Inventions have a strong
impact on the way societies are structured and function. Inventions on living essentials expanded
our capabilities and are the driving force for civilization. For example,
electric light extended human activities beyond sunset, making it possible to
read and work at night. Inventions on transportations impact on our work habits
and leisure activities. They allow people to work miles away from residence,
expanding labor supply; they also made the transportation of products between
different places faster, stimulating export and import. Communication
inventions made it possible for us to communicate to the whole world from any
point of globe. The top ten inventions that I have selected are important
because they are the Lego basis of our everyday life.
My top ten inventions are
listed below and they are selected based on two factors:
First, I looked at the
inventions that are essential to the safety and convenience of daily life.
Among many, I narrowed to the items that would apply to the largest number of
people. I selected Magnifying Glass, Electric Light, and X-rays.
Second, I look at the
difference between pre-modern and modern life and asked myself what contributed
to the difference. To me, the most significant difference between the two is
the increased level of awareness, communication, and interaction, which all
contribute to urbanization. This urbanization will not be possible without Wheel,
Compass, Steam Engine, Automobiles, airplane, mobile phone, and Internet.
Hi! I enjoyed your presentation during class and on your blog. I agree with you that "inventions on living essentials expanded our capabilities and are the driving force for civilization". There are so many things we do day to day that would not be possible without the inventions you mentioned. For example, the light bulb is a crucial invention in our day to day lives. It allowed humans to extend their activities beyond sunset. Now people are able to read, work, travel, and do a variety of activities at night. I also agree that the internet, airplanes, steam engine, compass, etc. are very important. Thank you for sharing :)
ReplyDeleteHi Yi,
ReplyDeleteWhat I really enjoyed about the way you identified your inventions was the unorthodox approach at looking at "the inventions that are essential to the safety and convenience of daily life." I did not observe that in a lot of people's work, myself included, and I think its something that truly defines the value of any invention. The impact on how it can not only benefit our lives, but also how it helps us survive is a component that many of us take for granted. I also enjoyed how you associated the rise of certain inventions such as the mobile phone and internet as keys to the development of urbanization. Many of us fail to realize the impact urbanization has had on our world and that these inventions that you've listed are key components behind the way our society is structured today which truly is remarkable. Thank you for highlighting these two criteria as they were excellent points as to why the inventions you chose can be defended as the ten most important inventions.
Hello,
ReplyDeleteVery interesting choices for your Top 10. I had many of the same ones in mine as well. Your presentation in class was very interesting as well, the lightbulb is something fundamental to human society. I would be unable to type this without light and power. Overall, I slightly disagree with the magnifying glass because I do not wear glasses though they have been fundamental in scientific discoveries.
I agree with your mode of thinking, incorporating inventions that are both vital to everyday life (safety) and allows life to be easier (convenience). I especially like that you chose a lot of inventions that came about earlier in human history, much unlike some of our peers. I agree 100% with your logic that you used for each of your inventions.
ReplyDeleteHowever, I would like to probe a bit deeper into your general ranking system. Why list inventions that enhance safety and convenience? Surely there are more inventions out there that have saved lives (vaccination, modern medicine) that many would argue are much more important than inventions that make our lives more convenient.
Yi Cai,
ReplyDeleteAbsolutely phenomenal presentation; it is clear that you put a lot of work into your Top 10 which is awesome. It is very interesting to note that all of your inventions have to do with some sort of transportation whether that is information transportation (i.e. internet) or physical transportation (i.e. Steam engine). I 100 percent agree with your appropriation of transportation, whether you were consciously thinking of this when you are creating your list. I think transportation of goods and services has changed the world more than many people can imagine.
However, I would have liked to see maybe a little more emphasis on inventions that affected people on a more individual basis.
Great presentation!
Great work! Like Professor Lavian mentioned in class, it's obvious that your work shines among most others' work (mine included). I liked how all of your inventions had very thorough and well-thought explanations. It was easy to follow along and see the overall reasoning behind each invention. It was interesting to see camera; I never would have thought about it. For your next post and vlog, be careful with the title of the vlog. Although I can read Chinese, keep in mind others cannot. Other than that, keep up the good work!
ReplyDeleteThanks for presenting in class, I thought you were sharp. I've read through your top 10 inventions and think they are good choices for a top 10 all time list. Now reading through your internet selection I'm curious if it too general selection. I also selected the internet in my list, but I'm thinking that possibly the world wide web and web browsers are more valuable, because they are the layers we generally use to gather information. Also, with your selection of the magnifying glass I am wondering if you benefit from eyeglasses, because I did not consider magnifying glass among my choices. I am led to believe a lot of what goes in to our lists is based on personal circumstance. Thanks for making me think, Yi.
ReplyDeleteHello!
ReplyDeleteI truly enjoyed your blog! Thanks for sharing your insights regarding the reasons behind your top ten inventions. I definitely agree that it is important to first and foremost consider inventions that have truly changed our world, fulfilled and met our necessary survival needs, and increased of life expectancy. Having some medical conditions, I know how hard it can be to survive with such inventions that have made our daily lives significantly more easy. I also agree in that it is first and foremost important to consider inventions that are or have been essential to the safety and convenience of daily life. In addition, I would like to suggest that you also focus on inventions that may not have necessary been designed to solely fulfill a basic need but have still drastically change our lifestyles and daily routines and have made our lives significantly more easier and interconnected. Thanks again for a great blog post!
Best,
Alankrita Dayal
Hola!
ReplyDeleteGreat job! I can't agree more to your sentence: "they are the Lego basis of our everyday life." Inventions are definitely the solutions to our main society problems, which we forget once we created a solution. We are so dependent to these inventions that we would not be considered humans if we lived without them, we would be consider monkeys :-)
Hey Yi Cai!
ReplyDeleteWhat an amazing presentation! I loved all of your slides. They each had a ton of information as well as beautiful pictures. It is pretty clear that you spent a lot of time on your presentation and really thought out your choices for the top 10 inventions. Unfortunately I did not get to see your in class presentation as I was not yet in the class but I am sure that your presentation was amazing! One question I would like to ask you is why you included the mobile phone on your list as opposed to the telephone? I feel like that the telephone paved way for the mobile phone. Anyways, great job and keep it up! I look forward to reading your blog in the future.
Hi Yi Cai!
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed going over your presentation! I really appreciate your simple yet thorough explanation of top 10 inventions and reasonings behind it! Great information with helpful pictures! It was very obvious that you put great effort and time into this presentation. I agreed how you chose the top 10 inventions based on vitality and efficiency. Great work!
Hi! Awesome job with the Top 10 Inventions - I definitely didn't think about all of those. For me, X-Ray was the most surprising, because now that you mentioned it, it is a tool that is widely used in medicine and does have significant impact on many people's lives. However, we survived before X-Rays, though many more people probably weren't able to identify broken bones!
ReplyDeleteHi! Awesome job with the Top 10 Inventions - I definitely didn't think about all of those. For me, X-Ray was the most surprising, because now that you mentioned it, it is a tool that is widely used in medicine and does have significant impact on many people's lives. However, we survived before X-Rays, though many more people probably weren't able to identify broken bones!
ReplyDeleteHi!
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed reading through your blog post. I feel your list did a good job of being comprehensive in including subjects from a variety of inventions. I especially liked the incorporation of X-rays; it gives appropriate weight to medical inventions.