CNN's top 25 innovations

[Joop]

I guess semiconductor/transistor technology.

John

Actually, some other organisation that issued a top ten had the
integrated circuit on number one. Without that invention half of the
others on the CNN list would not exist.

Joop

 

[Chaos Master]

Winfield Hill stated:

http://www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/01/03/cnn25.top25.innovations

CNN's list of the top 25 innovations of the last 25 years.

2. Cell phone [...]

The number one innovation will be announced on Sunday, January 16,
at 8 p.m. ET. What do you think it is?

Semiconductor technology
--
Chaos Master®, posting from Canoas, Brazil - 29.55° S / 51.11° W

"People told me I can't dress like a fairy.
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Mozilla Firefox 1.0, Gravity 2.70, Wget as downloader

 

[PaulCsouls]

http://www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/01/03/cnn25.top25.innovations

CNN's list of the top 25 innovations of the last 25 years.

2. Cell phone
3. Personal computers
4. Fiber optics
5. E-mail
6. Commercialized GPS
7. Portable computers
8. Memory storage discs
9. Consumer level digital camera
10. Radio frequency ID tags
11. MEMS
12. DNA fingerprinting
13. Air bags
14. ATM
15. Advanced batteries
16. Hybrid car
17. OLEDs
18. Display panels
19. HDTV
20. Space shuttle
21. Nanotechnology
22. Flash memory
23. Voice mail
24. Modern hearing aids
25. Short Range, High Frequency Radio

The number one innovation will be announced on Sunday, January 16,
at 8 p.m. ET. What do you think it is?

The left turn signal on traffic lights. You use to have to wait for
the light to just turn red and sneak throught before the other light
turned green. Now its easy. The guy who came up with that deserves a
medal. It's either that or superconductors.

 

[Joop]

Actually, some other organisation that issued a top ten had the
integrated circuit on number one. Without that invention half of the
others on the CNN list would not exist.

Joop

Ah, like Win corrected it was 25 years. Forget my post.

 

[Ben Bradley]

[email protected] (John S. Dyson) wrote:

Actually, some other organisation that issued a top ten had the
integrated circuit on number one. Without that invention half of the
others on the CNN list would not exist.

And of course that was also much longer than 25 years ago, not many
years after the transistor. Moore stated his law in the 1960's.

 

[Ben Bradley]

Internet (which, IIRC, was invented longer ago than 25 years).

The World Wide Web and web browser, which made the Internet a
point-and-click app instead of command-line driven (and Unix based)
was started circa 1990.

I'm a little surprised the Hubble Space Telescope isn't listed. It
may not really be the most innovative thing (well actually it might
be, but the idea of putting a reasonably big telescope into outer
space has been around a lot longer than 25 years), but many of the
images it has taken seem to have captured the public's imagination.

 

[Boris Mohar]

http://www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/01/03/cnn25.top25.innovations

CNN's list of the top 25 innovations of the last 25 years.

The number one innovation will be announced on Sunday, January 16,
at 8 p.m. ET. What do you think it is?

Spam

 

[Anthony Fremont]

Spam

LOL I can't believe Ron Popiel(sp?) didn't get an honorable
mention. Who else thinks it will be the George Foreman Grilling
Machine? ;-)

 

[Joerg]

Hi Winfield,

Quote: In creating the list, the group hoped to single out "25
non-medically related technological innovations that have become
widely used since 1980, are readily recognizable by most Americans,
have had a direct and perceptible impact on our everyday lives,
and/or could dramatically affect our lives in the future."

That would make 'number one' the card-reader compatible gift card. Ahem....

Regards, Joerg

 

[keith]

Hi Winfield,


That would make 'number one' the card-reader compatible gift card. Ahem....

Umm, perhaps your "gift" cards weren't, umm, purchased? ;-)

 

[keith]

http://www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/01/03/cnn25.top25.innovations

CNN's list of the top 25 innovations of the last 25 years.

2. Cell phone
3. Personal computers
4. Fiber optics
5. E-mail
6. Commercialized GPS
7. Portable computers
8. Memory storage discs
9. Consumer level digital camera
10. Radio frequency ID tags
11. MEMS
12. DNA fingerprinting
13. Air bags
14. ATM
15. Advanced batteries
16. Hybrid car
17. OLEDs
18. Display panels
19. HDTV
20. Space shuttle
21. Nanotechnology
22. Flash memory
23. Voice mail
24. Modern hearing aids
25. Short Range, High Frequency Radio

The number one innovation will be announced on Sunday, January 16,
at 8 p.m. ET. What do you think it is?

Ted Turner. Umm, Americas Cup. Maybe, Ted Turner's Americas cup? Nah,
it's *got* to be Ted Turner.

 

[keith]

That's a good one. The Web, made possible by PCs and fiber optics, is
a historical phenomenon, the worldwide democratization of information.

For a know-nothing journalist, perhaps. As we geeks know, there is a
*lot* more to the Internet than the WWW.

 

[keith]

Internet (which, IIRC, was invented longer ago than 25 years).

When were Journalism majors told? BTW, our internal network was bigger
than the "Internet" until, IIRC, '85.

 

[keith]

LOL, personal computers have been around longer than 25 years.

....depending on the definition.

this too
http://inventors.about.com/library/weekly/aa980407.htm

In commercial use?

so has this

Sure, we had crude, but perfectly functional email in the '70s.

Gotcha there!

this too depending upon your interpretation of "portable"

A lot of this is dependent on definitions.

this too

Sure. Even floppys predated '80 by a decade.

Ok

Whew!

Ok, let's see how this one goes...

Ok...


offered in some GM regular production vehicles in 1975

Didn't think it was quite that early. Even shoulder harnesses weren't
required until about then. Seatbelts a decade warlier.

close call on that one for being since 1980.

Not even close. We had ATM cards in '70. No networks, our bank only, but
ATMs none the less.

kinda subjective isn't it?
Indeed,

Were "advanced batteries" a lead-in to this one?

Whatever.

Good grief. Plato had plasma displays by at least the early '70s.

Standard (well a *lot* of standards), not a technology.

Before '80.

How has it improved my life *now*. ...to deserve a place in the top 25.

Wow! There were many similar, though more expensive technologies around
before '80.

hmm..... they must mean digital

Either way, it's not an improvement in my life.

too subjective, what is "modern"?
DSPs?


what do they mean by this? bluetooth?

EZ-Pass, cordless phones, I suppose.

I'm guessing that they'll say that it's the Internet when they probably
mean the web. But it probably should be the Mars rovers (or exploration
bots/autonomous vehicles) in general.

I'd agree with the Internet. I'd also agree that they'll confuse it for
the WWW. As slick as the Mars rovers are, they haven't done anything to
improve my life.

Seriously, couldn't they find 25 things that actually didn't occur until
after 1980? I would've thought that software patents would've been
included, especially since they've "revolutionized" the software
industry. ;-)

I think software patents also came before '80.

Does an innovation occur when someone actually implements an idea, or
only after it's mass acceptance? IMO, this is a poor list given the
fact that a "panel of technology leaders" came up with it. The ISS or
Hubble might have been worth mentioning.

"Panel of technology editors" is more like it. It *is* a piss-poor list.

 

[keith]

Winfield Hill stated:

http://www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/01/03/cnn25.top25.innovations

CNN's list of the top 25 innovations of the last 25 years.

2. Cell phone [...]

The number one innovation will be announced on Sunday, January 16,
at 8 p.m. ET. What do you think it is?

Semiconductor technology

....just a tad before '80.

 

[Rich Grise]

Umm, perhaps your "gift" cards weren't, umm, purchased? ;-)

No, it's true - they sell them like traveler's checks.

Cheers!
Rich

 

[Rich Grise]

John S. Dyson wrote...

?? That time frame is the 50s. 25 years ago is 1980.

Makes me think of "Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In", in 1969. I remember that
it was in 1969 because of the bit, "News of the future". He'd say
something like, "News of the future, 1989, 20 years from now". Watching
reruns of that is spooky, primarily because all of the gags are still
applicable. ;-)

Cheers!
Rich

 

[Mark Jones]

The World Wide Web and web browser, which made the Internet a
point-and-click app instead of command-line driven (and Unix based)
was started circa 1990.

I'm a little surprised the Hubble Space Telescope isn't listed. It
may not really be the most innovative thing (well actually it might
be, but the idea of putting a reasonably big telescope into outer
space has been around a lot longer than 25 years), but many of the
images it has taken seem to have captured the public's imagination.

Hmmm... the Mars rovers? (Which are still operating I might add, a
year later! They were designed for only a few weeks' operation. Now
that's engineering.)

 

[Ben Bradley]

http://www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/01/03/cnn25.top25.innovations

CNN's list of the top 25 innovations of the last 25 years.

21. Nanotechnology

This one word encapulates everything that is wrong with this list.
Just what does it mean? It could mean modern integrated circuitry
which has been made with sub-micron features for many years now (but
less than 25 years). This has just been the most recent evolution of
integrated circuits which have been shrinking since their first
manufacture.
Or it could mean the building up of small devices atom by atom
(what Drexler calls molecular nanotechnology, to distinguish it from
the usage in the above paragraph), as first proposed by Richard
Feynman in (IIRC) 1959. There's been a bit of research and talk about
it over the years, perhaps starting with Eric Drexler's book "Engines
of Creation" (text available online, a good read) published in 1986,
and continuing more recently in Michael Crichton's novel "Prey" from a
couple of years ago. This could well be the "Fusion power" (lots of
research going into it, but nothing practical coming out) of the 21st
Century.
But when reading the actual CNN article, not only am I suspicious
of their motives for flaunting nanotechnology (using the first meaning
but perhaps riding on the popularity of the second meaning), but they
also confuse it with MEMS (while were at it, if it's nanotechnology,
shouldn't it be _N_EMS?). So why do they have both of these on the
list as two separate categories, MEMS and nanotechnology?

Quoting the relevant paragraphs from TFA*:
"It is safe to say that the first words of someone who walks away from
a car accident unharmed are not, "Thank goodness for the advent of
nanotechnology [No. 21] and MEMS [microelectromechanical system, No.
11]."

"Yet without the tiny silicon chip that sensed the impending
collision, the airbag would not have deployed in time.

""The device that causes an airbag to inflate in a crash is a nanotech
device," said David Kirkpatrick, senior editor at Fortune Magazine."

I'll remember not to read Fortune Magazine for technical info.

The number one innovation will be announced on Sunday, January 16,
at 8 p.m. ET. What do you think it is?

It would be too much to hope for good reporting of science and
technology (now THAT would be a fantastic innovation), so I'd just
settle for faster-than-light travel.


* See slashdot for usage, as in "RTFA."

 

[Reg Edwards]

Hmmm... the Mars rovers? (Which are still operating I might add, a

year later! They were designed for only a few weeks' operation. Now
that's engineering.)

=============================

Anything which doesn't perform according to design is poor and uneconomic
engineering.