LONGECITY

What is the greatest invention of Mankind?
The Wheel, the written word, mathematics, use of fire or the micro wave oven?

My ideas on this might change, but to guess right now I would say the invention of language. Im not sure if anything else could have been done with out it.

It seems that as soon as language was created, or able to be created, it became only a matter of time before we embarked on working to gain indefinite life extension, and it will only be a matter of a bit more time here (relatively speaking) before we see if we can have it or not.

It's impossible to say, because it's impossible to accurately analyze the prehistoric economic realities that have led to civilization as we know it today. Fire, language, hunting implements, and agriculture are all good candidates. Once civilization achieved a certain "escape velocity" of economic development, however, the overall significance of each discovery was reduced due to its inevitability, because extinction and steady-state stagnation of the human species was no longer a likely outcome. It is also quite possible that the innovation that has made the greatest difference between human survival and extinction wasn't a product of man's mind but, for example, of his immune system.

And greatest according to whom? We simply don't have any other civilizations to compare ourselves to. It might turn out that K-3 civilizations are a dime a dozen in this vast universe of ours, but they'd all pay good money for tickets to Wrestlemania, the only thing on our Earth that is of any interest to them.

The greatest Invention of Mankind is yet to be invented.. but we have some "nice" things..

Strong AI will be our greatest invention.

So far, it's medicine

Logic and reason.

That's a meta-concept, not really an invention.

Of course if meta-concepts are allowed you could just say that the greatest invention of mankind is... invention!

Or that the greatest invention of mankind is... mankind itself!

money

The corporation.

I'd second language, possibly even narrowing it to written word.
Without language we'd have gone no-where. Even if we had only spoken word we'd be vastly behind where we are now, as oral traditions are much less efficient than written word.

Also I've always marveled at how the human brain can deal so well with something that never existed in nature. I always thought that an alien culture may not have such a convenient ability and would thus advance MUCH more slowly than us.

Another vote for language.

Without it, each of us would remain alone in our heads. Most any great advance or idea one person had would die with them.
With language came the exponential process of building on each others knowledge and experience. From the spoken word to printed books to now electronic signals that traverse the globe in an eyeblink, we have gained the ability to build on an ever-expanding collective of knowledge.

Without that, we'd be lucky to still be in the sticks-and-rocks stage.



.... which comes to think of it, makes the Babel story all kinds of creepy. Believe it as history or take it as myth, that people had that insight into the importance of language and communication so early is impressive.

It also makes me wonder what will come of all this real-time translation that's stumbling towards usefulness. That is going to be amazing... and quite possibly add another order of magnitude to that "how fast knowledge [broadly speaking] is multiplying" arc.

It's interesting how you define "language", with verbal language specifically being less significant than the preceding inventions that made survival and nutritional prerequisites for brain growth possible. Developing sign language instead of verbal language probably wouldn't have held humanity back much, and it might have even had some advantages: faster communication speed due to more possible variation, enhanced hand-eye coordination leading to better tool use, etc.

Toilet Paper?

Perhaps I should have said "organized principles of communication?"

The means is to a point irrelevant. English or Farsi, IP or analog wireless... the defining point was the ability to get well defined thoughts with a reasonable degree of precision from your head to mine, and vice versa.

It's interesting how you define "language", with verbal language specifically being less significant than the preceding inventions that made survival and nutritional prerequisites for brain growth possible. Developing sign language instead of verbal language probably wouldn't have held humanity back much, and it might have even had some advantages: faster communication speed due to more possible variation, enhanced hand-eye coordination leading to better tool use, etc.

That's a meta-concept, not really an invention.

Of course if meta-concepts are allowed you could just say that the greatest invention of mankind is... invention!

Or that the greatest invention of mankind is... mankind itself!

Fine, I'll change my answer to coffee then.

As "mankind" and technological exploitation is the latest molecular manifestation of the universe's natural evolution, I'd say the laws of physics (aka God). It's all just a causal chain, glory and blame cannot be pinned on individual actors.

The lens.

The automatic washer (and dryer).  Think of the time freed up for other things by this machine.

Edit to add: Okay, maybe not the greatest...Perhaps the printing press, or the wheel.
Edited by Mia K., 11 April 2010 - 06:46 PM.

Washing laundry by hand ain't so bad - great forearm exercise and gives one a chance to catch up on the podcasts...

The Dunny.

Seriously, what would you do without one....

bicycles

Taming electricity.

The Dunny.

Seriously, what would you do without one....

Have nano-bots that wrap themselves around your freely-excreted outputs just as they leave your body and discretely fly them to the nearest bio-plant for recycling?

The Dunny.

Seriously, what would you do without one....

Have nano-bots that wrap themselves around your freely-excreted outputs just as they leave your body and discretely fly them to the nearest bio-plant for recycling?

If you're going to go down that route how about we just re-engineer our bodies so that they are more efficient and produce less waste in general. Solar-powered people!

Why has no one said sliced bread yet?

Why has no one said sliced bread yet?

That isn't a bad one, actually. Agriculture, and specifically the domestication of grains, are a pillar of civilization. Without grains we would never have left the paleolithic. This is also why the Ug99 rust disease that attacks grains is pretty scary. Just as scary as climate change, financial crises, peak oil, solar storms, terrorism, and all that other stuff.

And of course without sliced bread we wouldn't have sandwiches. What would be the point of immortality without those?
Edited by progressive, 12 April 2010 - 10:57 PM.

If you're going to go down that route how about we just re-engineer our bodies so that they are more efficient and produce less waste in general. Solar-powered people!

We already have mostly solar-powered bodies, we just use plants as an import mechanism. And we already have solar-powered minds - computers, we just need to make them more powerful and figure out how to copy more of our meat-brains onto them, up to the point where we can get rid of the meat entirely...

Why has no one said sliced bread yet?

I can't stand sliced bread! Industrial pre-slicing in an insult to everything that makes bread great!
Edited by Alex Libman, 13 April 2010 - 06:42 PM.

Sliced bread isn't the greatest. Hence the saying 'The best thing since sliced bread'. And because that has been said many times, Sliced bread must be pretty low on the scale now.

Could be a little embarrassing though if your at a job interview or exchanging wedding vowels or doing a eulogy when some very smelly nanbots start flying out your arse buzzing like bees carrying bits of your crap as you needed to take a dump

The Dunny.

Seriously, what would you do without one....

Have nano-bots that wrap themselves around your freely-excreted outputs just as they leave your body and discretely fly them to the nearest bio-plant for recycling?