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Top 25 Innovations of the Past 25 Years
HarvardAce writes "CNN has just released a list of 24 of the top 25 innovations of the past 25 years. Most of them are things we use every day in life, such as cell phones (#2), PCs (#3), and e-mail (#5). CNN won't release the #1 innovation until Sunday, January 18 at 8pm EST (Monday, Jan 19 @ 1AM GMT), so I wanted to see if Slashdot users could come up with what they think the #1 innovation is and comment on the rest of the list."
#1 will be The World Wide Web/The Internet.
Yeah Plasma TVs and HDTV is a real super innovation. Give me a break, this list is just a big ad.
Occam's razor is the blind faith in the natural selection of least resistance and in universal oversimplification. -- EF
it's gotta be the segway. afterall wasn't "it" supposed to revolutize our lives? :)
For example, many people turn off their PCs (No. 3) and their HDTV (No. 19) or plasma screen TVs (No. 18) as they leave their homes.
Excuse me? PCs are VERY important and probably deserving of #3 but to say that HDTV and Plasma are in the top 100 is pushing it.
I have only seen HDTV at stores and on display at the state fair (I'm relatively unimpressed). I know one single person that has it and he uses it through DirecTV. I don't know a single person that owns a Plasma screen and I really don't think that they are terribly important.
HDTV is a bunch of tax-funded bullshit that's going to bring down the right to record as you choose. Media conglomorates aren't going to want you to have digitized recordings of high-def format because then you can compete with their DRMd discs.
Boo on this list.
so I am expecting CNN to be listed as the greatest innovation in the past 25 years.
Monstar L
It's obviously the iPod, we can stop speculating now.
I am suprised that RFID is at #10 on the list.
From the article: In creating the list, the group hoped to single out "25 non-medically related technological innovations that have become widely used since 1980, are readily recognizable by most Americans, have had a direct and perceptible impact on our everyday lives, and/or could dramatically affect our lives in the future
Is RFID really recognisable by most Americans?
I would have expected RDS Radio to have featured somewhere in the list. Do you have RDS Radio available in the states? Basically as you drive around your car radio looks for a stronger signal from the same station and then switches to it if it finds one. Also you can search for stations based upon criteria like News or Pop Music. And, the radios can display text, like phone numbers for a competion or the name of the track that is playing.
Other inovations I would have expected, would be Digital Radio and Digital TV. But they aren't as common as RDS because they are newer.
Arrrgggghhhh! How could I have so foolishly said The World Wide Web? It's nothing compared to the tasty wholesome lean goodness of a George Foreman Grilling Machine grilled burger!
I have only seen HDTV at stores and on display at the state fair (I'm relatively unimpressed). I know one single person that has it and he uses it through DirecTV.
:)
I own two HDTVs, an Hitachi rear projection CRT set and a Sony HS-20 front project or for my living room. Combined with a decent DD 5.1 sound and a home theater really does compete with commercial movie theaters. In Boston every broadcast station is now digital; that's ABC, CBS, NBC, PBS, FOX, UPN, and WC. I actually get more HD content from broadcast than DirecTV (I have DirectTV too). HBO and Showtime in HD is pretty damn nice. Widescreen aspect ration is very damn nice! Uhhh... whether HDTV is the greatest consumer invention since sliced bread, I don't know. But... I like it!
HDTV is a bunch of tax-funded bullshit that's going to bring down the right to record as you choose. Media conglomorates aren't going to want you to have digitized recordings of high-def format because then you can compete with their DRMd discs.
Uhhh... just so we're clear: HDTV display technology and broadcast standards are different from the political policies being pursued by media conglomerates in their attempt to limit consumer freedom. Right? HDTV deployment does not mandate the consumer limitation by politcial fiat. --M
They make the web, newgroups, etc useful.
"Google it" :-)
Hm, in 1978 I remember using a Commodore PET PC. I believe Apple IIs also existed in 1978... BSD was there also with uuget and uuput and we bundled mail for nightly transmission. 2005 - 1978 == 27 years.
How can PCs be #3 when they are the requirement for #1 (if #1 is indeed teh intarweb) - perhaps a hierarchy could be ordered - perhaps assessed on their own merits, anyway, I Agree With The Parent? Is this reflex journalism another excuse to fill the time and earn some $$$?
Or is this another excuse for hypnotic television:
#1 Rule of profitable television - do not offend the advertised
#2 Rule of profitable television - do not challenge the viewer
#3 Rule of profitable television - pander to the viewer's preconceptions, opinions and biases
#4 Rule of profitable television - make the viewer have a self assured, warm-inside feeling (see #2)
#5 Rule of profitable television - make the viewer feel they have been challenged and have additional insight, even though they do now
'Top 25 innovations', 'Top 100 80s music shows', 'Evening News', etc, fit so so so easily into this convention. It troubles me.
They don't say that these innovations were created in the last 25 years, just that they "have become widely used since 1980".
The net most certainly falls into that category.
-deane
The DVD isn't on the list.
As HDTV made it and DVDs were invented in the past 25 years (and this is CNN, not Nature) it'll be #1.
Search engines will be #1. Without them, the signal-to-noise ratio of the net would be higher than here on slashdot.
...The Internet did not become a commercial entity until 1992, the year that the US military moved their servers off the Internet (more or less).
But you have to admit one thing though: the real explosion of Internet use started in the fall of 1995, when Windows 95 with its built-in SLIP/PPP networking stack gave PC compatible users easy access to the Internet for the first time (Windows 3.1 could access the Internet using third-party addons, but given the nature of computer users that was still relatively rare).
Ok, I have to call bullshit here. The space shuttle does not have much of an impact on our lives. Other than being a drain of tax money, of course.
It's old and obsolete technology, so it won't have much of an effect on our future either. These days, it doesn't inspire anyone anymore either. I can get excited about SpaceShip one, but about the next shuttle mission? Give me a break!
*FREE* Internet Porn!
A Call For A New Slashdot Moderation Level!
I'm holding out for a 6 blade razor with vibration.
For example, how could they include 'Commercialised GPS'(6)? The innovation is GPS alone, or is making something 'commercial' innovative these days?
Also, portable computers (3) have not been 'innovative' in the usual sense of the word - its been a long slow evolution over decades, from small-screened 'luggables' in the early 1980s.
Suing everyone around you for money instead of working for it.
You can't handle the truth.
Another interesting article from Wired titled "Love Machines" can be found here.
Nuff said.
Sigs are for Terrorists.
I think the CNN list is a bit lame, and some of the timings to make it within the 25 years are questionable.
Also to lump in Flash memory with CD technology is ... well wrong !
regards
dbcad7
waiting for ad.doubleclick.net
That is a fantastic idea. One small point: it's already on the list. And was mentioned in the summary on the main page. Hooray for reading!
No, it's not. It's an accelerometer made in an IC fab. That's not atomic-level engineering. Not even close. By IC standards, it's huge.
The "nanotechnology" label is getting out of hand. It used to apply to concepts for elaborate structures made atom by atom. Now that funding is available, it's used to refer to finely ground particles.
Some of their choices were obvious. Others were poor. Here are my complaints:
10) RFID tags. Given that RFID is still mostly smoke and mirrors, is it reasonable to call it a major innovation of the past 25 years? Maybe 10 years from now we'll think so, but it doesn't belong on this year's list.
11) MEMS. What? No! VLSI is vastly more important than MEMS, and it didn't even make the list. Besides, MEMS is little more than a pit stop on the road to nanotech.
19) HDTV. HDTV is not a top innovation of any year, let alone a top innovation of the past 25. It was a committee-designed system haphazardly thrown together that has yet to make any meaningful impact on everyday life.
21) Nanotech. Nanotech will be an amazing innovation if it ever gets here, but is it fair to call something that's still mostly science fiction a top innovation of the past 25 years?
24) Modern hearing aids. Yes, they're better, but its evolutionary not revolutionary.
25) Short Range, High Frequency Radio. Uh yeah. This is not an innovation. Its a category of innovations like digital radio, spread spectrum, 802.11 and cordless phones.
And of course, #1 will be the World Wide Web. Since they've seperated email from the Internet, they'll seperate that as well.
But, having split out the Internet into its components the panel has failed badly in missing TCP/IP v4 from 1981, clearly a critical innovation of the past 25 years. Vastly more important than HDTV.
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
The shuttle, wasn't that designed and built in the 70's?
The PC is a product of the late 70's too. The Apple II, Atari and Commodore PET all were released in 78-79.
So # 3 & 20 are 70's
Air bags date to the 60's but is the footdragging by and reluctance of goverments to make the car makers use them innovation? NO
Strike number 13 too.
So it down to 22.
Fake breasts ....
Think about it for a minute. Without fake breasts we would never have had Bay Watch. Without Bay Watch, David Hasselhoff would have been a has-been alcoholic actor rather than an alcoholic actor in the twilight of a mediocre career in television. What a crying shame that would have been.
G
I have to disagree with this statement in the article. HDTV is not yet common place. 90 percent of homes in my neighborhood have regular TV's. I don't see Hotels putting a plasma HDTV in thier room. When hotels start adding HDTV in form of a plasma screen, ONLY THEN will I consider them to be common place.
Gorkman
It's obviously the Segway.
Generally, I get bored with my replies and give up on making sense halfway through.
Yeah, because having a shotgun blank fired into a plastic bag 18 inches from your face is *sooo* much safer than wearing a seatbelt.
Viagra ranks way above the Segway.
In my opnion, it wasn't the real Internet until BITNET became part of the internet. Circa 1986. A quote:
"BITNET had people in universities all over the world; it had world-wide email; it had real-time, interactive chat, one-to-one or in "Relay" chatrooms in places like CERN; it had world-wide remote file archives you could grab files from by issuing commands; it had world-wide "Listserv" email discussion lists; you could query if people were logged on across the world; it had disconnected "answering machines"; it had email to and from all other networks.
The whole thing (BITNET plus connected networks) was the embryonic Internet. The protocol has simply migrated to IP since, that's all. If BITNET wasn't the Internet, then neither was Arpanet before it switched to IP in 1983.
- Condon, Chris; BITNET USERHELP; October, 1990."
-- Boycott Shell
Barcode is recognized. It's everywhere. Try shopping without it. Alot of crap these days has up to 5 barcodes hidden on around and in it. RFID is trying to replace barcode. Remove the battery from your cell phone and count the number of barcodes hidden underneath. don't forget to count the one on the battery itself. I'm not positive, but i think barcode fits just within the 25 year mark.
The government which is strong enough to protect you from everything is strong enough to take everything from you.
I will bet my left testicle on the Integrated Circuit. Without it there would be no internet, personal computers, calculators, modern home appliances, cell phones, satelite comunications...
Cheers,
Adolfo
...came out in 1980, not-so-coincidentally 25 years ago. So it's probably #1.
There are two kinds of people: 1) those who start arrays with one and 1) those who start them with zero.
Genetically Modified Organisms (GMO).
Or, perhaps, a related technology like gene therapy.
---anactofgod---
"Equal opportunity swindling - *that* is the true test of a sustainable democracy."
I just realized now that the article said last 25 years !!! Oh well, there goes 1/3 of my manhood.
Cheers,
Adolfo
Praised and adored by lonely and dateless geeks everywhere, the "Real Doll" was voted to be the most important invention of the last 25 years.