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."

Comments

Stupid clickbait headline

[wonkey_monkey]

The Most Disruptive Technology of the Last 100 Years Isn't What You Think

Don't tell me what I think. You don't know what I think.

You don't want to know what I think.

Some of us carry on the tradition

[Bohnanza]

...and continue to consume great quantities of cheese, whiskey and hard cider.

Re:Disruptive?

[jellomizer]

You can just live in a bubble, and avoid anything dangerous. Oh wait, we found that we need a good supply of microorganisms to keep our body healthy, so living in a bubble is bad for our health too.
Our body can deal with with many of these "Bad" things when at the correct level. And with the amounts ideal, you are probably overall healthier than without them.

We americans trend towards excess, and will even go with excess of absence. Our body is designed to process many of these things, and without ingesting these harmful things, those part of our bodies atrophy and weaken our ability to protect against it. But that doesn't mean go hog while and base your diet strictly on foods with harmful elements. Just take things in moderation. A Balanced Diet, not an extreme one.

Truly disruptive

[chrism238]

The contraceptive pill.
It's saved trillions of dollars, saved trillions of hours of work, reduced poverty, childhood deaths, and the threat of countries being invaded for their land.

Re:Truly disruptive

[serviscope_minor]

It's saved trillions of dollars, saved trillions of hours of work, reduced poverty, childhood deaths, and the threat of countries being invaded for their land.

It also rendered obsolete massive amounts of social convention. We're still working on purging those obsolete ones from the system of society, it seems.

Re:Truly disruptive

[BitZtream]

... except the places where that is most true and would apply if they used the pill ... don't use the pill.

Re:Truly disruptive

[jellomizer]

In general a larger population is better for the economy. It is just most of us think of an economy as something in a fixed supply. So more people will just mean more jobs that are filled and less for others. That isn't true, as the population grows the economy will grow to meet the increased demand, by matching its increased supply of workforce.
The problem is our culture has values that are in conflict with itself. If someone has a child outside of wedlock we still have them considered as an outcast, and prefer not to give them or their child extra assistance, because "She shouldn't have done the act"
This was less of an issue in the older days, as people got married at a younger age, and often had a tight family structure to cover up such shame, such as the 40 year old grandmother, saying it is her child. In this modern age, we need to realize that people are getting married much later in life, this causes us much more time to avoid our natural urges, which causes a lot more failures.
Contraceptive is one part of the problem. Allowing the family to plan when they have a child, but the bigger cultural issue is still at play.

Not in All Parts of the World

[lazarus]

Agreed that the refrigerator (along with birth control) is one of the most disruptive technologies in the past 100 years. However, this is not yet the case for the world at large. Only 27% of people in India own a refrigerator. In the West we take things like refrigeration and toilets for granted...

Kalashnikov's Baby

[Oxygen99]

The AK-47. Bringing armed revolution to the masses!

Effect on Nutrition

[trout007]

Those preserving techniques provided major sources of nutrients. Sauerkraut (and other fermented vegetables) has lots of Vitamin A, C, B-6, K as byproducts of the fermentation.

Check your facts

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

"... 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?

Re:Disruptive?

[Mycroft-X]

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.

Not just food

[plopez]

It also changed how people socialized. Instead of popping down to the corner store where you often met people from the neighborhood, you now have mega-marts. Instead of canning parties of in-season veggies, you have frozen foods. Small truck farms were driven out of business.

Also in the field of medicine. Some medicines are very temperature sensitive, insulin comes to mind. Easier blood storage. Easier organ storage and corpse storage.

  It changed so many things besides just food storage and preparation.

Re:Disruptive?

[Wycliffe]

Smoking = carcinogens
Pickling = excessive salt
Canning = Preservatives
Refrigeration = lower temperature
I choose refrigeration .

I'm not sure you understand what the work disruptive means. One of the reasons refrigeration was disruptive is because everyone chose it over all of the previous methods. That's exactly what disruptive means.

Dude-centric

[Anonymous Coward]

The most disruptive tech of the last 100 years was the washing machine. Because it gave women some actual time to DO something during the day. Before the washing machine, women washed clothes all day. It was the most laborious thing they did, and it was a constant process. Yes, refrigeration REALLY changed a lot of things, but it didn't make life drastically more worth living for half the population. Washing machines. No question at all. Without them, women didn't need the vote, because they didn't have time to read, or work on getting educated. We're talking about half the population becoming part of the population, as opposed to beasts of burden.

Re:first poop

[DickBreath]

Close but incorrect.

The most disruptive technology of the last 100 years was . . .

Ta da . . .

Northern Toilet Tissue. Introduced in 1935. The very first splinter free toilet tissue.

Now that's innovation we take for granted.

Re:Disruptive?

[jellomizer]

But here is the issue, as part of balance, if we have too much bacteria or the wrong type we get sick too. Refrigeration slows down the spoiling process however it doesn't stop it, thus giving us a false sense of security, while eating spoiled food, just because a particular strand seems to thrive better in colder temperatures than the others. While the food is sterilized to serve at room temperature still isn't sterilized, and sometimes fermentation takes advantage of microorganisms to create the flavor we like.
We like the flavor from smoked, salted, and preserved foods. Why? Because we were evolved to like those, because we knew that it wasn't spoiled food and those side effect we can deal with.
I am not contradicting myself BALANCE is the keyword. Pining on all the bad stuff we face in our environment isn't healthy. Taking normal precautions and finding what your body feels as a good balance will probably help you live longer than picking up on the weekly buzzword diet trend. Or trying to do what that pretty girl is trying this week.