Smartphone, 1992/4-2007 - Apple/IBM
The smartphone might be one of the most influential inventions of the 21st century.
I believe it has had the greatest impact on society and how we as humans operate in our day-to-day lives.
We get our news straight from our phone, we get our politics straight from our phone, we buy things there, we can contact people effortlessly, etc.
All things, good and bad, of the 21st century can probably be traced back to the smartphone.
Bottom line is you have the entire world’s wealth of knowledge right in your pocket at any given time.
While the first traces of the smartphone come from the ‘90s, Apple is the company that truly revolutionized and perfected the smartphone and smartphone technologies.
Quantum Computing, 1900s+
Quantum computing is a very strange, complex, and unique concept that has so many applications I can’t count ‘em.
Quantum physics and mechanics has existed for, probably, more than a hundred years.
But, the true origins are found in the observations of behaviour of things at an atomic or even further level.
Things that cannot be measured because they are so untrackable.
The field of quantum mechanics has been worked on for decades and has even evolved along regular computing.
Quantum computing is the idea that you can use the insane physics and behavior of particles to compute. You can use these machines whose code is literally superpositioned (not being in any particular place at once, so, it can be multiple things) to compute and find out even more insane things about the universe.
Not much is known about this field as it’s partially theoretical, but it has already made discoveries and advancements like: computing atomic behavior, how planets behave while smashing into each other; basically just really intense mathematical stuff you can’t do on regular computers.
Artificial Intelligence, 1950s - Groups of scientists
AI is a computer’s ability to reason, compute, interact, and handle operations outside of regular code and direction. AI has no specific inventor—some notable people include Alan Turing (like the Turing Test)—but it was started in the 1950s and the name was coined by John McCarthy at Dartmouth College.
AI has had profound effects on modern society with the breakthrough of LLMs and generative AI.
Students use it to cheat, botters use it to infest the internet and spread lies, companies use it to put coders and artists out of work,
old people fall for it all the time, etc.
In general AI is really only going to be used to put regular people out of work so elites can make more money.
Now, not everything from AI is bad. AI has helped develop many important things, it helps with math and reasoning,
it can work on websites, and it can power any kind of machine.
This can help heavily in multiple industries and even in dangerous areas where regular people shouldn’t work.
I know AI has helped detect cancer in medical settings, just to name something.
Human Genome Mapping, 2000-21 - Human Genome Project
Mapping the human genome is something that literally took almost 30 years.
Outside of planning and funding, it took about 20 years just to map it.
This is an amazing feat of science.
With the human genome mapped out we can finally understand the ins-and-outs, the intricacies of human existence and biology. We can understand where certain health problems come from, what parts create cancer, what does what, etc. This is all stuff we can now interact with because of the decades of work put in by people.
This, paired potentially with CRISPR, could change human existence forever. We are entering a new age of medical science that can only be topped by, like, the discovery of immortality or something.
Multi-use Rockets, 2015 - SpaceX
Before SpaceX really delved into creating reusable rockts, there was just a bunch
of waste and trash created by all the missions into space. We'd leave trash in space that could damage our other
important pieces of technology. It could also land in the ocean and pollute it more. Etc.
We'd spend millions and millions of dollars to put one tiny little thing in space and most of
that money'd go to all the stuff to get whatever up there.
SpaceX successfully landed a rocket back in 2015 and has been bettering the
technology ever since. I'm pretty sure, just recently, they caught one of their rockets in
a pair of pincers right back on the launch pad.
SpaceX is doing all this while also putting the Starlink satellites in space.
Streaming, '90s/'00s - Youtube
Streaming has taken everything from before in digitized entertainment and flipped it over.
You had cable television and a computer for work and whatever else.
Now you have a bajillion different services that all offer shows, movies, videos, all sorts of content.
This has put cable and all the other businesses in the industry on the back burner or even out of business.
Different kinds of industries, not just entertainment, have to adjust to this. It's affected general society and how things online and in the real world work.
One of the big problems arising now is just how separated and monopolized everything is.
You have to own 3 different subscriptions just to watch one show. Sometimes a service just doesn't have what you're looking for,
or it's region blocked.
This had lead to a new, huge wave of piracy and online digital media renaissance.
People really do not like paying tens of dollars each month for multiple
services just to watch something. Streaming services have made a huge mistake
in trying to monitize and control every little thing, because people are "fighting back."
Online Gaming, '80s/00's - Multiple Orgs.
While early game developers could set up multi-input games "back in the day," online gaming really took off in the early 2000s. There were big games like Runescape and World of Warcraft and all the other MMOs.
Online gaming has been bringing people together for decades and has majorly changed how newer, and even older, generations interact.
People have even made entire careers based off of gaming and interacting with the gaming community.
I think online gaming has been very impactful, infulential, and a net-positive on the world.
Electic Vehicles, ~2010 - Tesla
The first prototypes of original cars were electric. Ford and Benz were making electric cars, but then big oil
and the common use of combustion engines took over the automobile industry.
And, yes, EVs have been someting that has been worked on for a good few decades before Tesla showed up, but Tesla really made
them marketable and useable; they're kind of like the Edison of electric cars: they made the commercially available version.
EVs are not only impacting the auto and renewable market, they're also impacting the Earth through pollution. The metals and materials that have to go into making just the battery for the cars are quite damaging to the Earth. And, when the cars explode, they're like 5 times harder to put out because it's a battery fire.
Social Media, '00s - MySpace/4Chan
Social media can tie back into the smartphone, what with the ability to parse information and recieve anything: news, politics, art, entertainment, etc. Social media has connected people like never before and has had prfound impacts on society and culture. Entire elections could be tied to social media, revolutions, market stability; anything can be affected by "the feed" and algorithms.
There's a bajillion things I could say that social media affected or influenced, and even that might not be enough. Social media has so severly changed the course of history and human development that other things might not be comparable.
E-Reader, 2004 - Sony
I don't know why every single site and search had to include the e-reader as "one of the greats," so, I just decided to write about it.
The e-reader is pretty cool because most of them run off some kind of weird battery saving type-thing.
Like, the e-ink is put on screen and it stops updating until further interaction; saves a lot of battery. That's because
they aren't like LCD displays, they just put the stuff on screen and stop.
E-reader displays have been used for a while, but had kind of a boost during the 2000s.
You don't see e-readers or displays that much now and they didn't even really have that big of an impact. I still really
don't know why all those sites and blogs listed it.