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The Most Disruptive Technology of the Last 100 Years Isn't What You Think
HughPickens.com writes: Ana Swanson writes in the Washington Post that when people talk about "disruptive technologies," they're usually thinking of the latest thing out of Silicon Valley but some of the most historically disruptive technologies aren't exactly what you would expect and arguably, the most disruptive technologiy of the last century is the refrigerator. In the 1920s, only about a third of households reported having a washer or a vacuum, and refrigerators were even rarer. But just 20 years later, refrigerator ownership was common, with more than two-thirds of Americans owning an icebox. According to Helen Veit, the surge in refrigerator ownership totally changed the way that Americans cooked. "Before reliable refrigeration, cooking and food preservation were barely distinguishable tasks" and techniques like pickling, smoking and canning were common in nearly every American kitchen. With the arrival of the icebox and then the electric refrigerator, foods could now be kept and consumed in the same form for days. Americans no longer had to make and consume great quantities of cheese, whiskey and hard cider — some of the only ways to keep foods edible through the winter. "A whole arsenal of home preservation techniques, from cheese-making to meat-smoking to egg-pickling to ketchup-making, receded from daily use within a single generation," writes Veit.
Technologies like the smartphone, the computer and the Internet have, of course, dramatically changed the ways we live and work but consider the spread of electricity, running water, the flush toilet developed and popularized by Thomas Crapper and central heating and the changes these have wrought. "These technologies were so disruptive because they massively reduced the time spent on housework," concludes Swanson. "The number of hours that people spent per week preparing meals, doing laundry and cleaning fell from 58 in 1900 to only 18 hours in 1970, and it has declined further since then."
Technologies like the smartphone, the computer and the Internet have, of course, dramatically changed the ways we live and work but consider the spread of electricity, running water, the flush toilet developed and popularized by Thomas Crapper and central heating and the changes these have wrought. "These technologies were so disruptive because they massively reduced the time spent on housework," concludes Swanson. "The number of hours that people spent per week preparing meals, doing laundry and cleaning fell from 58 in 1900 to only 18 hours in 1970, and it has declined further since then."
Holy straw man! I'm pretty sure people still have children, but what the Pill has stopped is pregnancy as a likely consequence of sex. Overpopulation causes all of the above.
"... the flush toilet developed and popularized by Thomas Crapper"
No, contrary to widespread misconceptions, Crapper did not invent the flush toilet.
Via snopes and wikipedia:
Wikipedia: It has often been claimed in popular culture that the slang term for human bodily waste, crap, originated with Thomas Crapper because of his association with lavatories. A common version of this story is that American servicemen stationed in England during World War I saw his name on cisterns and used it as army slang, i.e. "I'm going to the crapper".
Snopes: Alexander Cummings is generally credited with inventing the first flush mechanism in 1775 (more than 50 years before Crapper was born), and plumbers Joseph Bramah and Thomas Twyford further developed the technology with improvements such as the float-and-valve system. Thomas Crapper, said an article in Plumbing and Mechanical Magazine, "should best be remembered as a merchant of plumbing products, a terrific salesman and advertising genius."
I guess it's too much to hope that slashdot editors do even the most rudimentary fact-checking, eh?
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
Canning = Preservatives
Say what? No preservatives in anything I've canned.
Step 1: Buy pork
Step 2: Cut pork into smaller pieces
Step 3: Pack pork in canning jar
Step 4: Put lid on
Step 5: Process through pressure canner (~1.5 hours)
Step 6: Put on shelf for up to 5-10 years
Step 7: Serve and enjoy!
Pressure canning is one of the easiest things I've ever done.
Smoking = carcinogens Pickling = excessive salt Canning = Preservatives Refrigeration = lower temperature I choose refrigeration .
Come on mods. "Insightful"? Bunch of stupid millennials ya'll are.
Smoking is not the same as barbecue or burned meat juice/flesh and doesn't contain the same level alleged carcinogens.
Pickling or lacto-fermentation doesn't require high levels of salt necessarily, and it's a lot less than some of the crap people shovel into their mouths now days, how much salt do you think is in chinese take out? Sushi, or even pizza? Back then, much of the pickling was also done to get something tasty with some water to people who needed both because they were doing physical labor. Salt is a very required mineral for humans that are actually _doing_ something.
Lastly, preservatives? This is total complete utter ignorance. Here's what goes in fruit preserves: fruit, water, sugar. Which one is the alleged "preservative"? Water bath canning and pressure canning used.... salt, maybe a few spices, sometimes pectin. Ooooh, plants boiled down to some other parts.Scary!
Refrigeration is good, it opens up all sorts of doors. The parent poster, is however, completely ignorant and using baseless "facts" for it's "reasoning."