Huge Invention

Something to Change The World (Technological Determinism, Technological Revolution) (Evolution) (to solve a Grand Challenge?)

Oct'2014: Greatest changes of past 1000 years.

750: Joint-stock corporation (Tang dynasty)

1440: Printing Press

1474: Patent

1590/1608: Microscope, Telescope

1821: Electricity (Faraday motor)

1885: AutoMobile

1895: Radio

1903: Airplane (Kitty Hawk)

1928: Penicillin/Antibiotic

1951: Nuclear power (EBR-I)

1955: Polio Vaccine (Vaccination)

~1960 Norman Borlaug rice (Green Revolution)

1975 UNIX-4 (written in C, to spread)

1989 World Wide Web (1993: NCSA Mosaic)

1994 Dave Winer starts blogging

1995 WikiWikiWeb

See img at Where Good Ideas Come From.

do Great Books count? great Computer Games?

the Eliezer Yudkowsky ambition scale

1. We're going to build the next FaceBook!
2. We're going to found the next Apple Computer!
3. Our product will create sweeping political change! This will produce a major economic revolution in at least one country! (Sea-Steading would be change on this level if it worked; creating a new country successfully is around the same level of change as this.)
4. Our product is the next nuclear weapon. You wouldn't want that in the wrong hands, would you?
5. This is going to be the equivalent of the invention of electricity if it works out.
6. We're going to make an IQ-enhancing (Intelligence Increase) drug and produce basic change in the human condition.
7. We're going to build serious Eric Drexler-class molecular nanotechnology.
8. We're going to upload a human brain (Mind Upload) into a computer.
9. We're going to build a recursively self-improving Artificial Intelligence. (AGI)
10. We think we've figured out how to hack into the computer our universe is running on. (see Digital Philosophy)

See also (2024-09-30) ZviM AI And The Technological Richter Scale