The 20 Biggest Advances in Technology Over the Last 20 Years

Foundation for Economic Education ^ | 01/03/2020 | Alexander Hammond

[SamAdams76]

I would put fracking up there too. In the Top 5. This technology not only made the U.S. energy independent (and a net exporter) but it looks to provide civilization with enough fossil fuel for centuries to come.

Sorry all you doom and gloomers.

[WaltStuart]

Good list. Though the consequences of some (like Google, FB, YT), are being used to destroy our values & Constitution.

[fireman15]

First item on the list is smartphones.

I felt certain that I would provoke a reaction from the Apple fan boys here after blaspheming one of the principals in their holy trilogy of Apple products. Either this one went under their radar or they are now ignoring me.

“Smart phones” have become a bane on our society. They keep absolute track of you, they cause people to crash into other people and objects with their cars, and they become an unhealthy obsession for many. They have many useful functions, but I have to admit that as a life long gadget freak that I have developed a love/hate relationship with the ones that we own.

[Callan]

Terrible article. The author liberally mixes brand name products, companies, and technologies in a list.

"Technology" is the application for science and applied engineering including knowledge, products, tools, methods, systems.

[Vermont Lt]

Cyberdine. And Skynet.

They have become aware.

[Lurkina.n.Learnin]

LOL. I re-read your post after I posted that and figured out you were just trying to stir the applesauce.

On your point about smartphones it made me think how much freeer our dogs are than us smartphone users. Sure they got tags but they aren’t sending out info all the time on their location and what they are doing.

[minnesota_bound]

#10 Teams is the follow on and it is bloatware and slow loading when you start up the pc. Plus you cannot delete past chats, only hid them in Office 365 we have at work.

[spacewarp]

In many of these cases, as we’ve seen already, the technology wasn’t groundbreaking, but brought the technological advance to the mainstream.

[spacewarp]

And the mobile phone business. They built significantly better phones, but couldn’t convince developers to migrate to their platform and then they didn’t have the same base of applications everyone else had.