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.
Chemical fertilizer. World population would probably be half the size without it and starvation rates much higher.
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.
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?
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
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.
Transistors. Invented somewhere along the 50s.
Transistors is the defacto answer. We wouldn’t have anything we have now without them.
Oh you say but what about (this thing) that doesn’t have any in it? The factory it was mass produced in runs on transistors.
Going down the list of comments in this post:
Telephones. Always had transistors.
Internet. Obvious.
Coal. Everything from the trucks to the converors, to the systems that track production, and all the transportation involved after uses them.
Washing machines also use them even if they’re not the stupid “smart” machines people buy for some reason.
Edit. If you’re in anyway curious about transistors here’s a new video from Asianometry about them:
https://youtu.be/k8cdByDa3oA?si=5B4tgJjP7X7jIuhT
Something worth repeating is that transistors are a direct application of quantum mechanics. Quantum physics isn’t a metaphysical thing about half dead cats and working only on a few ultra cold atoms. If you want to explain how a piece of silicium can be conductive or insulating depending on it’s polarisation you need… Quantum physics.
semiconductor
It depends on what you mean by piece of technology I guess, since what we have now is a culmination of thousands of awesome tech over the last few hundred years.
If I were to choose one thing, I’d say the telephone. It’s the predecessor to the internet, and suddenly communication between people was instant rather than messages that’d take forever (or morse for the places that had it).
It probably changed the world forever, being able to talk to someone in a completely different country and share something quickly.
To be fair, you didn’t say it had to be a modern technological invention, just that it impacted the modern world
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.
