Mine is the computer. I continue to be amazed at what we can do with them.
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This one is massive. That along with the haber process which allowed for the creation of synthetic fertilizers, is said to be responsible for population growth, and reduction of hunger.
You’re looking at it.
Font kerning?
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Displays?
Glasses. The ability to see so much better than I otherwise could leaves me astonished every time I put them on.
I wouldn’t have survived childhood without glasses in a pre-modern era.
Same. I would be a ditch digger or something if I had survived.
Lenses also gave us telescopes and microscopes. Pretty amazing discovery.
The microwave.
Can you imagine having to cook every night?
You know you can reheat things other ways, right?
Plumbing. I could live without almost every modern comfort but a flushable toilet
I was going to say HVAC. It’s cold as all fuck here in the winter, and hotter than donkey balls baking in the sun during summer.
Woa WYA
The Mid-West? The center of a large continent gets really hot and really cold depending on the season
I would rank plumbing pretty high to be sure, but without the steam engine to drive the water pumps, plumbing is limited to aqueducts, gravity sewers, and intermittent, low-volume supply from animal or wind-driven pumps.
Even today, the overwhelming majority of our energy passes through a steam phase at some point. Steam power is by far the most important discovery/invention of the modern world.
I was going to say toilets/indoor plumbing. Necessary for survival? Maybe not. Best convenience ever invented? Probably.
To expand a hair on this, modern waste disposal. So with plumbing comes sewage. Then the close child is refuse removal. We literally cannot live (healthily) without these things.
Side-bar, the folks that power waste removal are VASTLY under-paid.
Totally. When mechanical systems in sewers and waste tanks break, somebody has to put on a diving suit, go in, and fix it. If any individual human in the world ever deserved $55 billion in compensation, it’s those people.
Waste removal is usually a premo paid job, yeah they could be paid more, but still pretty cushy pay for most of them. It’s not some minimum wage job and the entry barrier is usually high school education.
Depends on where you draw the line. Janitors for instance are usually paid a pittance. As are cleaning crews that vacuum the vast offices spaces around the country.
If you are talking about CDL drivers that collect trash cans then yeah, they tend to be paid well. Without all the pieces of the puzzle though the system breaks down.
Plumbers, as it turns out, are paid quite well since nobody wants to go into the trades currently.
Yeah that’s pretty fair, it’s usually referred to people after point of disposal. I’ve never heard a custodian say they work in waste management for example.
Agreed, custodians (usually) wouldn’t refer to themselves that way. Without them though, trash doesn’t make it to the point of disposal. Which is a break in the chain. We could debate the finer points I’m sure, but it’s about bed time for me and I have an early AM meeting with offshore.
So have a good one, and I do appreciate the discussion!
My dick.
I discovered it when I was twenty-one and it’s been my favourite thing since.
Late bloomer? I think most people figured it out around puberty
Did you have an innie before 21 or was it detachable and you finally found it?
Technically I would say the harnessing and utilization of fire. It arguably changed our evolution requiring less energy to digest food.
Upvoted (and came to say the same)!
The interesting thing about fire is that it is way back in human history, like, AFAIU, before our hominid species even evolved. So it’s likely intertwined with very biological being.
Another similar invention is likely language. Once the evolutionary pieces were there to get language to the ability of syntax, whoever were the people that riffed on communicating with sounds to the point of making up words and making sentences etc, they invented some ridiculously awesome shit. Like there was probably the first sharing between people of a pun, joke, or first abstraction or conceptual musing. The first argument where one person was more convincing. The first person who was naturally good at speaking and impressed others with it.
I don’t know if this counts, but I’d say the Enlightenment. It was a discovery in that we discovered a new way to interpret the world.
I think there is kind of a glass ceiling when you talk about fire, plumbing, electricity and so on. Each one was a necessary stepping stone to get us where we are, but without any one of them, we wouldn’t be here.
The Enlightenment gave us a brand new sense of autonomy as a species, which in turn has given us a greater amount of control over “Destiny.”
Central air
Gotta be vaccines for me.
The Internet.
Computers do a lot of things. But the Internet specifically is the aspect of the computer that revolutionized the world.
Internet porn, specifically. It drove many innovations like payment processing.
its also the reason Blender innovated so much in the last ten years, being the main choice for digital perverts
I would argue fire. Its arguably the gate technology and higher brain power.
Definitely fire, without it none of the other inventions happen afterwards; though I guess we didn’t really invent it as much as we learned to harness it.
I suppose u could argue the same for any technology tho.
Antibiotics. Turned so many lethal wounds into minor cuts.
And now people use them for minor cuts and soon we will no longer have (effective) antibiotics.
It’s a toss up: either chalkboards or dry erase boards. Both are remarkable.
::groan::
I think you mean “dyaaadddddd…”
Sliced bread. Before sandwiches what was the point?
Delicious drippings, stews and gravies on hunks of bread.
The sandwich was a downgrade.
