Greatest Inventions and Future Technology Some people were talking about what they believed were the greatest inventions, because they made the biggest impact on us. They couldn’t agree and it got me to thinking about it. I began to wonder than I realized we had to break it down to areas, because while one invention could have revolutionized one area did that area have such a great impact on us it changed everything? I came to the conclusion there have been a lot of inventions over the thousands of years humans have been on this planet and some of them were so important they changed our lives. I think the very first invention to change the way we all live was fire. Yes, I know I am going way back into the distant past, but without it we would all be eating raw food and with that ingesting all sorts of dangerous things contained in that food. Fire not only cooks our food and makes it taste better but it sanitizes it. Fire was is also the basis for some of our energy. No one knows who discovered it and how. It was probably discovered when lightning struck a tree or something like that. When it was first captured it had to be kept burning because man didn’t know how to start a fire, but obviously, he learned. There were other early inventions which changed the way we hunted and fought, such as the bow and arrow, the spear, and then the sword. None of these, though extremely helpful in hunting had the importance of fire in changing our lives. Sometimes change is not always good or only considered good by some of us. Take the computer revolution for example. People who were older didn’t like the change and some who were younger were disappointed in at least one aspect of it. The older people were mostly not tech savvy and even today need help using a computer or their cell phones if they have one. The younger ones who were disappointed wanted to do away with all paper but it seems in many cases there is more paper than ever. Just go to any doctor’s office to see what I mean. Using computers has more good points than bad, but the bad ones, like crime can really cause us problems. One technology which is just starting and will change all our lives is the self-driving car. Not only will we all only be passengers able to relax during those long drives, but older people who lost the ability to drive will suddenly be able to go anywhere. Think of the handicapped people. A blind person will be able to own a car and go anywhere he or she wants. Self-driving cars are already much safer than human driven ones. When we do hear about an accident, it is incredibly seldom when you consider the number of miles being traveled by these cars. Another technology which is not in full swing yet, but will change our lives is 3D printing. You might wonder why I am saying this, but it is because the potential for much cheaper prices for building homes and commercial buildings should accompany the 3D built structure. It will also allow us to build structures off world much easier. This tech seems like a win win, and one I can’t really see any downside to. I would also think the materials used will be much cheaper than those used today. Gene Editing Research may someday eliminate many of the diseases people face today. Just look around and you will see many people suffer from the same maladies their parents or grand-parents did. This will be able to be eliminated at birth by gene editing, giving those children a chance at a much longer and healthier life. There are areas of our lives which could use a future game changing technology and they are war, crime, medicine, poverty and a few more. Take war for example. Far too often war is used as a political tool. Many times, a war is declared to make us forget about some failed governmental policy and lives on both sides are sacrificed uselessly. We somehow need to put a stop to this. I don’t know if some future technological solution will appear someday, but I hope so. Medicine is an area where there is room for a lot of improvement. I can’t help but feel that way because I know so many people who really weren’t helped that much by going to doctors. To me the best thing which could happen in medicine would be an examination by advanced artificial intelligence. If we could program every possible disease and injury into an advanced AI program it might be able to give out a list of possible diseases and injuries in order of preference one has, you could then take it to your doctor so he knows better what to look for. In cases such as cancer if the AI could monitor your progress periodically it might be very helpful and it might even be able to recommend adjustment to your chemo and radiation for better results. Again, AI could be used to track criminals and assist in their capture by controlling devices which would apprehend them. Facial recognition has proven not to be that reliable, but in the future, it could be, making it extremely hard for a person to avoid detection. Lastly, we need to figure out a way our advanced technology can be used to eliminate poverty. It could turn out that space exploration and industrialization would provide so many more jobs it could pull most if not all of the people on this planet out of poverty. One can only hope.
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