What was the last truly innovative thing you witnessed?
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3d printer
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The first time I tried steering-assist on a car felt like a significant transition.
Even though it was a simple "stay in lane"feature, feeling the car moving the wheel took a bit of getting used to.
I know that there are lots of other replies about the Internet and phones, but I've always liked maps so as a specific example that's an area that has transformed astoundingly. I have a map in my pocket that can show me anywhere in the world, give me directions, monitor traffic levels, show aerial photographs and street-level photographs of many areas of the world. I can fly around a 3D view of a city's buildings, and even see where my family members are.
Oh, and you can buy vacuum cleaners that don't need bags, now.
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Don't use them tꝏ often , specially not enough to know how gꝏd they truly are . But if want basic info about some thing , don't like sifting thru pages and pages of search engine garbage . LLMs I used automate that process and consolidate the info into something fairly easy to understand
Peops hate LLMs bcus they supposedly "turn peops brain to mush" , but … what if my brain's ALREADY mush ? Think this's one instance LLMs might help more than hinder , so shouldn't be discarded entirely
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I’d say the iPhone. A truly innovative, smart phone. When it first came out, I mean.
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After reading the comments here, I see the problem: You judge past things by what they have become, and new things by what they are. Nothing will ever be "truly innovative" by those standards.
The automobile was for a long time just a more expensive carriage. The airplane was a pass time for the ultra rich, while anyone else got by with hot air balloons if they wanted to fly. The soviets got to space first by pointing a ballistic missile upwards.
We have CRISPR and can alter the Genes of any living organism to match our needs, but oh well, it's only used by labs right now and anyone else got by perfectly fine by selective breeding.
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If you remember navigating with a compass and map, GPS is goddamned magical.
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... The automobile was for a long time just a more expensive carriage...
100%. To add:
Automobile was actually slower than the horse for good many decades. -
If you think that the internet is revolutionary, what right do you have to claim that automobile ever was?
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"Um, yeah, but we could have already known everything thousands of years ago if we had just made any effort. AI is just a worse version of what evolution already made between my ears. We could have already blown the planet up 70 years ago. The beginning of time is sooooo 13.8 billion years ago, YAWN!" - OP probably
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The internet was well established before the mobile web really took off. It looked different (most of us would say better), but it was already a mature part of everyday life. The dot-com “bubble” around Y2K predates the iPhone by years.
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Just not paying attention. We advancing too quickly imo. Not mature enough as a species to control this kinda stuff
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The first information revolution, is somewhat equivalent. With the invention of the printing press, distribution of information became an order of magnitude cheaper.
Literal months of work to produce a single copy, became a few hours to setup the movable type, then produce as many copies as you want.
Daily gazettes became a thing that was possible to do.
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Are you familiar with the differences between traditional vaccines and mRNA vaccines in terms of production?
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If the innovation is the airplane then it doesn't matter if it's an old timey biplane or or a next generation stealth fighter
If the the innovation is the vaccine then it doesn't matter if it's a smallpox vaccine or an mRNA vaccine
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But that's an arbitrary distinction. You could also argue, "what's the difference between a vaccine and medicine?" Or "what's the difference between medicine and physical medical treatment?" mRNA vaccines involve more innovation and impact than bloodletting via leeches.
But I won't respond to that line of thought anymore because you didn't answer my question.
You can choose to answer my question or just not reply. Do you know what the differences are between traditional vaccines and mRNA vaccines?
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I'm not the original poster, but I'd like to say I don't know but am now curious to know what's the difference and what makes it more innovative
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A good horse is like 3 horsepower at least
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I'll start by saying I'm not a doctor. This is my layman's understanding.
Historically, vaccines have been samples of either weakened or dead viruses. Through trial and error, we've been able to determine how to weaken or kill these viruses, then inject them into ourselves in the hopes that our immune system can learn to recognize and kill the virus. This has worked really well for a long time, but it's costly and can be difficult to scale. For example, horses have very strong immune systems. It's quite common to inject a virus that hurts humans into a horse, then harvest the horse's blood to acquire the material needed to produce a vaccine. The horse's immune system learns how to kill the virus, and we can use the to teach our immune systems.
mRNA vaccines take a whole different approach. They kind of co-opt the mechanism that viruses use to replicate.
First, let's tall about what RNA is. You might know that DNA is used to produce proteins, and proteins are the tools that life uses to do... stuff. Almost everything, really. Thing is, DNA is stored safely inside cells' nuclei, but protein production happens outside the nuclei, in ribosomes. So if DNA is needed to produce proteins, but DNA can't be moved to the protein production center, how do? Our cells can produce another molecule called RNA. It's basically half of DNA. Since you can derive one half of DNA from the other, it essentially carries the same information. Inside the nuclei, RNA is produced based on your DNA. That RNA is then moved to the protein production center to be used as the blueprint for protein production. Voila! Your cells have proteins now and can do stuff.
What did that have to do with viruses? But first, how do viruses work? Funny thing: at their core, viruses are kind of like protein missiles with an RNA payload. (This is why people argue that viruses aren't really alive.) Viruses pierce your cells and inject their RNA into your cells. That RNA provides the blueprints to produce more RNA and the protein module, effectively, a copy of the virus. The viruses uses your cells' infrastructure to reproduce.
With me so far? Here's where it gets cool.
What if we could capture a virus' RNA? What if we could then isolate just enough of the RNA blueprint to get some part of the protein missile, without the payload? And then what if we could get so specific that we could make sure that part of the protein missile is something your immune system could learn to recognize and kill? Lastly, what if we could package this harmless but recognizable part of the virus in a manner that your cells could mass manufacture it?
This is mRNA, the "m" standing for "messenger." mRNA vaccines basically give your cells the blueprint to produce a recognizable part of a virus that won't hurt you. Your cells then produce that virus part, and your immune system learns how to recognize and kill the virus based on that part.
The best part? We can do this fast. No need for trial and error on how to weaken viruses. No need to manage livestock like horses specifically to harvest their immune system material. The COVID vaccine was an mRNA vaccine. I haven't actually checked the numbers, but I'm very confident that the COVID vaccine R&D was the fastest humanity has ever had for any vaccine. We'd been researching and experimenting with mRNA vaccines already, but they weren't yet approved for medical use. For good reason, medicines go through a huge amount of testing before we start injecting ourselves with magic feel-good juice. Given the emergency that COVID was, most countries fast-tracked their approval process for the COVID mRNA vaccine. In the long run, this may actually have been a benefit, as we've learned a lot about how to produce these types of vaccines rapidly, at scale and even update them for new variants of a virus.
So yeah, mRNA vaccines are super fucking cool. They're also a remarkably clever innovation, copying an idea from viruses and adapting it to a way to kill viruses. Theoretically, future vaccines should be produced faster, be better targeted, and have fewer side effects.
Thanks for coming to my TED talk?
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I kinda thought using the first vaccine and the most current vaccine in my explanation would infer that I am aware of the difference
The question is meant to be more conceptually overarching and abstract
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The first hard drive I used was a whooping 5megs and the CP/M machine couldn't handle it so it was partitioned as a million floppies.
