If you ask me? Mobile/WiFi internet… The way and amount of time we use our phones had changed A LOT since their diffusion. I guess the release of the iPhone changed our idea of what a phone is too
Edit: when I say modern world I’m referring to the last 50 years. So stuff like “the electricity” or “the telephone” doesn’t count.
Electricity. And electromagnetic radiations.
Chemical fertilizer. World population would probably be half the size without it and starvation rates much higher.
I don’t believe this, is there a convincing argument to be made or does it hinge on destroying the environment to reduce cost to the consumer?
This should not be down voted.
Those of you that are down voting this comment just because this skepticism doesn’t match your worldview or what you were taught from a textbook (which never tell the whole story) should stop and do a bit of research on your own. There is plenty of accessible evidence that points to nitrogenous fertilizers harming the environment and contributing to global warming without even digging into primary scientific publications.
It doesn’t mean that the comment about chemical fertilizers are wrong, that’s a more difficult claim to check (fertilizers increase crop yields, but could we support our populations without them if we didn’t focus on overproduction). That said, it’s what’s driving much of the recent research into alternative fertilization methods right now. Chemical fertilizers are damaging and we need alternatives.
Why? They are extremely damaging. The runoff destroys entire ecosystems like the wetlands where I used to live. Now filled with toxic microorganisms feeding on the fertiliser accumulating there
One of the guys who invented the process for large scale production was Fritz Haber, to make explosives and chemical weapons. He’s also responsible for using chlorine gas on the battlefield in WW1. His wife was a chemist and an activist, who shot herself in the heart after learning about his involvement. Haber left within days for the Eastern Front to oversee gas release against the Russian Army.
He ended up saving more lives than he destroyed, but what a story.
There’s a really good section on him in the book, How to hide an empire - a history of the greater united states.
Social media. And not in a good way
I agree.
OPs answer of saying that WiFi and phone Internet changed the world is correct, but it’s not specific enough or the full truth of the matter.
If we had the Internet and modern phones but the only sites that existed were those from 2002, we’d be living in a very different world.
Mobile Internet is the enabling technology, but if social media didn’t exist we’d probably leave our phones in our pockets most of the time.
Sure, I was there then. I was on Facebook right in the beginning, when you needed a university email address to even sign up.
So that’s true, but it’s also true to say that early Facebook wasn’t the same as modern Facebook. Early Facebook was - as the name suggested, a place to connect with friends, share pictures and plan events. You’d probably check it once a day to see what was happening, but that was it. And your home feed would be a direct and unfiltered view of what all your friends posted, in the order they posted it, without bias. And you could easily catch up on everything that had happened and then you were finished.
It’s the birth of the algorithm and infinitely scrollable tailored content feeds that really defines what social media has become.
This and mobile Internet have really gone hand-in-hand. The algorithm has made us want to be scrolling all the time, and mobile Internet has made it possible .
Cars shaped city planning, housing and by consequence our lifestyle, making us more dependent on them to get through your day. You can see it expecially in European cities that were built in medieval/reinassance times: if you live and work in the older parts you can totally do without a car. If you move a few kilometers out, not having one becomes a real handicap
In the last century? The diode, aka the P/N junction and every variant that has been created ever since.
Recently? Capacitive touch screens are by far the most significant change.
