By greatest invention I mean something that had big and positive influence.

  • Dr. Bob@lemmy.ca
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    4 months ago

    You’re not wrong. But there are counter examples. I was going to use the example of the jet engine in my last answer as a true paradigm shifting development that had immediate impact. And in the mid-century period too! Or the first powered flight occurred in the first decade of the 20th century and had an immediate impact. The transistor and solid state electronics would be another example.

    So let me flip it around and say we’ve had a quarter century without a major technological breakthrough. There’s been progress, but it feels incremental. I spent a night with a physicist a few years ago who was arguing that progress is slowing because we are still relying on the exploitation of Newtonian physics. There are a few technologies that have made the leap to nuclear physics. But we’ve had the basics of quantum physics for a century now and haven’t been able to exploit it in a useful fashion.

    • Hexorg@beehaw.org
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      4 months ago

      Good point! I wonder if we’re spoiled by computer invention though. Would be interesting to compare preWW2 invention rates and now. I suspect computers just made everything else easier, but now we’re back to hard problems

      • Dr. Bob@lemmy.ca
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        4 months ago

        Agreed. These are genuinely difficult problems that aren’t going to get solved by our current crop of silicon valley “geniuses”.