Story time:
I had my 10-year high school reunion earlier this year, and one moment from the day really stuck out for me.
As part of the event, we all got to revisit a questionnaire we filled out back in 2013, asking a series of questions where we made predictions about what ourselves, and the world would be like in 10 years.
One of these questions was: "What new invention or innovation do you hope will exist in 10 years?"
Most of us put something stupid, like flying cars, or similar.
But I thought about it for a while...and asked a few of my friends nearby:
What truly groundbreaking new innovation HAS there been in the last 10 years? Or heck even the last 20?
None of us could think of any. Just microscopic improvements on already existing tech knick knacks like TVs, phones, and other miscellaneous devices.
Of course, this led to me ranting about #Bitcoin for half an hour, how innovation has completely tanked in recent history due to the monetary destruction of fiat (h/t @saifedean for this video which really led me onto this: https://youtu.be/cDDh-VgWikk?si=Gu9r_BNTDOsvevC2)
So, I bring this question to the interwebs:
Can you think of a truly groundbreaking new innovation that's been introduced to the world in the last decade, which tangibly improved human lives at scale?
-BW
Nostr
(Edit: Anyone mentioning mRNAVaxes had better fucking be trolling!)
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  • LLMs, e.g. chatGPT
  • mRNA vaccines
  • CRIPSR
  • Mixed reality has gotten fairly close to going mainstream
  • Robotics and autonomous system have gotten a lot better
  • 3D printing has gotten fairly close to going mainstream
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When I want to dispatch a car from my home in San Francisco I only use Waymo self-driving cars these days (no safety driver, fully autonomous -- I'm just a passenger). I know these are not widely deployed yet, but the technology actually works and it's impressive. We're never going back. I didn't have access to this even 2 years ago. Most SF people still don't have access. This is a society-transforming technology in its infancy.
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RNA vaccines ;)
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Lightning
Detecting gravitational waves
With the James Webb telescope launching recently I imagine in the next few years we're going to break some more scientific models.
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5G sounds silly but I don’t think the true potential of 5G has been unlocked yet
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Don't you think it was over hyped? That's my opinion. Really it's an evolution not revolution.
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I think the speed capabilities make it revolutionary. Just no applications/software have found a use case to take advantage of such speed
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They r already on 6G lol I thinks it's done
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It will be unlocked with all those NPC that got the clot shots... soon.
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I work with the tech, 5G, specifically I was in the team responsible for the COVID release incident (lol, we let it out too early sry) and now I'm in the team for monitoring all chipped users. We're waiting for Verizon and the government to give us the ok before we start the Dream Speaker feature in the chips. We hope our customers will be happy, but I am not sure. We really had to rush it so I can't imagine error free devices, but the 60%+ devices that'll make it. Haha oh wee the users? They're in for a treat!
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Mindboggling to me how nobody thought of reusable orbital class rockets, a truly groundbreaking innovation in all aspects. I guess everyone hates Elon.
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It’s a good point, but we’re on the cusp of some dramatic technological changes I believe, in energy, propulsion, robotics & AI (the non-doomsday type).
Just got to navigate clown world for a few years first.
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I think the disconnect is between 'invented' and 'widely adopted'.
Many of the inventions that changed the world in this decade where actually invented in the previous decade. And I think the same will be true for inventions from this decade to the next.
It's crazy to think the first iPhone was launched in 2007. The bit we forget is that they didn't suddenly appear in everyone's pockets. That took years.
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The smart phone is a pretty good one but not big enough to me.
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Generalized AI, chatgpt is revolutionizing web browsing experience. Could argue that it has made information finding a lot easier but at the detriment of people's critical thinking abilities.
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YES!
The transformer architecture for neural networks: https://arxiv.org/abs/1706.03762
Case in point - this paper is way over my head and many of yours, but you can ask charGPT to summarize it for you and ELI5. ChatGPT, after all, is only possible due to the breakthrough presented in the paper.
Truly mind blowing!!!
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No one said the B word
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Cuz that was ~15 years ago*
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He said "even 20"
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Small scale nuclear reactors could be in the next ten years.
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Wow, so many have been blown away by "AI". It may end up being revolutionary but it sure isn't yet guys. I can't name anything. Everything is incremental improvement. AI is as well.
EV's guys? Really? They have been around since at least the 90s and they are better but no revolutionary. The Internet was revolutionary. Bitcoin will prove to be. I see nothing even close to those two.
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I grew up without the Internet. My grandparents grew up in a completely different world. My parents saw man walk on the moon and the Internet. The rate of technological progress has greatly decreased in my lifetime.
I hope things like CRISPR save people from cancer but it has yet to be proven. Lost my mother to cancer and I can tell you my impression is that we are in the dark ages with cancer treatments. I believe in 100 years people will think of our treatments like we think of blood letting now.
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no innovation for a very long time
it is a regression from a very high development to the lowest ever look at really old buildings, monuments, art
history = his STORY = fairy tales
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A lot of things can be reduced to deriving from an earlier discovery/invention. The plane found precursors in gliders and its first use was nowhere close to what we have now. The first cell phone was like a brick and weighed over 2 pounds and before that we had land lines. The internet was revolutionary but it stemmed from existing computer networks like arpanet and utilized technology from older networks like the telegram and phone lines.
Looking at innovations just from Apple we went from 8mp to 48mp iphone cameras, the invention of Apple pay, and the new M1 chipset that blew other chips out of the water when released. HD tvs transitioned to 4k as the standard for new purchases. A wireless VR headset (Oculus Quest 2) was created and sold for $300. Web assembly was announced and deployed to all popular web browsers making the way for robust web applications like Figma. Deep learning has been on the rise ever since AlexNet in 2012. Chatbots have evolved to pass the conversational Turing test. The MOOC model of education has flourished.
Plus all the things @ca mentioned!
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improved human lives at scale?
Nothing on this page has done this in the last 10 years.
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  • Attention is All You Need. This paper from Google in 2017 introduced the Transformers architecture, which transformed the AI industry (pun intended), allowing things like ChatGPT to exist.
  • Covid19 accelerated research into mRNA vaccines:
In March 2022 Moderna announced the development of mRNA vaccines for 15 diseases: Chikungunya virus, COVID-19, Crimean-Congo haemorrhagic fever, Dengue, Ebola virus disease, HIV, Malaria, Marburg virus disease, Lassa fever, Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV), Nipah and henipaviral diseases, Rift Valley fever, Severe fever with Thrombocytopenia syndrome, Tuberculosis and Zika
The world’s first autonomous ride-hailing service, available 24/7 to the public now.
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AI, EVs, also I'd point out just having the ability to work from anywhere in the world with a reasonable wifi connection in many jobs where WFH was unheard of before covid
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Also... drones. I feel like they have come a long way since 2013.
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Artificial intelligence is my answer here
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In 2013, a China-based computer hardware manufacturer called Canaan Creative released the first set of application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs) for bitcoin mining.
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AI is getting crazy good... most of our jobs are about to get commoditized in the next decade or so...
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