The World's Most Important Invention: How We Think About TechnologysteemCreated with Sketch.

in #history7 years ago

If asked what the most important invention of the 20th century is, the most common response is the atom bomb. It's right there in the history books, after all. It's also not true. As a society we tend to be really bad at assessing the importance of technological advancements.


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So what is the most important invention, then? Other major contenders include computers, airplanes, cars, and antibiotics, but it's none of those. The most important invention? The Haber process.

The Haber, or Haber-Bosch process, is an artificial nitrogen-fixing process. It's used to convert unusable atmostpheric nitrogen into ammonia, which has a variety of industrial uses, including in explosives. It has another, far more important use, however: Nitrogen fertilizers. Nitrogen fertilizers supplied by the Haber process feed as much as half of our global population today. Simply speaking, the current global population, for better or worse, could not likely have been reached without the Haber process.

So why do so many history books and teachers claim it was the atomic bomb?

It's because we, as a society, have some real problems in how we think of technology and progress.

First off, we tend to obsess about flashy inventions. Rockets are awesome, but radar and improved encryption and decryption were far more important in winning WWII. They're not particularly flashy, but the refrigerated rail car and canning were some of the most critical inventions in allowing for our modern system of food distribution and storage. Sometimes, it's the little boring inventions that change history the most. Barbed wire is laughably simple looking, but it utterly changed farming and ranching.

We also tend to lump all inventions and advancements together under the general banner of progress, which is a mistake. It's much more useful to divide them into different categories. The actual divisions themselves are up for debate- you can rearrange them endlessly, and even then the influence of one technology often reaches into the other categories. The very act of dividing it into categories, however, forces us to think about how technology and society interact on many levels.

Advancements are also often thought of in purely technological terms. Their importance comes from how much of an advance they are from the previous solution. Air travel is a huge improvement over sea travel. The telephone is a huge improvement over the telegraph. We should, however, be thinking about them in more terms than that. We need to be thinking of them in terms of resource cost. We should be thinking of them in terms of logistics- does it make it easier or harder to manage the day to day operation of civilization? (Non-technological logistical advancements often get ignored as well. In fairness, these are usually incredibly boring, but technological progress could not have occurred without them.) We should be asking whether this invention was expected (as the cell phone was) or came completely out of left field (the microwave oven). We should be asking whether advancements make previously existing goals and tasks easier, or whether they actually allow us brand new opportunities that the human race didn't have before. (This one is tricky- one might say that the nuclear bomb is a brand new ability of humanity to interfere with the fundamental forces of the universe while the Haber process is just a way to feed more people, but one might also say that the atom bomb is just a better way to blow stuff up, while the Haber process is fashioning bread out of air.)

Ultimately, you need to think about all of these inventions in a historical context. You can really only assess the importance of an invention in retrospect- not least because it's far too easy to get caught up in hype. For a great example of thinking about an invention in historical context, check out Alexander Monro's The Paper Trail: An Unexpected History of the World's Greatest Invention. Monro not only makes an excellent argument for the invention and dissemination of paper being a lynchpin of history, he provides a thoroughly enjoyable history as well.

When someone claims that a revolution- whether technological, social, or political- changes everything, and that we're no longer bound by the chains of history, you should be entirely skeptical, unless they're talking about, say, language or fire. Even the wheel is useless without a smooth enough surface to travel on. Everything builds upon everything else. History doesn't chain us; it provides the very surface we travel upon, and nothing escapes it. Cultivating a historical mindset will ultimately serve you incredibly well in all avenues of life.


Think I'm wrong about the most important inventions, or know other obscure or overlooked technologies that changed history? Let me know in the comments!


Bibliography:

The Paper Trail: An Unexpected History of the World's Greatest Invention, by Alexander Monro

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/10/21/head-count-3

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haber_process

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Great Article!

It is very unfortunate how today politics tends to get in the way of science. It would be nice for all of us to take a few steps back and appreciate everything we have gained because of science and allow it to run its course.

Well, science does need a little supervision- at the very least, scientists need to concern themselves with the ethics of their actions.

I definitely agree.

Very interesting thought... It does seem like mob mentality makes it so that the flashiest inventions and people get the lion's share of the attention. We see this in the cryptocurrency space - it's why young companies with no product are able to raise millions of dollars.

While most people are building products, the real influencers are building platforms. Paper is a platform on which knowledge can be spread. The Haber process is a platform to support much larger amounts of human life. Even Steemit is a platform - one that, in theory at least, incentivizes the best kind of content creation and (even better) collaboration.

Excellent post here, thanks @mountainwashere

Thanks! And yeah, we as a society really like shiny objects.

Platforms aren't a bad model to use to think about the issue.

Good article. Guess I don't have input on what may be the world's most important invention, because as you pointed out with one building upon the other, I find it hard to pick one to stand on its own.
One thing I find amazing with advances in technology is always made the world smaller. Air travel over sea travel: not just with mobility of people but now you can obtain commodities from half way across the world much cheaper and faster. Once we could put things in orbit, what we could do with satellites enabled SOOOO much.
Thanks mountain for another great post that makes us think!

You make a decent point about making the world smaller- but at the same time, it's allowing us to see more.

Birth control pill. It fundamentally shifted the traditional limits of one-half of human society, for good and ill. The ability to consistently influence timing of conception has resulted in current dynamic of declining marriages, delaying of child-birth, psychic and social separation of women from traditional roles, psychic and social separation of males from responsibility of conception, psychic and social diminution of fetus into non-personhood, psychic and social shift in conceptualizing marriage outside of child-rearing, etc.

Haber-Bosch process gave humanity the ability to industrialize agriculture, but the birth control pill mitigates the necessity for excess food production with ever-declining birth rates into negative territory. Humanity may breed itself out of existence.

Birth control pill is a good one, but lack of access and various social and cultural disincentives to use it have resulted in a still growing global population. (Birth control in general, including the condom, is a better thing to look at.) It hasn't made any real dent in the birth rate on its own- those few industrialized nations that have slowed their population growth down merely use birth control as one mechanism among many to control growth. The actual causes seem to be increasing standards of living and various (again) cultural and social causes.

A very well written piece.
I work in an industry that grabs the most talented scientists right out of college.
Most are incredibly inventive and want to use their talents for the benefit of mankind, sadly their talent often ends up creating technology some of us wish had never been discovered.
Great post.

I'm glad you liked it! What industry, if you don't mind me asking?

Defence, it's should be called the attack industry though. I don't see a lot of defending going on.

Yeah, that's pretty typical political doublespeak.

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