, Profit, Repeat" made?
The list seems to be typically biased towards US inventions like so many.
I think at least as much credit goes to Marconi and Reis for co-inventing the telephone.
This comment is printed on 100% recycled electrons.
Forbes discovery of using a "slide show" to cram 85 ads down a single users throat in a single "story".
I agree with the above poster, I find this very much on topic.
It is me or they are trying to make a point with great inventions and money?
They try to make the bell labs one of the best ideas in the century, but it is just a fusion. (imho)
They show as a great invention the polaroid, but now is dead (does anybody has a polaroid working and taking pictures today?) did it changed the world or it made a lot of money only?
The other point that I think they tried to show that most of the 85 best ideas of the last century (or so) are from U.S.A. (IMHO again)
I think there were several business ideas coming from outside that they didnt show at all, (I dont have many now, but the roller ball pen could be one, or in business, could have been set up the Volskwagen model)
May be Im a troll, or Im in a trollish mood, but I though that it was a piece of chauvinist crap, like "what forbes have made propaganda for this years and it is the best in the world"
CCV.
courtesy the native americans, and just about every other indigenous culture that the 'civilized' europeans wiped out. which btings me to another idea that changed the world: capitalist imperialism, still being worshipped today, the slaughterer of billions, the scourge of life itself.
Like my father (when I was born in the 1950s), I still drive to work in a car with a steering wheel and four tires (albeit auotmatic tranny and air conditioned), I still talk on the telephone (albeit cordless or wireless), I still watch TV (albeit color), I still listen to records (albeit anywhere), and I cook, clean, vacuum, and do laundry in much the same ways my mother did, (save for my microwave). And like my father, I don't have to get up in the morning before everybody else and stoke a furnace to get heat (like my grandfather did).
Point is, most of the truly life-changing inventions, or at least their introduction into mainstream society, occurred in the first half of the 20th century. We in the tech sector tend to forget that./p
Research shows that 67% of those who use the term "research shows", are just making shit up.
Who knows what kind of things are being developed today that will become part of our lives 40 years from now...
1954 -- Telstar The first commercial communications satellite is launched
Oh, well! If History is taught in the U.S. as Forbes' "historians" show it, no wonder why Americans are so unaware of the world's reality.
Are you aware of the term "Ad Hominem"? If you are, then you will know that attempting to discredit this argument based on irrelevant facts about Ben Stein doesn't hold much water.
I'm not trying to pick on this single post, because there hasn't been a single valid rebuttal on this thread, actually. It doesn't matter that I copied and pasted the post and it doesn't matter that Ben Stein hosts a game show. The points are still strong, and nobody seems to want to actually deal with the issues head on. That's exactly what prevents innovation -- lack of desire or ability to solve problems.
Tetraethyl Lead was a TERRIBLE idea - the only reason it was chosen over grain alcohol was that tetraethyl lead could be patented and marketed, whereas grain alcohol could not.
Perhaps it was a great business innovation, but a lousy scientific innovation.
www.eFax.com are spammers
Something that starts off with this line can be considered "Insightful"??
zrodney is attacking the article because it is written by someone who he says is apparently "evil" because he has a game show. That reeks of a Troll to me. I guess not to everyone else.
Lets ignore the fact that his gameshow (like some others) actually rely on the knowledge and intelligence of the contestants to win money and prizes... not just the "luck of the spin of the wheel". Lets also ignore the fact that Ben Stein is a highly intelligent man who has written speeches for U.S. Presidents and presidential candidates. Lets mod this guy up because he talks about the author of the article "being part of the problem with society"... which really has nothing to do with the article at all.
Karma: NaN
For instance:
2) Encourage the making of laws and rules by trial lawyers and sympathetic judges, especially through class actions.
As opposed to letting it be made by a morally bankrupt, corrupt congress which is primarilly elected based on their ability to:
1) Kow-tow to the incredibly popular president, regardless of what he's actually doing
and
2) Raise cash from huge corporations?
I'd much rather have intelligent judges legislate from the bench (even if I disagree with them) than letting CEOs legislate from the board room.
Besides, this is ONE of the ways that things can enter law, and if it's really WRONG congress can always overturn it.
I always love these "10 point" lists. They are ALWAYS oversimplifications of an incredibly complex problem (which can itself be simplified to "People are stupid")
-- IANAEG - I am not an elder god.
#92 - All Your Base...
There is not a single original thought in your post. Instead of flaming me for copying and pasting, how about you respond to some of the points that you disagree with?
But not as much as the knee jerk reactions to this "only 4 in the last 10 years" crap. Everybody is explaining that the reason why creativity has been so poor recently is that society has become fascist / communist / atheist / ruled by lawyers / ruled by M$ / ruled by unions / ruled by big business / ruled by journalists / democrat / republican / liberal... Come on, this is just a completely subjective list established by some journalists who obviously don't know what they are talking about.
These are supposed to be major business innovations and we have pure anecdotal stuff (Pampers, LCDs, Viagra, Prozac), pure financial markets stuff (junk bonds, discount brokerage, index funds...), hard science/medecine discoveries (automated sequencing machine, tomography, thorazine...). And they miss ERP, the software license (at a time when only hardware had a perceived value) etc...
Anyone (even me) can come up with a similar list. Theirs is no truer than mine. So please don't use that list as a fact to support a political agenda.
It would be nice to be sure of anything the way some people are of everything.
Innovations that Revolutionized Slashdot
from the not-I-said-jonkatz dept.
That's all I can think of, anyone care to add more?
Sigmentation fault - core dumped
No-brainer, here. Companies, instead of trying to find ways to make lives better/easier, are now focused on trying to sell you something. That simple. Innovation has taken a backseat to profit margins, patent mongering, and pop culture. Innovation just isn't as important to them anymore. If they can't make a quick million or 10 off of an idea, it gets the boot.
Blog Prophyts - Right On, Man
Considering they felt pacemakers revolutionized medicine, what about the anesthesia that allows those pacemakers to be implanted not to mention numerous other procedures to be performed safely? If anything they are too kind to recent developments. Nothing has come so far of the human genome project which they include. Huge advancements have been made after discovering that DNA is the repository of the genetic code. And Viagra, please, Playboy has had a more profound effect for a longer period of time.
cheers
Tetraethyl lead won WWII. It was the most advanced octane booster available at the time and was exclusively available to allied forces. Using leaded gasoline provided allied fighter aircraft with more power and performance. This helped overcome the technological advantage that German and Japanese aircraft had at the wars outset. It could be honestly stated that without tetraethyl lead, the air war over Brittain would have been longer or even unwinnable. As for CFCs... they were invented as a refrigerant (a task they excell at). They became a problem when people started using them as propellants in spray cans. If they had never been misused they would probably still be legal and providing us with energy efficient cooling.
Considering that Midgely had no formal training in Chemistry, he should be admired for his self-made nature.
AUGAUUUGCGCACAUAUCUCAGCGAAUGAAAGGGAUUAA
Would cause fewer inventions as well. Such a fragile thing creativity is. Certainly a human being is robust as far as being able to survive and being able to function. But the ability to be brilliant requires far more healthy brain cells than what is required to survive. In between brilliance and survival a whole hell of a lot of sharpness can be taken from the blade without much notice. And how could one tell long term if everyone were deficiant?
We have no guarantee on perputual mental accuity. If such a thing exists about our persons that inflicts damage to our brains, the less smarter we will be.
People have been more literate in the past than what we are today. Certainly we have more technology about us, which presents an image of sophistication, but are we as sophisticated as individuals as we were in the past?
O.K., they put in the sneaker, and the washing machine, and the cathode, and the mass spectrometer, but they left out other, much more important inventions, such as the bra (circa 1920). THink about it. Before the bra, women in polite company were breaking their ribs with corsets and suffering from the vapors. THe bra allowed a lot to happen, everything from the flapper designs to the ability of women to suck in a breath. Besides the practicality of the bra (woman's point of view), it gave men a new task to master - unhooking the thing with one hand through a sweater.
So, how accurate is this list when it fails to mention the bra?
Computer electronics is...not THAT interesting. Yeah computing on a 10k PeeCee is cute, How much intrinsinc value is involved, probably not all that much.
The way I read it was that trial lawyers and judges were preventing scientists, AND other people that understand the issues from solving the problems. There are a lot of people that have a lot to gain from problems not being resolved once and for all. Those people employee attorneys and sometimes judges to throw legal roadblocks in the way of those (scientists and everybody else) who may be able to put an end to the problems.
One thing that's interesting about this statement is that Stein himself is a lawyer.
What limp-dick decided that this is one of the top 85 ideas of the century? How is letting old people f*** somehow more important than, say, mechanized infantry?
I was quite surprised to see pong make the list as a business innovation.
"Nolan Bushnell (b. 1943) gave geeks another reason to stay indoors by introducing Pong" [insert favorite no-life geek joke]
Alas, there was no mention of ping anywhere. (How can we survive without ping?)
I'm sure all businesses were glad to see games eventually enter the workplace.
Also missing from the list: "The Boss Button"
this is better than the link given.
The other myth is that there were no good alternatives. In fact alcohol worked as well then as now. (It just wasn't patentable.)
They managed to suppress the evidence for just how toxic was the lead they were scattering around for many decades. The suppression was deliberate and criminally fraudulent.
Leaded gasoline was a disaster and a crime on a scale similar to the asbestos deception of the same era, but one that has still not been prosecuted, largely for political reasons. It is almost a miracle that leaded gas got banned at all. The ban certainly wouldn't happen in today's political climate, even though lead was killing a World Trade Center's worth of Americans every week. Killing Americans is a corporate privilege.
..to get 85 page views.
Geez, they can't put more than one on a page!
...is that nobody reads any of the posts already submitted before they post their insights.
Bill Murray was announced as the Earl of Sandwich
Buck Henry, escorting a woman,was announced as Lord and Lady "Douche Bag".
What were the rest of those inventors?
This should come as no surprise, as the value of most of these inventions wasn't realized until well after their creation. If this list and been compiled in 1972, I doubt "modem" would be listed at all.
Why prozac and not aspirin or tylenol? Safe, low cost pain killers have had a huge impact on people's lives, and spawned the entire pharmaceuticals juggernaut.
So long, and thanks for all the Phish
"You apparently haven't been to a Wal-Mart recently. Many women who are wearing spandex shouldn't."
There is actually a law "illegal use of spandex."
It's on the books, but seldom enforced.
and btw; what is that color of spandex, you know the one, it's sort of green and has milk stains on it?
Ick.
You know you're a geek if you've ever replied to a tagline.
the microprocessor and the answering machine invented in the same year!?
Yup. They were beastly electro-mechanical things about the size of a VCR.
Believe it or not, lots of technology existed before uP/uC's existed.
Take the automatic phone switch, for example... It was invented when a funeral home realized that the competitor's wife was working the switchboards and referring all businesses to him. It was basically a big rack of relays and switches.
How could they have left off duct tape!? Just think about all of the household problems, server problems, and co-worker problems (ahem) it's helped solve! It apparently came out during World War II, according to this somewhat disturbing article at About.com.
In a list of top business ideas, I'm a little suprised they missed the Black-Scholes Formula. While few outside of the financial have heard of it, this Nobel prize-winning development revolutionised the world of finance. It was (and is) a way of finding the fair price for options contracts, a problem that experts had been trying to solve for most of the century. It was revolutionary because it was the first one that actually worked and as such utterly changed the balance of risks involved with these financial transactions. The model was eventually extended to cover other instruments. Professors Black and Scholes later changed the world in another, less appealing way. They were behind the spectacular failure that was Long Term Capital Management (LTCM), proving, if anything, that their models were not entirely flawless.
Well 'scuse me, I just happen to thing that shooting at people is not something you do to get your own way.
Yep, it's something you do back to the people who are shooting at you to get their own way.
But if you can temp them into shootiong first?
Do you mind, your karma has just run over my dogma.
Damn, that girl has some nice legs.
(Yes, I know it's bad, but...)
Saying this list represents the 85 biggest ideas of the 20th century is an astonishingly stupid thing to say. There have been many hugely influential and important ideas that weren't inventions, including many in the sciences. It's funny how geeks often seem to think the universe revolves around them...
Laying out a group of items as a list, as in: ...
1.
2.
3.
4.
85.
(An invention the editors at Forbes.com seem to be ignorant about - either that or their convoluted layout of the 85 ideas is meant to get you to view 85 advertisements.)
While Einstein is not referenced, they list it as "nuclear power" in 1945, not "weapons".
Sleep is for the Weak
i don't know about that. i get the feeling that every generation says that innovation is starting to slow down.
/perfected because of physical limitations.
there are plenty of things that haven't been invented
for example: supersonic passenger air service. it's there, but not for the average joe and mary.
another example: wireless/satellite internet access, anywhere in the world. not there yet not because of limitations on science or technology, but because of limitations of innovations in business, right ?
How about presenting all the items in the list on one page of plain-vanilla HTML with a simple abstract for each item and a link if we want details? Otherwise, this thing is broadband only.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
I find it interesting that hardly anyone mentions Tesla's ether theories regarding the distribution of electric power wirelessly when discussing the most important scientific/revolutionary ideas of the last 100 years or so. I only recently became aware of such a theory (we never even heard about Tesla in school) and that it is actually possible to deliver unlimited power for FREE and without wires. How come this isn't a a more prominent subject and are scientists working on making this a reality?
Any Nikola Tesla groupies out there who would like sound off on that?
Its interesting to note that the article doesn't list the 85 top breakthroughs that have changed the way we live. It lists the 85 top business breakthroughs (very first sentence of the first page of the article).
That changes what could be perceived as a top breakthrough. With this in mind, the Protease Inhibitors and their affect on the HIV virus seem somewhat out of place - unless someone is making some money off of that, which I guess is probably the case. It does explain why viagra is on the list, and although DNA sequencing isn't hard to justify as a major breakthrough, from a business standpoint, a $300 million budget means someone must be interested in its financial aspects!
my vote for best invention of the last century....
-- too cruel for schuel
It's a matter of education and etiquette. People learned to scoop their doggie poo; they will learn how to use cell phones.
What about Public Key Crpto? Without public key crypto, E-business would be a very risky venture not to mention hundreds of other technologies that rely of public key.
Maybe it's time to increase the font on the web browser...
I can explanate how to administrate your network. You must configurate and segmentate it, so it can computate.
Similarly, I've heard, but I can't find a reference now (I think it may have been on a history of science list or something), that many physics labs had working microwave ovens as early as 1935, and while cooking wasn't what it was supposed to be used for, it was... :-)
The LASER was indeed not realized before the 1950-ties, but you can find many folks who worked on early LASERs that will tell you that Einstein really did most of the work a lot earlier. It was his ideas.
Employee of Inrupt, Project Release Manager and Community Manager for Solid
in ten years Real Doll will be on the list
in fifteen years Real Doll on Wheels *batteries included!*
in twenty years Real Doll *with functional glands*
a boom of Darwin Award stories follow
in twenty-five years Real Dolls incite WWIV and Sara Connor must fight to save the world from diminished libido
Stein's success in various fields tends to make him somewhat of an authority on the subject of what it takes to be successful -- the fruit of innovation.
Are you expecting a single, reasonably concise rebuttal for all of the hundreds of disparate potshots he takes in his 1,000-word diatribe? It would take too long to enumerate every instance in which I disagree with Mr. Stein.
I'm not an unreasonable man, but you didn't even attempt one point.
In general, the points toe a very predictable conservative line, and do not offer any new insight that I can see.
Not new, but still correct.
I should mention that it's really amusing to see all these down-moderations, yet not one person has managed to list a single valid rebuttal to any of the points. "I disagree, but I don't know why!"
i would rather chew a whole roll of effing tin foil than read any book written by that effing G.D. b*tch!! she is hateful, atheism is good and altruism is bad?? what the eff kind of attitude is that?? i don't have any problem with atheists, but lashing out at altruism?? hello?? i don't beleive in censorship, but if i did, that book would be the first to go. jiminy effing chr*st
It's amazing what's possible in a healthy, homogeneous White society. Now the people responsible for these acheivements are slowly being replaced. Where's the White resistance??
I vote the punched-chad ballot (or the Supreme Court interpretation of such) as the invention which will have the greatest effect on the world as we know it.
https://app.box.com/WitthoftResume Code: https://github.com/cellocgw
Cite.
At first I thought it was 85 new ideas since the movie "Sneakers" came out and what spy tools we could use that they couldn't in that movie. THAT would have been interesting. Then I saw the 1917 date. DOH!
I didn't even finish reading all 85 ideas because it is rather exasperating to click through to each idea 85 freaking times to see them all. With such a short blurb on each one, you would think they could fit at least 10 on each page. Jeez! The streaming videos about FOrbes history are kinda intersting though.
>>>>>> Chewie, take the professor in the back and plug him into the hyperdrive.
Jesus Christ, go write a letter you cry baby!
no, didn't think so.
.. no, just save it.
great.. another paranoid delusional. "The Truth Is Out There" ooOOOoOOOoooOOOoooOOoOOooooOOooOO DAH DAH DAH DUM!
save it for
It's fun to observe the small circles that we run around in because of beauracracy(sp?). Cell phones could have been implemented in 1947, but
The FCC stymied the idea by limiting the number of radio-spectrum frequencies for mobile telephone service; it didn't reconsider its position until 1968.
Anyone see parallels with wireless technology?
Thank you FCC for protecting me!!!
Why should I argue rationally with someone being irrational? I'll just mock them instead.
The obvious things missing from this list are penis enlargment pills and miniature remote controlled cars.
Lead was necessary to lubricate and cool exhaust valves. Metallurgy had not progressed to the level we have today and durable, hardened valves did not exist. Engines produced during the period of leaded gasoline will be destroyed very quickly when used with modern gasoline and no lead substitute.
Nice conspiracy theory, though.
Maybe you need to vote for more fashion cops, if the ones you have are not able to enforce the law effectively.
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
I bet Bill gates is not happy to have not made the list but Steve Jobs did.
Also in the fact that Sam Walton would be the richist man if he where alive today!!!!
Wise men speak because they have something to say, Fools because they have to say something!!!!
Amen to that Brotha!
The real reason you have to wait a few years before listing it, is that you need to let peoples memories fade a bit before you can claim it was an American invention.
Looking through the list, the inventions fall into 4 categories.
1. American inventions, where their origin is made clear. They're quite careful to always list where the inventions came from, along the lines of "(asian/eastern european name) of the University of (somewhere in America)"
2.Foreign inventions, where no mention of their inventors nationality is made. Fleming, the inventor of penicillin is one example.
3. Foreign inventions that are credited to Americans who came along later. Television and computers are two examples.
4. Foreign inventions that are credited to their actual inventors, and nationality acknowledged. I counted 3.
What is it with Americans?
Why do you feed the need to claim the credit for everything?
Quidquid Latine dictum sit, altum videtur (anything said in Latin sounds important)
> I should mention that it's really amusing to see all these down-moderations, yet not one person has managed to list a single valid rebuttal to any of the points. "I disagree, but I don't know why!"
The reason you don't see a rebuttal to these points is that they're correct as they stand. The mistake you make (and Mr. Stein, for whom I have a great deal of respect, by the way) is (in his case) implying that these bad ideas have all been implemented by the U.S. culture and (in your case) believing him. In point 11, I agree that this socialized medical system would be a bad thing, but I disagree with his implication that this is the way things work now. In point 9, the immigration policy he describes is indeed horrible, but I remain unconvinced that it's accurate. I could go on, but you get my point. This doesn't fit "valid rebuttal to any of the points" strictly, but it does represent disagreement with his position.
Virg
I nearly shit myself when I was watching an old Perry Mason episode and I saw him using a car phone! This is like the late 50's, so I didn't realise they had that tech back then. In the same episode, Him and Paul make a big deal out of some guys "Hi-Fi" stereo setup...like the car phone wasn't a big deal. And what about the wind-up phone in MASH that was always in the Blake/Potter's office. That was cool.
1933 Frequency Modulation
Forget Howard Stern. The real force behind modern radio is Edwin Howard Armstrong (1890-1954). By 1913 he figured out how to amplify radio signals with a feedback loop. During WWI he improved reception and made tuning in signals easier with the superheterodyne circuit, a component that transforms high-frequency waves into intermediate-frequency waves. His biggest hit in communications came with his radical notion that radio signals should transmit data by variations not in amplitude but in frequency. By this scheme he eliminated much of the static that plagued traditional AM broadcasts. The broadcast industry, heavily invested in AM, tried to stop him, but FM eventually won the day. It's also the electronic format for tv and space communication.
Nice to know somethings never change. RIAA take note.
There have been many more than 4 great innovations in the last decade - we just don't know what they are yet. And 20 years from now, we will most likely rethink those 4. Notice that nearly half of the 85 innovations had long gestation periods - some more than 20 years. CDs, conceived in 1970, did not become breakthrough until 1986. The significance of fiber-optics in data networks was largely ignored until telco deregulation and the explosion of the internet. It is interesting how some innovations become immediately important (jet engines, WWW, Viagra), yet others are ignored or actively suppressed for decades.
Okay, so countless people find the need to point out that the inventions of the last decade can't be appropriately represented due to a lack in the passage of time...
and yet near the top of the thread everyone mentioning this gets modded 0:Redundant although as you go on these posts start getting modded as 2's, then 4's, and 5's... WITH NO SIGNIFICANT CONTENT IN THE MESSAGES.
WTF?
-- btw, I did not post one of these comments, I just think the modding was less than appropriate and approaching new levels of LAME.
Hmm. They list penicillin, which saved millions of lives, and polio vaccine that prevented at least thousands of not millions of cases of paralysis as happening decades ago.
And all we can manage lately is helping Bob Dole sprout wood? I think the pharmaceutical industry is in trouble.
One other comment: I worked at Medtronic (largest pacemaker manufacturer) for about 3 years. Some of the stories about how that got invented by the dude they mention in that article and Earl Bakken (the founder of Medtronic who worked with him) are pretty interesting. The early ones were external, and you had to have it hooked up to a electrical socket. When the power went out so did your pacemaker, so they then started connecting them to big batteries similar to car batteries. Imagine having to drag that around with you all day? Having a pacemaker in the early days was no fun. But better than being dead I guess.
My motto is: Never give up - unless it's harder than you want it to be.
Sig ?
Still, I don't see how they could have missed the Segway
I hate myself for knowing this but there was also a I Love Lucy episode with a car phone.
Cypherpunks: Civil Liberty Through Complex Mathematics. Those who live by the sword die by the arrow.
New ideas are born out of necessity.
...fast-forward a few decades... Now every office cannot be without one (or a variant).
I'll give you an example of just the opposite (necessity born out of new ideas): xerography. Who needs an expensive machine to make copies when you have carbon-copy paper? Maybe 10 of the largest office buildings would own one.
Btw, I do agree that the invention would probably never have been pursued if someone didn't feel a need for it. If not a patent lawyer, then maybe someone with a need to constantly photograph their butt.
This is not my sig.
No joke. Duct tape is being used by doctors to treat warts. Apparently applying duct tape on warts consistently for a month or so causes some sort of antibacterial chemical in the skin to be released as a reaction to the glue in duct tape. The chemical has been shown to get rid of warts with an efficacy of 85%... duct tape: truly the doctor's... err, handy man's secret weapon.
u ct ape.html
http://health.discovery.com/news/afp/20021014/d
It might help if they added "software testing" to their list. Which I haven't seen, because after trying several different browsers, and having them all fail to display the list in different ways (Netscape 4.7 just displays a blank window with a car ad) I've wasted enough time and need to get some work done.
Grumble! Harumph!
P.S. Does this mean that everybody is accessing the page with Internet Exploder, the only browser that seems to work? Shudder.
With Intellectual Property, I wonder how many "Good Ideas" will be lost in the future. You can't even propose something without being sued to hell, or your too restricted to create new buisnesses because everything is patented.
::throws prototype in trash::"
"Billy: Hey! I have made a prototype for a Nanotech replicator!"
"Sally: Err... Sony patented everything Nanotec"
"Billy: Yea, I forgot.
Car phones in those days weren't anything like the cell phones of today. They were clunky things that weren't directly tied-in to the phone system. Well, maybe they were dialing out, using phone patch technology similar to what hams use, but to call somebody's car phone you placed a call to the "mobile operator" and had them make the connection.
Kinda like when making a long distance call outside the country in those days you had to ask for the "overseas operator" and have them place the call.
-- Alastair
That sounds pretty significant to me.
If he explores all forms and substances Straight homeward to their symbol-essences; He shall not die.
Many people don't realize the wool has been pulled over their eyes in other areas as well. Why doesn't anyone ever talk about this???
It is odd that they put Fortran on as the language that started computer languages while in fact it was COBOL. They put the original inventions of many other things up and not the one that made it big. I wonder if they new COBOL was first.
They got a small royalty on every burger sold. That small royalty really started to add up over the years :)
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
interactive TV and videophones are pretty much here anyway, now (oh, you don't have a cell-phone with a camera yet?)
And space-based solar power is actually one of the two major long-term energy options we have (the other being fusion) so it definitely shouldn't be discounted! I just wish NASA and the Department of Energy were spending a little bit more on research into it ($25 million over 30 years doesn't amount to very much...)
Energy: time to change the picture.
In The Sun magazine, there is an interview with someone named Carolyn Raffensperger. This lady wants to do some radical and awful things to scientific development in the guise of applying "the precautionary principle"to the research agenda.
This is the wronnnng way to go about things. Scientists should be completely independent, as much from business as from government or "society." The key to public interest involvement in scientific development is getting the corporate control out of the media, politics, and other information vectors.
I can't believe that Tesla's asynchronous current, transformers and the first hydro electric plant on Niagara didn't make it on the list. Without that you'd have to have dirty power generation stations every dozen miles because DC can go very far without substantial losses. The power wouldn't be nearly as available as today...
Audio synthesizers, starting with the big RCA analog machine back in the fifties, and progressing through digital sampling w/ DSP.
How did the cellphone revoluntionize the world? Did it double crop outputs or cure a disease or what?
... oops, scratch that last part. (I have a nondisclosure agreement with Microsoft.)
It does sound just a tad pompous. Even the microprocessor computer has taken a while to come into its own, and it is a far more flexible device. But for real impact on people's lives, it has been argued that the inventions of a century ago, from the cotton gin to the steam engine to modern pesticides to the assembly line to the combine and automobile and airplane to safe surgery WITH anesthesia and antiseptics (even the discovery of the GERM was, well, revolutionary) to the Edison electric light bulb -- all before or about 1900. While we're at it, how about the invention of the telephone?
I'm just rattling off semirandom industrial things that I hope are in the right time period, but you see the fundamental changes these inventions wrought, versus the more subtle improvements of the second half of the 20th century. I do think we're slowing down because so many of the great inventions are taken, yet maybe are too impressed with what has happened in our lifetimes. Another poster wisely pointed out that recent pickings may seem slim because we haven't had time to figure out which inventions are great, just as it takes about 50 years to assess the significance of a President.
But really, the cellphone? An enhanced cordless phone? Half "the world" has probably never even used one. They're wonderful and all, but incremental and transitory. Eventually we'll have the goddamn things implanted in our skulls, linked not to cells but satellites that manipulate our every thought
As for:
How long did it take for [the cellphone] to revolutionize the world?
Answer: Not yet.
Postscript: Does it horrify anyone else here that historians will refer to us as living "at the turn of the century"? All my life that has meant 1901.
Not to mention that Fleming shared the Nobel Prize for the "creation of penicillin" with Howard Florey and Ernst Chain, who actually figured out how to isolate and produce it in quantity. Fleming's contribution was noticing the effect that mould had on bacteria, but he didn't take things any further.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
Actually, adjusted for inflation the price of gas has not changed much since 1950. I'm not sure how much it was before that, but my impression is that it was the cost of the vehicle then more than now that was the major stumbling block, hence the success of Ford. The heavy taxes that account for about a third of the price of gas also had not yet been invented.
I can see how boosting mileage would be a competitive advantage but am not so convinced the industry would have died without it. Then there's all the adverse health effects to factor in -- those cost money, too, even if they are externalized and subtle.
I do think leaded gas was an odd pick.
When I used to work on GA aircraft, I spent a lot of time picking pieces of lead out of the spark plugs (they cost $10 apiece, and so were worth saving).
Interestingly these many of the engines, which in design dated from about WWII, ran perfectly well on "low-lead" gas with a fraction the original lead. I don't know if anyone put much thought into minimizing the lead.
I have heard anything about MTBE? It was patented and earning whatever oil company a fortune. Sadly, it is also incredibly toxic and can leach into groundwater from leaking tanks -- like a gallon could destroy an aquifer. I'm not yet convinced it is as bad as described, but what I heard was very disturbing.
From the article:
Electronic Digital Computer
After "an evening of scotch and 100mph car rides"
This might explain alot in the computer industry...
-ted
It's your belief that "The USA" and "The World" are the same thing that fucks me off the most. In sport, there is The World Series - well the rest of the world couldn't give a shit if we're not invited. (BTW, where did you get at the last World Cup?) In politics there's the belief that you are "right", to believe otherwise is "Un-American" and therefore the work of evil revolutionaries - which makes it OK to shoot anyone who disagrees with you. Well 'scuse me, I just happen to thing that shooting at people is not something you do to get your own way. But the most infuriating is the belief that the first time you do something makes it a "World Changing Moment" (TM) - regardless of how long the rest of the world has been doing something similar. Bunch of fucking emus.
Let me get this straight, we're a bunch of assholes, even though you're the one who's throwing 270,000,000 people into the same trash heap?
Big fucking man you are, d00d, spraying your prejudice around for everyone to applaud under an AC sig. Why don't you come on over to the WTC and shout that at the rooftops?
Now really. I zoned out after those.
And you folks wonder why a french farmer burns down a Macdonalds? I really cannot blame him. This level of stupidity is sickening, and it seems to be enforced upon those who actually managed to _make a living_ in the country they were born in. Unlike some other country that shall remain nameless for the occasion. Flame intended.
This mixture of recycled paper and the cheap mineral gypsum is cheap, to boot: Industry insiders say this is the only business where you can sandwich dirt between two layers of garbage and get money for it. Apparently industry insiders don't watch much television.
"FDA staff reviewers expressed concern about the number of patients who were left out of the study because they died."
i wasted a perfectly good rant
You forgot the latest one, the DUPE(tm) technology, now patent pending in US and other countries.
The moon is not fully subjugated. I demand a second assault wave preceded by a massive nuclear bombardment.
I had a feeling that the article would claim that everything was invented by the US (or exclude things invented outside the US), and where they had to include something huge, they'd fudge over the details about where it was invented.
I couldn't get the article to load properly (kept crashing Chimera) so I didn't get to see them all.
I would have thought one of the top ones would have been the TV ariel - invented in Japan, or the jet engine, invented in Britain, or radar, invented in Britain, or the computer - invented in Britain by Charles Babbage.
The US will be claiming it invented the wheel soon.
Well, a US company will probably patent it then sue everyone that wants to use "a circular device that aids travel".
You also left off the fact that slashdot got everyone to google "Beowulf Cluster" to find out what they actually are.
Anyone else find it amusing for the "1969 Charged Coupled Device" slide, there's a picture of David and Albert Maysles holding a *film* camera?
ha.
Driving through the midwest in 1965 (Ohio, I think), there were occasional gas stations with the brand name "Boron". I was informed that the "Boron" chain was so-named because they used a boron compound as an anti-knock agent. Apparently this was not a great commercial success. I have no idea if toxicity was a problem, but my father said the company he worked for (Commercial Solvents Corp.) helped "Boron" with some difficulties they had keeping their compound dissolved in the gasoline.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
I thought John Logie Baird, a Scottish inventor, came up with the TV. Maybe that was colour TV.
I can't remember.
Agree that article is way too much american centric to be serious.
Men are born ignorant, not stupid; they are made stupid by education. Bertrand Russel
I noticed that too. It's a typo. If you click on the "more information" link on the slide, they show the correct year of 1962.
But they're ignoring strokes of genius like one-click shopping swinging sideways!
pr0n - keeping monitor glass spotless since 1981.
At a sidebar, there is a poll that caught my attention. Below is an excerpt.
Which of these technologies is most likely to reinvent the future:I wish I had a button that would say "Nooooo!"
My exception safety is -fno-exceptions.
the answer is simple and illustrated by the first line of the article.
"Innovation is the spark of capitalism."
With the rise of the mixed economy and the fall of capitalism throughout the world, innovation doens't have a chance.
According to this article "in 1957 the world's first nuclear reactor went online at Shippingport, Pa". This is wrong and a conceptual error: the first human-built nuclear reactor was the Chicago Pile. The first reactors were built for the future Manhattan project. While nuclear weapons exist or have existed without using plutonium, ones that do, get their plutonium from a nuclear reactor.
Suddenly, the hairy finger of a familiar monkey tapped me on the shoulder. It was time.--G. T.
I don't see these as failed at all. In fact, we use many of these things in the present day, albeit their implementation is a bit different than what was initally visualized.
/.
Faxed Newspapers
How about the internet? Sure, it's not FAX'ed, but there's not a lot of difference between a FAX and a modem, and the idea of replacing trees with a monitor is the reason I can post this response here on
The Videophone
Have you seen the most recent cellphone advertisements on TV? The videophone is here already, even without a 3G network.
3D Movies
Original 3-D movies were done in a very antiquated way, but technology is already out that can project images into space without the use of special glasses. It's currently being used to aid in open-heart surgery, but it's only a matter of time before the technology becomes affordable enough to the average consumer.
Interactive Television
One word for you: Tivo.
I live and love IT, but really, it seemed near half the list was some or other minor step in the march of IT towards world domination, with some side bets on medicine, motor cars and financial instruments.
From memory, food got three mentions (frozen, micorwaved and fast/franchised) and construction two (tract housing and Gyprock).
What about glass skinned skyscrapers? If you used the approach they used to IT, I'm sure there could be several more discrete innovations which have made our modern CBDs possible.
But beyond that, and even more essentially American (at least before the rise of China in the last decade) is the interconnected web of manufacturing industry where things like JIT and TQM, of even, in its day, the humble fax, have made a huge difference.
I dunno what I can do but chuckle when a publication like Forbes starts to see the whole world as an IT application. WIRED I can imagine.
-- Our systemic servants do not good masters make.
You forgot the latest one, the DUPE(tm) technology, now patent pending in US and other countries.
Shit.
I really hate Dan Patrick.
Why do you feed the need to claim the credit for everything?
I think you're just being paranoid.
For the vast majority of the inventions, no nationality is mentioned at all.
I see plenty of inventions that mention "Royal [University|airforce] of such and such", or "Invented by Sir So-and-so". Sure, there are plenty of references to companies like "Raytheon invented the microwave" or something, but I rarely see nationality mentioned.
"Can of worms? The can is open... the worms are everywhere."
Would lead fuel actually damage your engine these days, or is the sticker just a propaganda device against the evil harmful lead?
I've heard both...
Tim
Omnia vestra castrorum habetur nobis.
I don't know about you guys, but this is one of the funniest pictures I've ever seen!
"Yeah, well, Dracula called and he's coming over tonight for you and I said okay."
You forgot the technique of discussing the viability of creating Beowolf Clusters of just about damn near everything.
144l. ph34r my 133t l3g4l 5k1lz!
I believe that Baird invented a mechanical mechanical "television" (as well as Color TV, later on), but Farnsworth came up with the idea of using a Cathode Ray tubes instead of mechanical parts.
The years are mixed up, however. Some articles say that Baird created his TV in 1925, and Farnsworth did his part in 1923, 2 years before Baird.
Either way, it goes to show that alot of these "I invented it first" arguments are utter rubbish.
We wouldn't have modern TV or monitors without either of these folks.
"Can of worms? The can is open... the worms are everywhere."
Besides the obvious issue of lead poisoning, there were a few other factors in the phaseout of tetraethyl lead.
The development of much more precise fuel delivery systems with port (and now direct) fuel injection, better engine breathing (turbocharging, supercharging and 16 or 20 valve per cylinder cylinder heads) and the development of computerized engine controls made it possible to have extremely precise control of the combustion process, which made it possible to have powerful engines with no worries about engine knocking. A great example of this is the evolution of the four-cylinder engine on the Honda Accord; the 1986 Accord LX sported a 2.2-liter 12-valve per cylinder I-4 engine made about 98 bhp, while the 2003 Accord LX sports a 2.4-liter 16-valve per cylinder I-4 engine that makes 160 bhp, with a tiny fraction of the harmful emissions output and no change in fuel mileage! =)
Did anybody see the article referenced on the side about how
innovators die poor?
1. Have a great idea
2. ???
3. Die broke
BTW, I am glad that they included relational databases in their innovation list. I would have had a hissy fit if they did not. Is Codd still alive, BTW?
Table-ized A.I.
given the writeup on slashdot frontpage i though it would be an fascinating read. After the first 2 'ideas' began to suspect that forbes needed to do more research, but when Sloan was chosen over Taylor for the invention of scientific management -- please
It is probably politically incorrect to say this, but "We figured out a great way to give women severe medical side effects on the way to trying to stop life from being created, when the practice of contraception has been known about and engaged in since early Egypt" is hardly groundbreaking. Perhaps they should have included and memorialized the first abortion clinic too. Oh wait, those predated the timeframe of the piece.
In a century where women have made more progress than at any time in the past, surely there were more and better contributions from women over the last 100 years that could have been offered.
Considering this and the factual errors already posted, I would have expected far better from Forbes.
The first to cross the Atlantic were John Alcock and Arthur Whitten Brown, two british chaps.
Go figure for the rest of similar "thruths". :-)
Idempotent operation: Like MS software, wether you run it once or often, that doesn't make it any better.
You see, you prove my point exactly.
The only disaster in the world? 9/11 and the WTC.
we're a bunch of assholes
Nope, never said that, I said your're a bunch of fucking emus who think nobody else matters.
But if your happy to be an asshole then far from me to disagree.
All phones used to be wind up.
Yeah, we've got some problems over here. Yeah, America has too big of an ego a lot of the time. But there is one thing we are the best at:
baseball.
Oh yeah, the World Cup team did pretty damned well for a country not named Brasil or Germany.
Certainly this idea should rank in the top 100 ideas that have dramatically improved my life. I am actually thinking of designing a remote that has a HUGE mute button. I am tired of having to look for the damn thing.
Houses in the states are wood framed with vinyl siding or brick veneer, with interior walls wall made from 2x4s covered with the theme word of this post(sheetrock).
Stick built homes are about as useful in a big storm as a box kite. Yes they will fly but they don't last very long in the hurricane force winds.
In europe, south america, etc many homes are built with materials that guarantee the house will survive a long time.
Much like it seems you shouldn't run your mouth about mine
Well IMHO the fact that my country is being dragged into your President's own private war - a war that has more to do with oil and politcs than what is right - gives me a perfect right.
As to using seeping gerneralisations, well I've seen precious little evidence supporting an alternate view. Indeed the only evidence I did see came from an American - who went on to make exactly the same generalisations about American's that I've made.
Chances are I don't know enough about your country to run my mouth about how it runs its business.
Why does that not suprise me?
Tesla was a great scientist. Alternating current, motors that ran on AC, the tesla engine, even radio(patent 645576). Wireless electricity probably is a bad idea.
Then did we switch over to AC for power transmission early on in the 20th century?
How is it possible that Amazon makes it on that list, and the website that was the sparkplug of the Internet (Yahoo), a search engine that finally allowed people to navigate the Internet, didn't make it. Hmm.. I'd say that the decision was made by typical business logic.
I've discovered a meal between breakfast and brunch! - Homer J. Simpson
I have to admit that I learned something today. So much to learn so little time.
Do a search for gs_kettle.pdf and you find some of the reasons that DC transmission lines can be better than AC.
Fascinating.
arrogant uptight jerk, does not qualify as a good idea. Even on slashdot.
Seriously. everyone I know that really likes Rand is one elitist SOB.
John Logie Baird invented 'television', that American chap developed the concept.
Wings of OS/400:
The airline has bought ancient DC-3s, arguably the best and safest planes
that ever flew, and painted "747" on their tails to make them look as if
they are fast. The flight attendants, of course, attend to your every need,
though the drinks cost $15 a pop. Stupid questions cost $230 per hour,
unless you have SupportLine, which requires a first class ticket and
membership in the frequent flyer club. Then they cost $500, but your
accounting department can call it overhead.
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