There can be no doubt that the twentieth century is one of the most remarkable unparalleled rate in mankind’s history for its technological advances and scientific discoveries, a rate that continues to this day. In fact, there were so many new gadgets invented and discoveries made in the last century that it’s difficult to pare the list down to just the three. However, here are the three technologies, that I have managed to narrow it down to those three innovations or technologies that have had the greatest influence on mankind: computer, internet, and radio.
Internet
The internet has become a cultural, economic, and life changing technological phenomenon. Enough cannot be said about this incredible technology. However, the internet is not one single invention; it is a simple idea that has evolved throughout the decades into something bigger than us all. While the internet was started fairly recently, today we are still at the tip of the iceberg of what this technology in all its many forms can help us achieve.
So in essence the internet has already and will continue to revolutionize the world. Even as its beginnings were humble, no one could have predicted its amazing growth through the last several decades. The internet has brought us so much information and not only to the social and business elite, but to the entire world. Looking back, the essential idea of the internet is extremely basic; however with several innovations, the internet has grown and evolved to where it is currently at today.
Computer
It’s difficult to imagine our world today without computers that rendered the typewriter obsolete and made hand writing a thing of the past; however, it took the internet to truly turn the computer into the monster it is today. Of course, the computer have been around since World War II, it was clunky, massive, and an expensive thing that had all the calculating power of a brick. In 1976, when Steve Wozniak and Stephen Jobs introduced the first Apple computer, it took the world my storm and changed everything. Today, of course, they are everywhere and we have become so dependent upon them that many people almost feel naked without one. The computer allows information to be brought into our lives instantly and this information is received from distant countries in s bat of an eye. For some, they even provide the very means of maintaining a livelihood: we use them to keep track of our finances, write books, design logos, and sell real estate. It also gives anyone the ability to buy and sell almost anything imaginable, find and torment old school mates, watch the latest you-tube videos, and even find their perfect life partner, all for a few bucks a month.
Plus, they are rapidly replacing the stereo and television in their ability to entertain us with music, movies, and games. Life without a computer would makes it hard to understand how our ancestors did so well without it. Radio. Radio has transformed society three times, not to mention giving birth to the entire field of electronics. Perhaps no invention of modern times has delivered so much while initially promising so little. When radio arrived at the end of the 19th century, few thought that “wireless” communications, in which intangible signals could be sent through the air over long distances, would be competitive in a world dominated by the telegraph and telephone.
Few people today can appreciate the impact the advent of radio had on the late 19th and 20th century. Not only did it suddenly make it possible for a person to be heard from hundreds or even thousands of miles away without the use of a wire (quite an accomplishment in the first years of the century) but it was the center of family life through the end of the Second World War and into the doldrums of the fifties, when it was gradually replaced by that new-fangled contraption, the television. Today, it seems to only be useful in the car as a means of keeping the driver from falling asleep behind the wheel or as a tool of talk radio designed to rile the masses. In its day, however, it was every bit as vital to existence as the television, the computer, the microwave, and the cell phone are to us today. Conclusion
The pace of economic growth was very rapid in the years around the turn of the 20th century. Rapid technological change and high rates of investment in physical capital fueled the growth. Technological advances in different areas were combined to produce new products and new systems that had profound consequences for the ways in which people lived.
References
Bellis, M. (2014). The invention of Radio. Radio 2. Retrieved from:
http://inventors.about.com/od/rstartinventions/a/radio.htm
Bogren, S., Erlinger, K., Hari, J., & Walleghen, P. H. (1999). An Educator’s Guide to
Commercialism. History of the Internet. Retrieved from:
http://education.illinois.edu/wp/commercialism/Commercialism.htm Frieberger, P. A. (2014). Computer. Invention of the modern computer. Retrieved from:
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/130429/computer
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