I'll go with fire ,use can use fire to cool off.

 

And did not discover until much later about the destruction of it after the WWII.
Not sure why that was done?

"That was a terrible mistake. I was instructed to destroy all the records, which I did. I took all the drawings and the plans and all the information about Colossus on paper and put it in the boiler fire. And saw it burn."
Inventor Tommy Flowers.

hi Max,
Two of the Mk2 Colossus computers at the end of WW2 were taken to GCHQ, where they were used until 1962.
The reason being that the Russians had acquired a great number of German Lorenz code machines which they refurbished and used, not knowing of the existence of the Colossus machines.
Churchill ordered all knowledge of Colossus to be kept top secret indefinitely for this reason.

On a lighter note, my personal choice of the greatest invention of the 20th Century was the OFF switch.

Eric

 

on a lighter note, my personal choice of the greatest invention on the 20th century was the off switch

:d :d :d

 

On a lighter note, my personal choice of the greatest invention of the 20th Century was the OFF switch.
Eric

It may yet happen but one of mans greatest achievements (of the atomic age) was making it out of the 20th century without a full scale nuclear war (the big OFF switch) that would have reset man back to the dark-ages.

Maybe one day all the completely crazy operations and provocations all sides did to each other will be released so people can see how close we came to losing it all.

 

The local University here recently had a visit from Dr Neil DeGrasse Tyson promoting his Cosmos series.
He presents a very interesting scenario.
He relates the scientific fact that the difference in DNA between us and our closest relatives of the ape family is less than 5%.
In spite of this small difference, our apparent cognative and creative ability appears very much greater.
He puts forward a concept that supposes there could be a planet like ours out there in the cosmos that supports life, and what if that race of people had only 5% more brain power than us, to them, we may seem like the apes do to us.
Max.

 

Actually mans greatest achievement so far is to have survived in spite of his other achievements.

 

In the late 70’s there was a BBC series called “Connections: an Alternative View of Change." Fascinating show, the basic premise was one never knows what one is ultimately doing as the show’s author and host James Burke demonstrated strong connections of technological devices. For example, he showed how the quest to best malaria led to air conditioning, and once you have something cold to keep it cold so you invent the thermal (Dewar) flask, and if you build several flasks large enough you can hold the fuel to get to the moon.

Very first episode dealt with what basic tool do you need if civilization goes wrong, over and out. You fight your way out of the cities (death traps all) and find an empty piece of ground far away, rummage thru the remainders to find the one device that makes all else possible: the plow.

With a plow one person can meet the food needs for many, and that frees up human labor for other uses… any and all uses, and makes technology possible.

I have no quibble with his answer.

 

that connections series was great.

 

Certainly was

 

I can't help but think that computing is extremely advanced compared to other aspects of human achievement. Consider a computer processor, the intricate motherboard, memory, the hard disk, how electrical signals go from your plug socket into your computer, travel down the correct paths into the cpu are processed, calculated and passed on, through a perfect system until finally the data either performs a task or displays something on your screen.

Compare this to something else like a train or a plane, a submarine or something else, sure they're great inventions but the complexity and extreme detail that goes into a computer system is just phenomenal.

I'm actually amazed humans every managed to design such a system in the first place. It's hard to think that humans could design an even more complicated, complex or faster system. I know quantum computing is on the horizon but I'm not sure how promising that looks.

And the computer is just beginning... consider networking, the internet, servers and the millions of other things that have been made possible by the computer, surely it has to be mans greatest achievement?

So while computing has became faster and with more uses, it still uses the same core technology. I forgot where I saw it but there was a history graph of the advancement of man in terms of technology, medicine, construction etc and the gradient was relatively subtle until the computer was invented and then the advancement of pretty much everything spiked dramatically. Here is a similar graph but doesn't display before 1900's

Anyway I just felt like I had to talk about this to try and figure out why the computer is unimaginably more complex than anything else we've invented and why we didn't invent it sooner?

Years ago, I told everyone that computers would destroy the World and Mankind.

I wasn't that far off.



Then, I bought one and discovered the Internet.
No going back now, I guess.

 

It may yet happen but one of mans greatest achievements (of the atomic age) was making it out of the 20th century without a full scale nuclear war (the big OFF switch) that would have reset man back to the dark-ages.

Maybe one day all the completely crazy operations and provocations all sides did to each other will be released so people can see how close we came to losing it all.

Yes, but that can only happen with more "Snowdens".
Many, many more, brave individuals......

The World Governments, do not want to part with their secrets willingly.
Not without force.

 

Gun powder and metallurgy. Made way for idle time, to compute.

 

I have heard it argued it was beer. The need (want?) for beer is supposedly what got agriculture started. It sounds facetious, but it was something a guy proposed in a book he was hawking on PBS.

 

I have heard it argued it was beer. The need (want?) for beer is supposedly what got agriculture started. It sounds facetious, but it was something a guy proposed in a book he was hawking on PBS.

Food preservation for long term storage has to near the top along with refrigeration. Imagine Las Vegas (or most of Texas) without air conditioning.

 

Yes, but that can only happen with more "Snowdens".
Many, many more, brave individuals......

Snowden violated the trust bestowed upon him. Makes him no better than a common thug. It also speaks poorly of the vetting process.

The problem will always be the human element. The greatest achievement might be the fact so many survived for so long without destruction.

Many "achievements" were accomplished because of WAR or survival. I don't mean just the more recent century, but even the "Ages", Iron and Bronze. Further back by attaching rocks to sticks or the slingshot to improve man's reach when attacking. Sharpening sticks to provide better penetration. Survival ... and war.

Humans are humanity's worse enemy.

 

It's interesting to think back and ask how this question may have been answered 100 and 200 years ago. I suspect 100 years ago the answer might have been "flight" or "telegraph" and 200 years ago "steam power"

 

"Snowden violated the trust bestowed upon him. Makes him no better than a common thug."



Totally disagree, Joe.

The panic and coverup that ensued, proved that what he did was Patriotic.
Why not inform the American people, that their so-called "Trust" in gov. was a fantasy?
If you cannot trust the elected leaders, then what?
Every agency is bloated and corrupt.
That's what always happens when their is no oversight.
Or accountability.

 

I would hate to see this thread go political...

 

It won't go political. My opine remains mine and his remains his.

People give away much more information on the internet that others "sell". Google knows more about people than governments.

 

A google implant would just be there to put adverts directly into your brain. Remember we are Google's product that they sell, not their customers.
...

The ads will still be there, and you'll need to install the latest popup blockers for your brain, or be good at messing with the configs.

You should not think this is too farfetched. The technology is right within man's grasp at the moment. As it stands today, the "implant" is in your pocket not your cranium, so you need to access it the slow clumsy way by touching it and looking at it etc. But implanting it is just around the corner and is 100% certain to happen.

Those two things; instant access to anything man has ever known, and the ability to instantly communicate with any person or system in the world, give man abilities previously reserved to gods.

Possibly the only prior achievement that I think elevated man to a godlike level was flight. The ability to fly at high speeds to relocate from one part of the planet to another.

But these new "powers" given to man from computing trump that. If you can instantly access knowledge and communication anywhere in the world at light speed, why would you need to relocate to a different part of the planet? That's SO last century.