Penicillin has got to be up there. As much as the internet brings us much, I can't help thinking that may be it has some detrimental effects on society. So I'd also like to add electricity, with out which your fancy pants computer-me-watsits wouldn't work! Bah!
Indeed I could, but a debate is much more fun. Imagine if everyone went Wiki instead of discussing things based on their own knowledge. A debate down the pub would last the few seconds it took to look it up on google!
Hence all the iPads and iPhones - interaction and socialising will perhaps become a thing of the past
Come now, when have you been down the pub and heard people let facts and knowledge get in the way of their conversation?
I think that conversations are stifled by the use of google, wiki etc in way they weren't before.(just my opinion), social interaction has definitely changed since the advent of mobile internet.
It has improved social interaction in some ways, dependent on the time of day, I can discuss a matter with Thai in virtual live time that previously has only been possible by telephone!
ah right, thanks for the link. Not on that page but apparently the earliest precursor was a computer network developed for SAGE, an American radar system. That was the early 1950s.
Have to agree here as it saved my mother's life when she was a young girl, without it I would not be here. Ironically I'm allergic to it !!!!!!!!!!
Was it an invention though, or a discovery (seeing as it was produced by accident)? One for 'Pedants Corner'?
i think it's a worry for children growing up now, most of them have got smartphones and would rather play on them in the playground, than say participate in a good old game of british bulldog
Even more worrying is that it appears to reduce the amount of attention small children receive e.g. when still in their prams and pushchairs. Walk along any street and you will be horrified by how many of the pram pushers are ignoring the child in it while jabbering away on their phones. Children are deprived of enough conversational interaction with their parents without it being further reduced by the mobile phone.
Nothing wrong with that, max, my teenage boys have had smartphones for the last few years and have played with them in the 15-30 mins that they're allowed in the playground, hasn't stopped them both playing football for their local teams, one of them boxing... Parents of every age have thought that the age that their children are growing up in is the worst age ever, but it probably hasn't been, and isn't now.
