Allan Stam wrote: "The number of industries that the iPhone has destroyed is really quite extraordinary. Pocket cameras, calculators, stand-alone GPS, and literally dozens of others. One wonders how much of this Steve Jobs anticipated or if he would be just as surprised at the scale and scope of the smartphone's success and impact."
Mike's comment: Years ago, my brother Charlie and I had a game: what's the most amazing development of your lifetime? We were talking generally about "stuff," not big political changes, ecological considerations such as the population explosion, or deep scientific advances.
He's double-boarded in internal medicine and pediatrics (pretty close to a general practitioner), and at one point he chose antidepressants. One of my earlier choices was the reliability of cars: pre-1969 cars were very unreliable compared to today's, 1969 being the cutoff given to me by the crusty old guy at my local car mechanic shop who knows more about cars than he could ever impart. I remember when I was very young, younger than 10, our father would take the car to the gas station, which also doubled as a "garage" at that time, a.k.a. a mechanic's shop, to have it "checked" prior to a driving trip from Milwaukee to Indianapolis...a trip of only 273 miles (440 km). Cars then seldom lasted past 100,000 miles, and "tuneups" for cars with carburetors had to be regular starting at, what, 5,000 miles was it? Today, a humble Toyota Corolla, which I would argue is just as high an expression of human ingenuity as the fanciest Ferrari, sells for a very reasonable price and can last 20 years and go 300,000 miles with pretty minimal maintenance.
In the '90s Charlie and I had to make an exemption for the internet—the question became "what's the most amazing development of your lifetime apart from the internet?" At some point it was the personal computer. I think Charlie picked his iMac G4—the one set on the base that was half of a sphere—a little past the turn of the millennium.
But sometime around 2010, our answers converged: the iPhone. Charlie named it first; I was a late adopter. It's so obviously the answer now that we haven't played the game recently. (Another game we play is, "who would you like to be President if you could appoint anybody you wanted?" Elizabeth Warren!*)
(iPhone 13**)
As far as we picture-people are concerned, it's just plain lucky that "the camera" (I'd say camera system) in smartphones just happens to be one of the differentiators that matters to people when they are making their choice of what phone to buy. That's the only reason why so much development is concentrated on the built-in cameras and their functions. It could just as easily not be the case.
Of course, this—the whole fundamentally bizarre situation—is a haphazard development, in the way that most of culture is haphazard rather than rational, sensible, and planned. I mean, would anyone plan that enormous gas-guzzling pickup trucks and giant seven-passenger SUVs would become the de facto personal conveyances in non-urban America, in an era of rising gas prices and the threat of climate change? That's madness. Would we have planned that fast food, which is arguably the least healthy food ever regularly eaten by any cohort of human beings in the history of the planet, would become ubiquitous in the first era in which "what's good for you" even became a consideration in food choice? (The "health" of food didn't really start to be rationally framed as a concept, scientifically at least, until about the 1890s.)
Much of culture is actually the opposite of "rational, sensible, and planned." It comes about by chance, because of a hodgepodge of random factors that can't be predicted or managed. That certainly extends to cameras. Tell me: in 2012, at the peak of the digital camera boom, would you have agreed with the statement that the ultimate "lowest common denominator" we should all agree to be stuck with would be a tiny point-and-shoot or digicam built into another device, with fixed lenses, the advantages of which would work partly by falsifying the integrity of the lens image? I doubt it. But that's the way the various forces of culture, economics, and happenstance have dictated things would head. (No, we're not there yet. We're only heading that direction.)
Then again, I certainly wouldn't have said that cameras should be excessively expensive, hyper-complex, grossly overfeatured electronic devices built around sensors the size of a 135 negative, either! Or that most "good" lenses should be greatly oversized, greatly overpriced, and greatly overweight compared to, say, the OM Zuikos of the 1980s or the Leica M lenses of the 1960s.
But really, most "deep enthusiasts" of photography have always gone their own way, and have always existed on the fringes of the popular market. We adapt because we have to, but we force the existing choices to adapt to our needs, too. Because it's the work that's important. And if you can do your work better with an iPhone, then power to you, my brother, my sister. It's all good.
+ = + = + = + = +
I've just posted all the Featured Comments to the past five posts, so go back and catch up with those if you want. And I'll try hard to keep up with comments better this weekend. The question before the Commentariat is: what's the most amazing development of your lifetime? You can relate it to photography if you would like to, but you don't have to. For extra credit, don't answer the question about who should be president. (Unless it's the correct answer, Elizabeth Warren.)
Have a nice weekend! I'll be posting on Sunday this week, and not on Saturday or Monday. Oh, and I almost forgot to mention: I'm told my latest article for newyorker.com will be published next Thursday! Very exciting. It's a more major article than the last one. I'll post a link, if and when.
Mike
ADDENDUM: I meant to mention, seconding what Allan wrote, that after I got my first iPhone—first smartphone—the Apple iPhone 4s, which I think I bought in 2012 when the blog really took off—I had the idea of making a photograph of all the things that it replaced. I pictured a little heap of objects that would fit on the kitchen table—an old Ma Bell phone, a camera, a flashlight, a calculator, a Rolodex, a stack of LPs, a GPS navigation device, paper books, board games, a light meter, a calendar, maps, a clock, a timer, a stopwatch, a dictionary, a compass, a radio, a news magazine, etc. Of course, you know the problem...actually the heap would be so big you wouldn't even be able to see everything in it, and even then it wouldn't include everything the smartphone can reasonably be said to substitute for. I'm not an "app chaser," and I have relatively few of them on my phone, but one of them is an altimeter—I got it to measure the height of the hill I live beneath—and one I use all the time can scan plants and instantly identify them. Another can listen to music and identify the song and artist (although my friends Kim and Bob stymie it sometimes). The list goes on, as you know.
*That's my answer, not Charlie's. Well, it's very far from his answer. Come to think, I don't actually know what his answer would be today—it's a game we play prior to elections. I'll have to remember to ask him. Maybe I'll just pretend his answer is Elizabeth Warren—he doesn't read the blog regularly, so he'll never know. Heh heh. But I suppose if he comments I'll have to feature it. Although if he says Ted Cruz I'll have to delete it on the grounds that he's insane. Sorry, just amusing meself here.
**I cannot tell a lie, this was Potatochopped. I moved in the clump of grass at the bottom from another exposure. Dutiful disclosure.
Book o' the Week
The Mindful Photographer by Sophie Howarth. I only know of Sophie Howarth from her time as a curator at the Tate Modern in London, but my impression then was positive. Her brand new book (it only came out a few days ago) is about slowing down as a means of enjoying photographing more. It's said to contain a curated collection of photographs along with anecdotes and explanation.
The book link is your portal to Amazon from TOP, should you wish to support this site.
Original contents copyright 2020 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:
mike r in colorado: "I see a few comments have already been posted. Skipping them to not be influenced. The whole computer hardware industry is my number one pick. And if that's too easy, the integrated circuit is probably specific enough. I work in computer software, so maybe I'm more jaded to the amazing-ness of software, but I consider it a much less 'under control' part of the industry. I can think of several other amazing things during my lifetime—global communication, medical imaging—but many of them circle right back to being based on computer hardware."
Dillan: "I'd agree that it has to be the iPhone, or more generally the smartphone. I'm not picking it for the camera in my pocket, though, for I don't use the camera for anything other than visual note taking. No, for me it's the internet in my pocket. I have access to the world's information anywhere. It is a dream come true for an inquisitive person like myself."
Nikhil Ramkarran: "Like most other people, for me, it would definitely be modern mobile phones. But a decade or so ago, after dark one evening, I opened the door to our darkened living room and saw my two-year-old daughter sitting on the couch with her mom's iPad lighting up her little face, and her four-year-old brother leaning from the side so he could see the screen also (yes, I got the picture). It struck me right then (and I've never forgotten) that this slim, portable screen, with all of its entertainment, information and power, was just a mundane, routine thing to these children. What would be their most amazing lifetime development?"
Malcolm Meyers: "I'll forego all the 'obvious' answers and throw a vote in for podcasting. It is a relatively simple technology yet it allows pretty much anyone to start broadcasting their thoughts and ideas to the whole world via their own, personalised 'radio station.' I have to say that I enjoy a lot of film photography podcasts and I've listened to people who, ten years ago, I would never have had a chance to listen to."
Phil: "My Dad, born in 1923, once told me that he had always thought the most amazing invention during his lifetime was inter-continental air travel. He first flew from Vancouver to England in 1972 and it took less than 12 hours, including a fuel stop. He couldn't get over that for a long time, but then when I and his various grandkids started showing him what we could do with our smartphones, he changed his mind. He was quite computer-savvy, so the internet itself was something he had already absorbed, but I remember him describing how a visiting grandkid declined a ride home because he knew exactly when the bus was coming. When he showed the transit app that had real-time tracking for the bus stop down the street, Dad was just amazed.
"As for me, I'm just a bit younger than you, and I distinctly remember during a trip to Paris in 2012. We decided to go for a quick walk in the evening to shake off jet lag, and, it being a 'quick walk,' I didn't bring my camera; but then I saw an entrancing scene along the river with great light so I pulled my Nexus S out of my pocket and took a decent souvenir shot and it just struck me what an amazing thing it was because, at the same time, I was also using maps I had downloaded to the 'phone' to navigate us to and from the hotel!
"I still walk around with an actual camera most of the time but I often feel sheepish that I'm just being 'old' and if I only spent a bit of time to learn how to get the best results from the camera in my phone (a Pixel 3), I would be better off. As long as I bring my reading glasses, that is!"
Rich Beaubien: "In the 1960s as a teenager I got interested in Amateur Radio (ham radio). For the most part the radios were made using vacuum tubes as a principle ingredient. The big thing though was to learn about and use FETs (Field Effect Transistors). I just remember being fascinated by FETs when they first appeared in QST (QST was the magazine for amateur radio users. QST in the lingo means 'calling all stations.')
"The idea of a field-effect transistor came in 1926 from an Austro-Hungarian physicist, Julius Edgar Lilienfeld. The first working FET was invented in 1947 by William Shockley, John Bardeen, and Walter Brattain at Bell Labs. They shared the 1956 Nobel Prize in Physics.
"The FET was first constructed of Germanium which is chemically similar to its Periodic Table neighbors silicon and tin, called a metalloid. Metalloids are a type of chemical element that has properties both of metals and nonmetals. When transistor R&D was opened into the public domain, business discovered that silicon had improved electronic properties, was cheaper, and worked just as as well. The first commercial product was the Sonotone hearing aids (1952). Followed by the first transistor radio (1954), and, in the early 1960s, portable TVs.
"Without the invention of the transistor none of today's electronics (those faxes, radios, CD players, phones, computers, digital cameras, etc.) would exist. It is the most important invention of the last 100 years."
Omer: "Passenger jet aircraft travel. Before COVID, more than two million people traveled by plane every day in the USA alone. It astonishes me that I can physically travel from Tucson, Arizona to Dhaka, Bangladesh in roughly 35 hours. Try that on the internet."
Philip Byford: "For me it is chemotherapy. So far I've enjoyed an extra 17 years of this wonderful life (I'm now 72) since a wonder drug destroyed my leukemia back in 2005. Cheers!"
Mike replies: Hard to argue with that!
Gaspar Heurtley: "My grandfather was born in 1901 and died in 1986. The Wright brothers' first flight was in 1903, so he was born in a world where planes didn’t exist yet, and in 1969, when he was about your age, he got to see the man walking on the Moon. How crazy is that? It always impressed me as a kid thinking how all that could happen in just one lifetime."
Mike replies: I've written before that, to me, the most amazing single thing in human history is that there were only 66 years between Kitty Hawk and the Moon landing. Even after long familiarity it still astonishes me. Of course, that happened in our grandfathers' lifetimes rather than ours.
Jon Erickson: "My sentimental favorite amazing development is the computer mouse, thanks to Douglas Englebart and the Stanford Research Institute, first commercialized by Apple in the Macintosh. The technology is foundational to how most of us interact with our various computing devices, including smartphones."
Paul: "Solar cells. These brilliant thingies are going to save us all, if we actually choose to employ them properly. Wind turbines are also high up in the list."
Ian Parr: "'Most amazing development of a lifetime' is apt to change at the drop of a hat with the pace of technology being what it is. For today, ignoring fundamental science as per Mike's rules (so ruling out the semiconductor transistor and DNA sequencing), I'd have to say the James Webb Telescope is probably the most amazing thing of my lifetime. It's due to start publishing images and science data in a couple of days, on July 12th. I suspect that even the wildest dreamers of the Apollo era would have struggled to foresee such a device being launched into space, let alone what it's going to study (imaging the origins of the universe, dark energy, exoplanets, etc.). Amazing by any criteria, and, for a bonus point, heavily linked to cameras and imaging."
Bryan Geyer: "The 'Most Amazing Development' in my lifetime initially sparked on December 23, 1947, when the first transistor was successfully demonstrated at Bell Laboratories, in Murray Hill, NJ. It was a crude point-contact germanium device, and its lengthy evolutionary course has now absorbed some seven-plus decades, but that event marked the birth of a technology that now allows us cram some 40,000+ equivalent transistor-type devices (as integrated silicon MOS-FET digital switches) into a modern smart ’phone. It's the 'Amazing Development' of this semiconductor brain that makes all of those iPhone applications feasible. P.S.: I personally entered the semiconductor trade in March of 1957, as a sales-engineer trainee. I was employed by the fledgling Semiconductor Division of Tung-Sol Electric Co., a company then notable as a producer of vacuum tubes."
Ernest Zarate: "After reading through the comments here and giving some thought to it, I’m hard pressed to come up with anything more amazing than the smartphones of today. Not only their capabilities but also the ubiquitousness of them in our society. Yes, the Internet preceded smartphones, and without the Internet, smartphones would be a lot less 'smart.' But, the smartphone took the Internet to entirely new levels it would not have reached without smartphones.
"As an aside, my two sons (ages 12 and 14) seem nonchalant towards their phones. They use them, but infrequently. The 12-year-old has to be reminded to charge his, and it is rarely on his person, typically languishing on its own on some shelf or other. The 14-year-old uses his a bit more, but even then, mostly as a phone (!!) to communicate with his friends. Their mom and I don’t say anything one way or the other (unless they’re heading out the door over to a friend's home or to the movies). I know it’s a small sample size, but I wonder if there is a trend by the youngest to not get hooked into constant attention to those small screens. Curious…."
Jim: "Fiber optics. Without fiber optics, you would not have the Internet, wireless phones (especially smartphones and 5G), CATV/streaming and just about every other technology that depends on communications. Fiber optics made communications incredibly cheaper and better enabling of all sorts of other technological advances. Every future advance that needs communications will depend on our worldwide network of fiber. When I first learned about fiber optics at Bell Labs in the late '70s, I realized it was going to be big. I became an entrepreneur in the field and let's just say it has made my life comfortable."
Mike replies: There's a great display and docent presentation about fiber optics at the Corning Museum of Glass in Corning, New York. When I was there, the docent giving the talk and media presentation recounted how he looked up one day to see one of the three inventors of fiber optics sitting in his small audience. He got excited just telling the story. Apparently all three patent holders (Robert Maurer, Donald Keck, and Peter Schultz) still live in the hills surrounding the town of Corning—or did at that time anyway. That was maybe 2014 or '15.
Don't even joke about Warren even getting near the presidency, let alone getting elected.
I'd say the switch from carburetors to fuel injection was perhaps the biggest single improvement to cars in perhaps ever.
Posted by: Patrick Wahl | Friday, 08 July 2022 at 12:40 PM
I second Elizabeth Warren. First candidate since Bobby Kennedy that had my complete support (and I was too young to vote for Kennedy). Most amazing development of my lifetime? That a third of the country has a suicide pact to destroy the environment and our democracy.
Posted by: jerry | Friday, 08 July 2022 at 01:06 PM
I think the iPhone is way up there, especially since most folks just assume you have a smart phone.
Note that Steve Jobs just posthumously got the Medal of Freedom from Biden. How many people can claim that they were instrumental (I hesitate to say it was single-handedly) in completely changing *4* industries: the personal computer, the music business, smart phones and computer animation.
Posted by: KeithB | Friday, 08 July 2022 at 01:11 PM
The internet!
Posted by: Bruce Bodine | Friday, 08 July 2022 at 01:27 PM
Having grown up in the later cold war, to me the most amazing (and delightful) development is the positive view of socialism by so many young people. It's truly remarkable, and gives me hope despite all that is going on.
The iPhone is impressive, but every time I see all the people (mostly men) idling in the parking lot, scrolling Facebook while their partner shops, running either the heater or air conditioner, I cringe at the carbon impact. Twenty years ago they would be bored, standing by the magazine racks! Every smart phone has an invisible exhaust pipe.
Posted by: John Krumm | Friday, 08 July 2022 at 01:29 PM
I recently had a most amazing development of your lifetime discussion with my 93 year old father. He said it was either penicillin or the polio vaccine, and I can't argue with that.
Posted by: Mark B | Friday, 08 July 2022 at 01:47 PM
I don't know about amazing, but I've long maintained that the fax machine was the ruination of the world. Before the fax if my "higher headquarters" needed something from me I'd prepare it and put it in the mail. They'd get it in a few days and that was fast enough. After the fax machine suddenly everything had to be taken care of in a matter of hours, if not minutes. Nothing was ever really so urgent that a few days, or a week, or a month, wasn't soon enough...but after the fax machine it had to be immediate. Of course, email has made it worse, but it started with the fax.
Posted by: Dave Levingston | Friday, 08 July 2022 at 01:48 PM
Wrt most amazing development of my life time - derived from extended human knowledge foundational to science and technology - nearly ubiquitous, low cost, high speed internet, the NASA Space Shuttle, ISSand Hubble / Webb telescope imagery, and for long term vs impact yet to be fully realized - genetic sequencing and annotation of humans, animals, and plants.
Posted by: Robert Zimmerman | Friday, 08 July 2022 at 02:13 PM
I often think back on arguments, debates and friendly wagers where the hindrance for settling things was, "How do you prove it?" Or watching some old movie, "Who is that guy, what else was he in?"
The smart phone even exclusive of the built in camera is my pick. It is almost like on the '60s Star Trek where they could go to their handy tricorder and get anything answered. The tricorder was the size of a 1960s cassette recorder, not slim and pocketable like the phone.
Think of this: how many terrific movies from the '40s to the '70s would be 5 minutes long if the hero or victim simply had a smart phone. Things that use to be a major problem are solved without too many hassles with a few clicks and swipes.
The whole internet in your palm, navigation problems solved in seconds, ordering anything on a whim, and yes, settling bets on the spot. The phone is the thing that I'd hate to give up more than most things... and I almost never use the camera.
Posted by: Albert Smith | Friday, 08 July 2022 at 02:14 PM
Being born in 1944, I will say "the most amazing thing I've ever seen" was the men on the moon!
Posted by: Harry B Houchins | Friday, 08 July 2022 at 02:14 PM
“But sometime around 2010, our answers converged: the iPhone.” Did you mean iPhone as in smartphone or iPhone as in the Apple product of that name? I know you usually mean what you write, I was just wondering if in this case you didn’t.
[He and I have only had iPhones; that's the only reason I put it that way. --Mike]
Posted by: Paul | Friday, 08 July 2022 at 03:34 PM
The fact that mass storage, especially non-solid-state mass storage, for computers has evolved on the same growth curve as the rest of computer technology.
Posted by: psu | Friday, 08 July 2022 at 03:49 PM
Oh, and I had the phones clearly on the path to replacing at least digital point and shoots in 2011. Though admittedly I didn't think they would get quite as good as they currently are.
Posted by: psu | Friday, 08 July 2022 at 03:57 PM
I don't think thus can be blamed on the iphone,but cellphones have helped hasten society's deep dive into mediocrity. I find that the current phones are lacking. Remember the bell tv commercial where the landlines connection was so good "you could hear a pin drop?" Can't say that anymore. How about a phone that works well? How about looking at the net on something bigger than a postage stamp?
Oh well, all change isn't for the better.
Posted by: Bill Pearce | Friday, 08 July 2022 at 04:18 PM
The most amazing development in my lifetime?
I have to say bottled water!
When you consider something that came free into a held-out glass from a kitchen faucet,- is now packed in cardboard and wrapped in plastic, and poured from plastic bottles, only to contribute to land fills and artificial islands of plastic, it’s amazing and troubling all at once!
Fred
Posted by: Fred Haynes | Friday, 08 July 2022 at 04:47 PM
In answer to the Allan’s question, I’d (randomly) recommend googling “Alan Kay and Dynabook” and also “Ivan Sutherland snd sketchpad” to see what kinds of things were Jobs’s inspiration for the Mac. Not sure what the correct seeds and prototypes of “wireless personal electronic device for communication of text, image, video, voice” were. maybe all the thinkers at Xerox PARC. Someone else can maybe chime in.
I guess it’s always nice to also make a nod to Edwin Land, who had an analog/chemical solution for personal photography and sharing that didn’t quite take hold. Maybe he envisioned the human connections that casual photo-making could lead to, but electronics and computer communication turned out to be a better substrate, for better or for worse.
Posted by: xf mj | Friday, 08 July 2022 at 05:06 PM
The most amazing development is/are vaccines but since we are limited to my/our lifetime I'll nominate just the polio vaccine. Many readers (Ok, some readers) may remember seeing children in iron lungs on black and white TV while growing up with friends who wore leg braces.
The results of the field trial were announced 12 April 1955 (the tenth anniversary of the death of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, whose paralytic illness was generally believed to have been caused by polio). The Salk vaccine had been 60–70% effective against PV1 (poliovirus type 1), over 90% effective against PV2 and PV3, and 94% effective against the development of bulbar polio. Soon after Salk's vaccine was licensed in 1955, children's vaccination campaigns were launched. In the U.S, following a mass immunization campaign promoted by the March of Dimes, the annual number of polio cases fell from 35,000 in 1953 to 5,600 by 1957. By 1961 only 161 cases were recorded in the United States.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polio_vaccine
(References at the link)
From the Gates Foundation ...
In 1988, when the Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI) was launched, polio was present in more than 125 countries and paralyzed about 1,000 children per day. Thanks to immunization efforts that have reached nearly 3 billion children, the incidence of polio has decreased by 99 percent since then.
https://www.gatesfoundation.org/our-work/programs/global-development/polio
Posted by: Speed | Friday, 08 July 2022 at 06:25 PM
A: Elizabeth Warren
Posted by: MikeR | Friday, 08 July 2022 at 07:24 PM
The presence of more than a half-million beggars on American Streets.* We are now what we were once told India was.
*Wiki: Homelessness in America.
Posted by: John Camp | Friday, 08 July 2022 at 07:43 PM
The Threw Stooges< is all you need to know! They exreeplaine everything that has happened from Trump to M4/3.
Posted by: c.d.embrey | Friday, 08 July 2022 at 07:48 PM
Amazing Development:
Electric cars.
Culture and vehicle size:
I took a quick look back at the 16? vehicles I’ve owned in my life and after a very quick skim of the internet for specs I’ve listed my top five longest vehicles below. Note that a 2021 Tahoe is 210” long so it seems that some things never change. :-)
1974 Ford Torino (212”, surprised me)
1965 Ford Galaxie Convertible (210”, thought this was longest)
2001 Toyota Tacoma Double Cab (208”, classified as compact)
1969 Dodge Coronet (206”, 117” wheelbase)
1972 Dodge Charger (206”, 115” wheelbase)
Posted by: Jim Arthur | Friday, 08 July 2022 at 08:27 PM
The Transistor. It all has to start somewhere and the beginning of modern life begins with the transistor.
Simple enough.
Posted by: John Krill | Friday, 08 July 2022 at 08:49 PM
Hi.
Me, dunno. Probably is the iPhone actually. I live in science fiction now. More importunely, I guess, it has changed the way people behave.
I think about this in relation to my grandmother at times. She was born at the tail end of the 1800s. She grew up without electricity, piped water, vehicles, etc. She had birthed something like four children before her and my grandfather bought their first motor vehicle, and a whopping 10 children before they motorised their farm. In her life she saw (in the personal sense) the arrival of gas lamps, electricity, motorised vehicles, telephones, antibiotics, radios, movies, aeroplanes, vaccines, televisions and a guy on the moon. etc. Not to mention two world wars and a pandemic which left her with a lifelong fear of influenza. Must have been mind blowing.
Peace & all that,
Dean
Posted by: Dean Johnston | Friday, 08 July 2022 at 11:02 PM
Statin drugs.
I’m biased, I take Lipitor.
Vaccine technology is also amazing.
Posted by: SteveW | Saturday, 09 July 2022 at 12:10 AM
The internet.
Posted by: Simon Griffee | Saturday, 09 July 2022 at 12:13 AM
I'd agree with others who have said that the most amazing development of my lifetime has been the invention and continued development of the integrated circuit. Everything we've done with them - personal computers, smartphones, the internet, etc - depends on them.
And they depend on electricity, of course, so for a longer-term view, I'd suggest the steam engine. Its various applications - marine steam engines, locomotives, steam turbines - remade the world and are still heavily in use. Most electricity is still generated with steam turbines, for example. (The steam is produced from a range of heat sources, of course.) And here's a fascinating thought - a nuclear submarine is actually steam ship....
Posted by: Tom Burke | Saturday, 09 July 2022 at 02:53 AM
Most amazing development of my lifetime? That's easy, it's the internet. The death of pocket calculators is a long way in the future though. As long as children still do maths exams I think they will continue to be common, even if they aren't popular.
Posted by: Andrew | Saturday, 09 July 2022 at 04:00 AM
Lots of things have been important and even life changing (antibiotics, vaccines, computers) but for “amazing” in the sense of unexpected and surprising, as opposed to it’s current common usage, I would have to pick the web connected cameras. I remember it was the one thing I had a problem with in Orwell’s 1984! It was just impossible that people could ever be spied on by Big Brother wherever they went and now China is well on the way to doing it and we are not far behind but using more diffuse methods.
Posted by: Richard Parkin | Saturday, 09 July 2022 at 05:18 AM
Unravelling DNA, except that we don't yet fully appreciate its significance.
Posted by: Trevor Johnson | Saturday, 09 July 2022 at 06:23 AM
Most Amazing Development: Duct tape.
Posted by: Chico Ruger | Saturday, 09 July 2022 at 07:45 AM
Mike: I am shocked that your brother, as a physician, didn’t cite more of the many medical treatment technologies developed during the past 50 years! Truly miraculous developments.
For me, I’d have to choose a trifecta of developments that have now merged for all practical considerations. Communications technologies, computing technologies, and display technologies. Together they are changing everything in the world…for better and worse.
Posted by: Kenneth Tanaka | Saturday, 09 July 2022 at 09:46 AM
The proliferation of nuclear weapons and the growth of the military industrial complex. My entire life an all societies either live with a constant threat or benefit from the research from defense research. One could make an argument that today’s electronics, optics, medical and political structures have certainly changed because of that WW II effort. Tye list and depth of that nuclear effort reaches into every aspect of this world’s daily life.
Posted by: J. N. Lauretig | Saturday, 09 July 2022 at 11:10 AM
Ten years ago I was working in a photo lab (remember those?) and as the cameras in phones got better our work started drying up. After I made a very nice 16x20 enlargement from an iPhone 5 I told my boss that our industry was toast. We were out of business the next spring.
Posted by: Stephen Cowdery | Saturday, 09 July 2022 at 11:19 AM
The internet - what a magical thing. It moves tiny slivers and huge amounts of data, from anywhere, almost instantaneously, to individual devices with precision and, usually, privacy. For 2/3rds of my life we could not do that. Almost all of the computing technology wonders we enjoy today depend on, are enabled by, a fast and reliable internet.
Posted by: Peter Barnes | Saturday, 09 July 2022 at 11:48 AM
Mallory Mcmorrow for president. Her speech before the Michigan senate was amazing. I might be jumping the gun but only by a few days. The James Web Space Telescope.
Posted by: John L | Saturday, 09 July 2022 at 11:54 AM
I’m going to interpret “in your lifetime” to refer to the original invention of something, rather than its broad development throughout society.
Since the transistor pre-dates my birth by (all too few) years, I’ll jump forward to the Internet. I’m a Computer Scientist by training, and I remember my skepticism when I met the guys involved in creating its predecessor, Arpanet. But it has changed everything. The smartphone would be a nice pocket phone/calendar/calculator/phone book toy without the Internet. The extraordinary connectedness and access which the Internet affords us makes our daily life different in so many profound ways that we can no longer remember the pre-Internet world.
We started building a new house in January 2021, the height of the pandemic. It simply would have been unimaginable to do so with the Internet. Instead, we proceeded mostly on a normal schedule while adhering to a reasonable degree of separation from other human beings. Zoom, email, text, shared databases, access to building & zoning codes, permit applications, shopping, … . The list of ways we used the Internet during this project is endless. All of which would have been possible, if less convenient without smartphones.
Posted by: Scott Abbey | Saturday, 09 July 2022 at 12:48 PM
Well, smartphones of course: Double-edged sword there offering a combination of all-purpose tool/toy, but with addictive qualities.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/25/opinion/sunday/steve-jobs-never-wanted-us-to-use-our-iphones-like-this.html
I watched a recent Apple keynote presentation where Watch's sleep-enhancing features were touted, but thought it more than a little ironic that they only work if you wear the device in bed.
Posted by: Jeff in Colorado | Saturday, 09 July 2022 at 01:28 PM
Artificial Intelligence. It's only in its infancy
Posted by: Thomas Walsh | Saturday, 09 July 2022 at 02:19 PM
The “tool” that I enjoy the most is the iPad; I have an iPhone 13 Mini but don’t want to use it for anything other than the very few ‘phone calls that I make: I see it mainly as an emergency item. I deplore the idea that people can catch me at any old moment that they imagine I’m going to be delighted to be interrupted by them. Maybe the ability to see who’s calling you is a major step ahead.
The Internet is handy, but there is no doubt in my mind that the technological advances since the 80s have led to a massive dumbing down of the population, a weakening of the pleasure we now derive from most things, a sort of ennui, where nothing really surprises me (or probably anyone else) anymore, and excitement has mainly drifted away… when everything seems possible, nothing amazes anymore. I guess it’s that when you can access everything, you actually access less and less because there seems no particular point and you can always do it later, if you can be bothered, that is.
Maybe that’s why so many people eat out: spend too much time in your own kitchen and by the end of it, you hate the sight of that thing you just cooked for yourself. Photography, of course, peaked with Kodachrome 64 Pro. It has been on a slide down the populist drain ever since.
Posted by: Rob Campbell | Saturday, 09 July 2022 at 04:30 PM
On the social front what has amazed me is the acceptance of gayness. I had a family member that was gay (deceased now), and even though he received the Bronze Star for heroic duty at age 20 in WWII (did not talk much about it), and lived a fairly successful life, he could not live fully as he was. I loved him dearly and wish he was here today to see the acceptance.
Technologically, as many have stated, it is the internet, communications, and computing power. Especially available storage and price as I grew-up in the graphics business, starting a few years before my MAC 512k showed up, and the prices along the way for storage and speed was incredibly expensive and today, very affordable.
On the domestic front, it amazed me after switching from a wired home alarm system to a wireless one and the ability to spy on my pets when I am out of town. It is always comforting to see them happy and resting while mom's away.
Posted by: darlene | Saturday, 09 July 2022 at 04:52 PM
All technology developments of the post WWII period are remarkable and in one way or another changed the face of the world, but if freedom is the most cherished right, and to me it is... the most impactful development is the personal car.
[But that didn't happen in your lifetime, did it? --Mike]
Posted by: A. Dias | Saturday, 09 July 2022 at 05:05 PM
Just a minor correction regarding Rich Beaubien’s Featured Comment: That first transistor Shockley, Bardeen, and Brattain built was not a FET, but a point-contact transistor. The first FETs were built a bit later, although they were, indeed, the first hypothesized transistors. As is often the case, Wikipedia has good explanations at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transistor and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_transistor.
Admittedly, very few will care about this small technicality.
Posted by: Derek | Saturday, 09 July 2022 at 05:08 PM
Gotta go with the Internet.
The invention of the Internet is roughly analogous to the invention of the printing press with movable type by Gutenberg.
One of the reasons for our current social disruptions is that we are at Gutenberg + 50, or because our pace of change has increased, maybe +75.
Think about it: one hundred years ago we had roads, municipal water and sewer, mass communications in the form of radio and newspapers, the beginnings of commercial agriculture/green revolution (nitrogen fertilizers), urbanization, telephone communications, powered flight, we had the germ theory and vaccines, if not as many as we have today, the world map was more or less what it is today. The notion of modernity was alive and well. I am not saying that then was the same as now. But all the seeds of now were all already firmly planted.
But the Internet will change, has changed, everything, across all boarders. And the iPhone would really be nothing without the Internet connectivity underpins our society. Remember, a human alone can accomplish almost nothing. It is our genius as a species to be able to problem-solve together. And the Internet has juuuust started to show us what it can do in that regard.
Posted by: Benjamin Marks | Saturday, 09 July 2022 at 06:22 PM
For me, the realisation that global warming is is incontrovertibly real and that humanity doesn’t have the sense to deal with it meaningfully. The consequences of this failure will have greater long term ramifications than anything else I can think of.
Posted by: Barry Reid | Saturday, 09 July 2022 at 06:33 PM
Well, I'd say the IC chip. Because that covers so much! Basis of computers and the internet and GPS, and CAT scans and better weather prediction and CGI effects in movies and of course digital photography.
I don't think air travel is it. When I was 4 we took a ship from New York to England (I think; might have been France, we went to both that trip) and it only took a week and was very calm and scheduled. Air is faster, hours rather than days -- but the big difference was sailing ships that only sometimes got there and took a month or so, highly variable, to steamships that got there much more reliably and much faster. Similarly, the railroads improved so much on covered wagons that it was a difference of kind, not just degree, but changing a few days to a a few hours, while significant (see how many people take trains in the US now!), isn't world-changing.
Posted by: David Dyer-Bennet | Saturday, 09 July 2022 at 06:43 PM
Internet dating platforms. Never participated myself, but this has opened the world up for so many people who simply don't have the right personality to initiate dating the traditional way. Transformed lives everywhere, and not just teenagers but all walks of life, all social situations, all physical circumstances. Yes it has its own risks but IMO the transformative power has been vast.
Posted by: Arg | Sunday, 10 July 2022 at 12:08 AM
the dumbing down of large populations of the 'west' by 'social' (anti social) media and how it has facilitated the spread of hate to all corners of the world. much against its original expectations.
Posted by: Brian | Sunday, 10 July 2022 at 01:18 AM
to add to my previous post. I used to be proud of working for the plastics industry now not so much but am a little consoled that at least i did not work for Facebook.
Posted by: Brian | Sunday, 10 July 2022 at 01:23 AM
"Most amazing development of a lifetime" is apt to change at the drop of a hat with the pace of technology being what it is.
For today, ignoring fundamental science as per Mike's rules (so ruling out the semiconductor transistor and DNA sequencing), I'd have to say the James Webb Telescope is probably the most amazing thing of my lifetime. It's due to start publishing images and science data in a couple of days on July 12th.
I suspect that even the wildest dreamers of the Apollo era would have struggled to foresee such a device being launched into space, let alone what it's going to study (imaging the origins of the universe, dark energy, exoplanets etc).
Amazing by any criteria, and, for a bonus point, heavily linked to cameras & imaging.
Posted by: Ian Parr | Sunday, 10 July 2022 at 04:03 AM
One development that has made a huge difference to my life is the anterolateral free flap.
In a lengthy operation, a large piece of muscle was removed from the front of my right thigh, and joined to my wrecked left foot. It means I can walk and use fairly normal, though Orthotic, shoes.
Although my range is slightly limited, I can still walk around and (for example) take photos.
My consultant had gone to Japan to learn how to do this complex procedure.
Posted by: Roger Bradbury | Sunday, 10 July 2022 at 08:40 AM
Upon further review ...
Having read all of the comments, obeying the constraint of "in my lifetime" and bringing in my personal experience, I nominate solid state electronics, semiconductors.
I was born in 1942. The first realization of a semiconductor occurred a few years later. I fooled around with vacuum tube electronics as a teen. I was schooled in real working electronics while in the USAF, in the early 60s. Everything was vacuum tube. Back into civilian life, I applied to IBM, where their current digital computer employed gates that were modules using a vacuum tube.
About then, the floodgates opened. Smaller and smaller transistors. Many semiconductors embedded in an IC, integrated circuit. Ever greater packing into a small footprint. CPU chips. Shrinkage of the form factor moved exponentially.
Without this foundation, were we still using vacuum tubes, neither the internet nor personal computers nor smartphones would have been possible.
Posted by: MikeR | Sunday, 10 July 2022 at 09:23 AM
Smart phone is the Swiss Army knife of today. It can do a lot of things but for just about anything, there is a better tool for serious work.
Posted by: Ilkka | Sunday, 10 July 2022 at 10:22 AM
"who would you like to be President if you could appoint anybody you wanted?"
Harry S. Truman, the last president with balls and moral honesty. Ike also qualifies but he was too cautious to denounce McCarthy. What an astonishing decay in this nation: Harry or Ike and, a few decades later, Trump.
Posted by: Kodachromeguy | Sunday, 10 July 2022 at 11:12 AM
This one got me going around in circles about what is “amazement”. Surprising? Personal impact? Least predictable? I am inclined to nominate the internet, especially if I can include social media under that heading. IMO the internet really has been the engine for the era of the information revolution that we are now living in. It’s not that it happened - it was an obvious invention even before it was invented - but the speed of its spread, its ubiquity and its enormous impact in such a short time is what I find truly amazing. I started legal practice in an era where the only knowledge not to be found on paper was on microfiche - yet today, many of my colleagues run legal practices almost entirely without printed books - or indeed paper. I spent forever learning how to avoid chequing fraud on a trust account; yet today - in OZ - it is not possible to open or operate a cheque account with most banks. All money transaction are online, immediate, and even more susceptible to fraud. After allowing for the internet, the most amazing developments for me personally were the word processor- at the expense of the skilled typist / secretary as - in an information production business - it meant that one person could do the job of what otherwise took many. That was followed by the iPhone 3GS, at which point my whole of my business would be moved from a fixed location into the palm of my hand wherever I chose to be - it was imperfect and inconvenient to be sure (and I did use predecessors such as the palm) - but the 3GS was the first truly portable computing device meeting real world needs, and that it was a combined voice and text communication device was a major bonus. Lastly, the digital camera (however implemented) - whihc allowed me to practice photography again, and is why I’m here…
Posted by: Bear. | Sunday, 10 July 2022 at 07:58 PM
PCR (aka the Polymerase Chain Reaction). I had the luck to be in the right place at the right time with the right skills to be one of the scientists that invented and developed of this key technology at Cetus Corporation in the 80s. My colleague, Kary Mullis, had the concept of PCR, but could not get it to work; I was assigned that responsibiity by our R&D VP Tom White, and spent the next 18 months reducing the core invention to practice, as they say in the patent world. We soon developed other key technologies, including Taq polymerase (which was cloned my friends David Gelfand and Suzanne Stoffel, both outstanding scientists), a thermostable DNA polymerase that did not require adding the polymerase every PCR cycle, and PCR product detection technologies, including non-isotopic detection chemistries.
Once we had automated DNA Thermal Cyclers, we were off and running and much like the invention of the transistor in electronics, molecular biology and world have not been the same since.
The other co-inventors on the original PCR patents were Randy Saiki, Glenn Horn, Fred Faloona, and my manager, Henry Erlich.
I was also fortunate to be the first person ever to use PCR for molecular cloning and it was also breakthrough for that application, as we could drop the PCR amplicon of the genetic target directly into M13, rather than spending months cloning into phage libraries and having to do a sh*tload of screening to find the target.
It was a pretty amazing time to be a molecular biologist and I feel fortunate to have played a part. One of the most gratifying applications I developed with PCR was using it to amplify VNTRs to be able to do quantitative assessment of allogeneic bone marrow transplant (BMT) engraftment. This was a big help to bone marrow transplant recipients and surgeons, as we could quantitiavely monitor how the degree and success of the bone marrow transplantation procedure.
Heady times, indeed. ;-)
Posted by: Stephen Scharf | Monday, 11 July 2022 at 12:38 PM
The development that most impacted my life was becoming a single parent of two toddlers. Both girls.
Posted by: Eric Rose | Monday, 11 July 2022 at 02:33 PM
Vaccines
Posted by: John Abee | Monday, 11 July 2022 at 05:54 PM
I was born a couple of decades after the first computers and a few years after the first integrated circuits and the beginnings of space exploration, so in my lifetime it would have to be the internet. If we're taking the internet off the table, the microcomputer and the mobile phone are right up there, along with maybe GPS, space habitats and reusable space vehicles.
Posted by: robert e | Tuesday, 12 July 2022 at 05:14 PM
P.S. I'm sidestepping the smartphone question by saying it's the inevitable merging of microcomputer and mobile phone (OK, and camera ;)).
P.P.S. I also forgot about PCR, and cloning, and CRISPR/Cas9 gene editing (thanks, Stephen Sharp, for reminding me of an entire field of research). CRISPR is revolutionary, but I think so recent that it's still under the layperson's radar.
Posted by: robert e | Tuesday, 12 July 2022 at 05:29 PM