63 replies to this topic

[Alex Libman]

Well, I thought the personal hygiene nano-bots would just replace the dunny (toilet) as a device without replacing the cultural preference for privacy during one's bowel movements. They could be very effective at containing the smell though, and even the sound, so... Baggy pants?

[mikeinnaples]

Language itself wasn't mankind's invention (written language however was, though I suppose that can be argued on a technicality as well), neither was fire.

Edited by mikeinnaples, 15 April 2010 - 12:58 PM.

[A941]

There has been a very funny webcomic about ST TNG where they have delicate negotiations going on and Commander Riker has to go to the toilet, but he uses the transporter to teleport the stuff from his bowels to the toilet.

[kiosk]

antibiotics...geez no one thought of this one??? we would have all been dead long ago.....remmember the plague that almost wiped out europe???

you know is so ironic we celebrate holidays for things like xmass, independence day, valentine, etc, etc. but we fail to celerabe, heck even remmember, the true and most significant events of our existence, such as antibiotics, electricity, landing on the moon.....one day we will look back puzzled out our own irony, in disbelief.......

[daren]

shelter, hunting weapons and traps etc. May have gone hand in hand with language. But definately made life easier. More time around the camp fire to work on language.

[e Volution]

I'm defining Mankind as post agricultural revolution. It's hard to single out a single Paleolithic invention that stands out from the rest other than the very object that defines the period itself; the discovery of the first stone tool. But then were they Human or 'Man'? Well I guess no, not really.

Abstract: Science & Evolution

Concrete: The Internet

[xontek]

The condom.

[Reno]

Language really isn't an invention unique to humanity. There are many species that communicate with one another in their own unique languages. Fire isn't an invention either, it was discovered.

I would say one of the most if not the most important is probably the microscope. Before the microscope humanity had no idea how complicated the world was. We used religion to explain life and our roll in it. We also had no real understanding of disease. The microscope lead to vaccines which lead to modern medicine and the saving of millions if not billions of lives. Saving those lives lead to countless other discoveries and innovations which would have otherwise never been.

Edit: or PEZ

Edited by Reno, 06 July 2010 - 05:40 PM.

[valkyrie_ice]

The single greatest "invention" of mankind is the concept of TIME.

Every other species lives in an eternal present, with no real concept of time. Humans can not only recognize time, but are able to use time actively. We can plan, we can understand cause and effect, and we can then use those to our advantage.

Agriculture occurred because we grasped the meaning of time and realized seeds planted NOW meant food in the FUTURE.

That is the single greatest "invention" the human race has ever created, and it is what has allowed us to create nearly all other advances.

[aLurker]

bacon

[e Volution]

I would say one of the most if not the most important is probably the microscope. Before the microscope humanity had no idea how complicated the world was. We used religion to explain life and our roll in it. We also had no real understanding of disease. The microscope lead to vaccines which lead to modern medicine and the saving of millions if not billions of lives. Saving those lives lead to countless other discoveries and innovations which would have otherwise never been.

This is trumped by the Lens, which covers everything you just listed to do with the very small as we turned it towards ourselves, but also the very large as we turned it away from us to see just what is out there and appreciate our place in this vast universe

[Reno]

This is trumped by the Lens, which covers everything you just listed to do with the very small as we turned it towards ourselves, but also the very large as we turned it away from us to see just what is out there and appreciate our place in this vast universe

To really judge the usefulness of an invention you have to ask yourself the question, "What, by itself, can it do?"

Edited by Reno, 06 July 2010 - 11:58 PM.

[chris w]

The single greatest "invention" of mankind is the concept of TIME.

Every other species lives in an eternal present, with no real concept of time. Humans can not only recognize time, but are able to use time actively. We can plan, we can understand cause and effect, and we can then use those to our advantage.

Agriculture occurred because we grasped the meaning of time and realized seeds planted NOW meant food in the FUTURE.

That is the single greatest "invention" the human race has ever created, and it is what has allowed us to create nearly all other advances.

I really like that. Too bad it's double edged - with it comes the realisation of mortality - and from there the "opium of the massess".

My candidate - the very first PC's Prince Of Persia

Edited by chris w, 07 July 2010 - 01:03 PM.

[Brafarality]

The lens.

I was going to say the camera, but lens is close enough.

[valkyrie_ice]

The single greatest "invention" of mankind is the concept of TIME.

Every other species lives in an eternal present, with no real concept of time. Humans can not only recognize time, but are able to use time actively. We can plan, we can understand cause and effect, and we can then use those to our advantage.

Agriculture occurred because we grasped the meaning of time and realized seeds planted NOW meant food in the FUTURE.

That is the single greatest "invention" the human race has ever created, and it is what has allowed us to create nearly all other advances.

I really like that. Too bad it's double edged - with it comes the realisation of mortality - and from there the "opium of the massess".

My candidate - the very first PC's Prince Of Persia

And from the realization of mortality, Imminst as well.

Time has driven us to produce all technology, Every invention ever created is to "save time" or allow us to "enjoy time" more or to "give us more time"

Yes it's a double edged sword, but without it we would still be savanna apes.

[EmbraceUnity]

Music

[chris w]

Talk about double edged swords...

[valkyrie_ice]

Talk about double edged swords...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJQVlVHsFF8

I managed 38 seconds before the urge to rip my eyes out of their sockets nearly overwhelmed me.

Edited by valkyrie_ice, 08 July 2010 - 08:00 PM.

[DeadMeat]

The single greatest "invention" of mankind is the concept of TIME.

Every other species lives in an eternal present, with no real concept of time. Humans can not only recognize time, but are able to use time actively. We can plan, we can understand cause and effect, and we can then use those to our advantage.

Agriculture occurred because we grasped the meaning of time and realized seeds planted NOW meant food in the FUTURE.

That is the single greatest "invention" the human race has ever created, and it is what has allowed us to create nearly all other advances.

Many intelligent animals understand cause and effect and make all sorts of schemes to get food, attention or social status that require a certain concept of time. Human critters are just a little bit better at it. But in its simplest form, cause and effect is just: press lever -> get food.

That we can recognize that we can set a process in motion that will take very long to get us food, just means that we have a better sense of time(or a better memory or simply more patience). Although this is important and very useful, I don't think its a real invention. But more like a property of us or something. Just like generally having better reasoning skills and opposable thumbs.

Personally I think the greatest invention of mankind is: Vacation!

[EmbraceUnity]

AHAHAHAHAHA

come on that video is awesome.

Edited by EmbraceUnity, 10 July 2010 - 09:26 AM.

[karen]

Language for sure. It's the mother of all inventions. Without it you can't form complex ideas nor instruct others to span ideas across individuals. Then the written word - to span generations.

[GiovanniR]

I am undecided between two answers I have read here: language or logic and reasoning.
I would say they are quite on the same level, and probably go together.
Thinking of what can be somehow the foundation for everything else, these two seem to me to be the most important ones.

[EmbraceUnity]

I changed my mind, head massagers are the best invention of all time.

[Rational Madman]

Perhaps markets, governance, or written characters.

Edited by Rol82, 23 January 2011 - 08:12 AM.

[chris w]

governance

If the term is narrowed down enough. A rudimentary form of governance stems from alpha male dominance, the Big Man rule, so it's not invented by us, it just is. But right, as the effort to devise the most effective way of collectively facing the environment, this would be a major one.

oh yeah, and markets eat babies in their cradles !

[Elus]

The internet.

Edited by Elus, 22 January 2011 - 08:21 PM.

[Lazarus Long]

This topic is a repeat of the same discussion from a few years ago. I wish we had back that little built-in search function that linked parallel topics at the bottom of the page.

I wrote a paper about twelve years ago in paleo-linguistics called "Fire, Women, and Words". Obviously from the title it details not only the idea that language is the "quintessential" invention of mankind but also links much of both the transition from proto-linguistics and proto-technology to women's hearth behaviors in the earliest stages of the transition from strict hunter-gatherer to sedentary proto-agricultural.

By the way everyone please consider: Is fire an invention or discovery? And does the analysis of this topic here adequately make such distinctions?

The making and uses of fire are most probably inventions and refinements by many contributors over many generations, but the recognition of fire as a potential tool rather than a survival threat is a discovery that we can thank some intelligent AND courageous hominid ancestor for; perhaps even more than one particular ancestor, in more than one time and place. However the relatively rapid spread of that knowledge across the fossil record implies a proto-linguistic ability already sufficient to convey complex information from one generation to the next, as well as to the neighbors. Language is what not only makes learning possible, it’s what makes history and record keeping possible even without writing.

Such ideas as words and even logic might be construed at their earliest phases to be discoveries of already latent characteristics, which developed evolutionarily and were already a part of our earliest cultural developments from the perspective of evolutionary psychology. Like our primate cousins, some birds, whales, bees, and even prairie dogs, we were using words before we recognized them as such. Communication is a part of the evolution of social beings. However, the transition from onomatopoeia and "serendipitous sound association" to intentional naming is a stage of linguistic development that I consider invention, not discovery. And I consider it up there near the top of a relatively short list of hyper-critical inventions such as the wheel, lever, and numbers, from which all other inventions owe their existence.

In that paper I not only developed the idea that language and naming were hearth activities but also the "keeping" and "development" of fire and derivative early technology, such as metallurgy, chemistry, medicine, taxonomy, biology, not to mention recording, empiricism, and pedagogy through female dominated child rearing and sustenance assessment. Basket weaving, net making, textiles, pottery, and so many more critical early inventions owe their existence to the hearth hierarchy of our ancestral matriarchy. The more specialized hunter-gatherer males also used language but they learned it from their mothers, however the naming of landmarks, threat versus prey, and task related tool making were the province of the males dominated hunting bands. These too also involved a learning/teaching environment (apprenticeship) as a child developed into adolescence.

"Naming and Numbers" was also a theme of language I investigated and I find the roots of written language to be based on them together. The first written words were numbers and the recognition of numbers as symbolic of meaning allowed the creation (invention) of written language. Most of the earliest languages share the meaning of the aleph or first 'letter' with the number one. The phonetic alphabet, as opposed to the more empirically developed symbolic one, is clearly an "invention” worth being on our short list here not to mention perhaps the variety of methods and means of writing itself (ink, carbonized sticks, stylus and wax, papyrus, dried leaf, stone tablet, etc).

I think it might be better to re-frame this topic into a periodic analysis that predicates the responses on the level of concurrent technology and acknowledges more how much we are dependent on all that goes before us. In other wards what was the most important invention of the last year, decade, century, half millennium, millennium, ten millennium, etc. Then maybe a comparison of the interdependence and relative importance of each with respect to the others.

I also suggest an analysis that scrutinizes the accelerating aspects of linguistic development that have also preceded all other technologies. Just as oral cultures gave way to literary ones and our species left the Pleistocene for the Holocene, when the printing press was invented, the Renaissance leads to the industrial age and our first fledgling steps into the Anthropocene.

The internet represents a quantum linguistic transition again in the form of a massive socially interactive memory device, as well as communication medium, that is accelerating Human Selection and affirming for geologic time the current era as the Anthropocene and the end of the Holocene.

Not just any, but every invention which can be linked to critical developmental transitions of our species and even shifts that drag along all life on our world such as Gene-tech, deserve to be assessed in this topic because they define critical markers in our and now all evolution for our planet.

Edited by Lazarus Long, 23 January 2011 - 08:50 PM.

[Lazarus Long]

I am undecided between two answers I have read here: language or logic and reasoning.
I would say they are quite on the same level, and probably go together.
Thinking of what can be somehow the foundation for everything else, these two seem to me to be the most important ones.

I have difficulty in defining logic and reason as an invention. Even bacteria appear capable of it and clearly it is rooted in not just 'our' DNA but in the very function of DNA itself.

However, if by logic and reason you mean to imply 'philosophy' then it is acceptable since not only is that an invention, it isn't really a discovery either.

Language is also problematic when considered too broadly but a significant number of critical linguistic developments, such as writing, alphabets, and grammar systems are clearly inventions even when at times applications of already existing linguistic conventions.

I went into the distinction between 'discovery and invention' a little before but it is a distinction worth paying more attention to in this topic. The analysis of our species' relationship with fire is an example of how blurred the distinction can get but also exemplary of how important it is to examine.

[Rational Madman]

governance

If the term is narrowed down enough. A rudimentary form of governance stems from alpha male dominance, the Big Man rule, so it's not invented by us, it just is. But right, as the effort to devise the most effective way of collectively facing the environment, this would be a major one.

oh yeah, and markets eat babies in their cradles !

Very true, and as you're plainly aware, I was referring to the more structured and higher order of governance that allowed participants to devote more energy toward self-improvement---as opposed to spending the day hunting and gathering. And right, I wish many could move beyond their narrow definition of "market," which unfortunately causes some to knee-jerkingly think of words like evil and avarice.

[Maosef]

Firearms and ammunition because everyone can join in which leaves WMDs in a close second, just to exclusive.

No no, in all due seriousness I believe the invention of the market economy is probably the greatest proponent to the generation of wealth which I deem to be the most crucial aspect of advancing humanity in hand with Innovation where the two both heavily rely upon one another.

You could cite that the market economy obviously requires some basic prerequisites such as language and a structured society but I think these are too inert to the natural human function to be effectively deemed external inovations so much as internal discoverys; a kind of realisation of our own evolutionary ability.

Kind of tired and didn't really feel like writing beyond the joke but I felt I ought to give it a whack.

Edited by Maosef, 24 January 2011 - 01:26 AM.