Complex Numbers

The Father of Invention

elusive ennui warm inside asks: what do you think is the most important invention/discovery of the last 100 years? and why?

As a matter of boundaries, this leaves out fire, roads, the wheel, aqueducts, electric lights, radio, telephone, automobiles, powered flight, x-rays, radio, and AC power - among other things.

That leaves a whole lot of territory - the last 100 years has witnessed an explosion of technology, from the small (microchips) to the huge (Saturn V, the rocket that put a dude on the moon).

As for discoveries, well, there's relativity, quantum mechanics, galaxies, the Big Bang theory of origin, and Bruce Springsteen.

So I got to thinking - what's really important, and to whom?

They say that necessity is the mother of invention. To that, I say that laziness is the milkman. For every invention that resulted from perceived necessity, there's at least one that was designed to help us stop doing crap work: washing machines, cars, water pumps, boat engines, and so on arose not so much out of necessity, but some man or woman going, "I'm tired of doing this shit. I'm going to design a machine that can do it for me." Even the personal computer, which could be argued to be the invention with the most far-reaching effects, falls into this category.

But even the personal computer relies on earlier technologies: microchips, printed circuits, CRTs and so on. Those in turn relied on earlier discoveries and inventions, and on all the way back to fire and the wedge.

No, if I had to choose the most important invention of the last 100 years, it would have to be one that enabled other inventions, provided a foundation on which other discoveries and/or inventions could stand. And ultimately, what drives invention?

Necessity. Laziness. And dreams - both the night kind and the day kind. Without dreams, we are mere automatons, going through our daily routines without thought or hope.

A big feature of the Industrial Revolution, and one that continued long afterward, is the industrial image of people working as cogs in a giant, well-oiled machine. We all have our function, says this myth, and we must perform it for 40 years, then retire and die. We must get up at six, get dressed, go to work, come home, eat dinner, go to sleep, rinse, repeat. Progress depends on you! Don't call in sick! We're depending on you!

This stifles dreams, aborts inventions, resists discoveries, smothers curiosity. Cogs have no free will. The great inventions of the industrial age, paradoxically, destroyed our individuality, caused us to be ruled by the tyranny of time.

But there was subversion and rebellion against this chronocracy. Of course, all open rebellion was quickly squashed, its practitioners relegated to the fringes to live in boxes under bridges. But there was guerilla warfare, gradual erosion of the soul-numbing industriousness.

And what was it that was at the root cause of this insurrection? A rebellion that got to the root of the chronocracy, striking a blow against the oppression of the measured life while at the same time giving us more time to dream, to think, to plan... to invent.

I'm unable to determine the name of the rebel-saint who blew up the Parliament of Industry. Perhaps she or he is destined to go through history unappreciated, unsung, unrecorded. But the invention has forever changed the way we approach work and dreams.

It is.... the snooze button.