oberon

What's your opinion on this?

My vote will be for the movable type apparatus, by Johannes Gutenburg in the 1600s. This forever changed the way people communicate.

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KWSN

Mine is easily controlled electricity. Just about every aspect of the modern world relies in some way in some form of electricity. Without electricity, we would have almost none of the luxuries we have today.

My runners-up are plastics and the printing press.

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paddyjoe

air conditioners and toilet paper

Cynthetiq

internet...and all it's pieces like email, websites, streaming video...same reasons. Mr. G's was just mechanical, which is very cool.

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greytone

The wheel and movable type are the first two to come to mind. I wonder if in 250 years people won't answer with the microchip.

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rock_bottom

Cheasy sounding answer, but I'd say language. We take it for granted... but it's really nothing all that simple.

BBtB

Is it my imagination or didn't we allready have a thread like this?

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"I would like about three fiddy"

HeyAgain

Yup, that would be my choice as well. Without electricity, TFP wouldn't have existed.

double

Hmmm...Making fire. The spark.

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ARTelevision

yeah, it's this thing here - the Internet.

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lukeswalewalker

remote controls for TV.

Lurtch

Not to be a dick, but movable type was created in the late 1400's or the early 1500's.

Lebell

Agriculture.

It allowed human beings to settle in one spot and spend significantly less time hunting and gatherering sustenance. This allowed humans the time to develop writing, mathematics, etc.

Had the Indians of the Americas had substantial agriculture, Europeans might very well have found cities and a society that could rival that which was in Europe.

History would have been VERY different then.

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bundy

this is easy.
the printing press is without a doubt the most influential and greatest invention.
mass media.
Gutenburg struck gold with that one!

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vermin

Toilet paper (how else could we, as a civilization, show our disapproval of a certain high school teacher?) and the Farenheit scale.

(What happened to the hmm smiley?)

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qpid

Im still going to go with the internet, it makes getting porn so much easier

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Halx

electricity begat computers, which in turn begat the internet, which in turn begat the TFP

it should be easy

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QuasiMojo

Und what shall TFP beget? !

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Halx

you decide

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b1m2x3

as ive said in the chat:

PLASTICS

just try to imagine our world, all of our technology without plastic....

Halx

no plastics.. no dildos... we're doomed

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scarebearjinx

i must agree with you man. we'd all probably be still in caves and in loin cloths.

bermuDa

not to be a dick, but "During the Ch'ing-li period (1041-1048) a commoner named Pi Sheng first invented the movable type"

my vote goes to language (written and spoken) first and electricity second...


the farenheit scale?? lol

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laconic1

I'd have to go with the wheel. Pretty much every method (except for boats) of getting anything or anybody from one place to another depends on it.

rogue49

From where mass media really started
The Gutenberg Press.



But, if you are talking about modern times,

Cloning
The implications are profound

Cuball

The wheel without a doubt ...

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Loki

well, i'd have to opt for the orginal crude common tools, such as a rock tied together to a stick by a vine... etc

Without those, we wouldnt even be able to make the other inventions on the board. Hell, we probably would be extinct =)

World's King

Did anyone say condom yet?


With my lifestyle the condom has to be the most used thing I know of.

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JadziaDax

Fire.

Oh, and the indoor outhouse.

rabidy

I Would have to say, The stick, yes the humble stick,
first used by primitive primates to forage insects out of mounds and logs, later to hunt small game, the first tool, the increase in protein led to increases in brain size, and as our brains evolved so did our tools, as time passed primate became man, and invented all we know today, but it all began with but a simple stick.

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Cynthetiq

SWEET!

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b1m2x3

sticks wernt invented... they were here a pretty damn long time..... hehe

i think he means manmade, guys

rabidy

well, electricity wasn't invented either, merely harnessed, just like
the mighty stick, 80)

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KellyC

Aww hell..I was gonna say the spear, but I'll go with yours.

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Shpoop

wow u revived a dead one...

someone said the spark, but that is a discovery not an invention

pocon1

I second language. Many of you said the internet, or electricity powering the internet. But the power of the net is still about communication, just on a larger scale. the internet is a tool to facilitate communication, but it still involves input by people. Put a monkey in front of a computer, and it won't communicate any better. Moveable type just allowed communication to be portable and permanent. Language allowed the spread of ideas. On a primitive level, look at the animals and insects that use communication to survive. Bees tell others in the hive where nectar is at. Ants follow each other by pheremones to food or danger. Dogs can read body language like that. Monkeys use screeches, howls, and other noises to communicate. Our brains are so highly developed to handle the ability to process verbal sounds. Some scientists believe that language caused this brain growth, not brain growth causing language. The primitives who could communicate better lived longer. Think about it. We have no claws, no sharp teeth, we are slow, our babies take years to develop, we have no prtective fur, but we dominated every environment by being able to work together and communicate.

MSD

I can't choose just one, so:

The printing press
The wheel
The telegraph
The integrated circuit
The birth control pill (Greatest invention of the 20th Century)

If you look at it, most of what we have comes from those. Right now I'm typing on a whole bunch of integrated circuits attached to a really fast telegraph.

FleaCircus

I'll answer with that one now.

Either that, or fried chicken. Gotta love the man who came up with that.

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Aletheia

Printing press.

Omar12

Anesthesia and sterilization.

Computers would be second.

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