> Which was a more important innovation: indoor plumbing, jet air travel or mobile phones?
None of the above. It’s eyeglasses.
Without them, life after 45 is all blur.
My dad said when he left Oklahoma they ate in the house and crapped outside. Came to California where they crap in the house and eat outside.
Perhaps of interest?
There’s plenty of innovation going on all the time.
There are periods during which it is appreciated, and periods during which it isn’t.
That one is easy to answer. You can survive a summer without the internet far better than you can survive a summer without air conditioning.
For the most part, the internet is about entertainment available at our convenience. We did fine without it. However, people die without air conditioning.
Going down memory lane; I can remember a telephone call to relatives in Iowa took several hours to complete circa 1948.
I always think the electric light is the most important, but the dishwasher is my personal fave.
And in 2016, Gov’t created the unisex bathrooms just for preverts.
That and hot and cold running water and soaps
It was the U.S. Constitution, which created the FREEDOM to allow innovations to thrive.
I have to vote for the hand axe, about 1.75 million years ago, as the foundation stone for all future innovation.
Mobile phone have bigger downsides than that for plumbing or jet travel. Mobile phone produce radiation, facilitate government and corporate spying, and reliance on mobile phone devices has resulted in a reduction in conversation skills and car accidents (texting), and the convenience of a mobile phone with many apps has lead to anti-social and addictive type behaviors.
In the old days when you saw a family at restaurant bowing their heads before a meal, you knew they were praying before their meal. Today, when you see them bowing their heads, they’re texting or gaming on their phones.
My grandmother was raised in a covered wagon and homesteaded on the Texas plains in a mud house and traveled by horse-drawn wagon. Saw the railroads come in and the bicycle and roadways, the automobile and the airplane. Then the jet and even the lunar landings.
When asked which things made the most impact, it was the washing machine, refrigerator, and electric stove. The transportation allowed people to eat more than the crops and cattle they raised or the water they could draw from a well or catch in a large catch-basin.
She saw the advent of the radio, TV, PC, typewriter, motion pictures, movies, VCRs, and cell phone.
She saw horse and ox power, gasoline power, diesel power, steam power, nuclear power, electrical power, solar power, and windmills.
From the late 1890s thru the 1980s, she saw some of the most influential technological changes of modern man.
Electric power.
Toilet paper. Can’t imagine life without it.
One could make an argument for a specific tool as being the most significant innovation, but given the accumulation of every innovation before it, sanitation and refrigeration have probably contributed more to humans living longer healthier lives than anything else.
My vote is for the wheel.