What's the most important invention? (power, browser, cell phone, digital)
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Fire, not really an invention more like a discovery.
I think the ability to start fire at any time was an invention. I think the most important one. It allowed heating, light at night, cooking, making tools.
There are many important inventions. The internet is one of them, basically allowing access to information 24/7 and facilitating many activities:: work, social life, shopping, travel, job search, banking, financial transactions, etc.
The search engine would be next, allowing users to effectively and efficiently search through all
of this information.
Other important inventions: automobile, aircraft, wireless communications, cellular telephones, etc.
There are many "most important" inventions. The basics ones -- wheel, lever, fire starting and management, etc -- had to come first and so in a sense were the most important. As someone else pointed out the printing press was pivotal for the explosion of human learning, as well as its democratization (printed books are far cheaper to own than hand-copied ones). Compulsory and free public education is the next one, otherwise there would have been far too literate persons and books wouldn't have mattered nearly as much; they would have just been another bauble for the elites.
The invention of the computer was important, but the invention of computer networking was the force multiplier for computers and for information generally. Without the "network effect" information would still be mostly siloed and moving it around would be very cumbersome. I often think about Bill Gate's notion in the early 1990s that the CD-ROM was the future of computing -- he published a book entitled "Information At Your Fingertips" in 1994 to push this, not realizing the significance of the then-nascent Internet. He had the right general idea but not the best idea. He now sees his under-estimation of the impact of the Internet, and later, the smart phone, as his greatest miscalculations.
Not the definitive answer but the one that first came to my mind - the invention of writing. A poster above mentioned the printing press being important, which I agree with. But I think the invention of writing itself was perhaps even more important and the biggest gamechanger.
Being able to store and manipulate information outside ourselves is the core of most modern technological inventions. The invention of computing exponentially improved the efficiency with which this can be done, but it still boils down to sorting and manipulating information outside ourselves.
Good question. Many candidates....But it got me thnking...What if some distant future archeologists dig our civilization up and the only thing they find is a Whoopi Cushion? What will they think of us us?
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