Ask HN: What technology of the last 30 years has had the largest social impact? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What technology of the last 30 years has had the largest social impact?

9 pointscmod6 comments

If you fell asleep thirty years ago and woke up today, what aspects of society would you find most shocking as changed by technology?

- Everyone looking down into their hand computers, everywhere, all the time (including men at urinals)?

- Hyper-normalization of online dating?

- Amazon's ability to deliver almost anything anywhere within two days?

- Proliferation of fake news and its effect on the electorate?

- Twitter, protests and rapid organization of large groups of people?

- The commoditization and accessibility of technology? (A good modern computer being so cheap? Farmers in developing countries owning highly capable $70 smartphones?)

- The rise of China as king of manufacturing high-precision consumer products are improbable scales?

- ???

The biggest change encompasses all of the things that your talking about.

Pace, and not the pace of progress, the literal pace of people.

20 years ago when I moved to the bay area, from the east coast there was still a cadence that was much slower than the "new york minute" that I was used to.

Today everyone is rushing from one thing to the next, we all seem compelled to know and respond instantly. Almost everything you listed can be answered with some form of "faster" (smaller elapsed time) than we could have done it previously, and I think that is a big deal.

I'm split between "the internet" and "mobile phones". 30 years ago is a couple of years prior to the invention of the World Wide Web and browsers, so that's clearly a huge change that's had a massive impact on a lot of people. Equally though, access to data and comms has been changed immensely by mobile phones for literally everyone on Earth. It's hard to say which has had a bigger impact.

I would find it mind blowing that whilst sitting on the toilet, I have all of the worlds knowledge, and the ability to communicate with people anywhere in the world, in the palm of my hand.

None. The fall of the Berlin Wall had the same or more social impact that any or some of your points joined. I'd point the rise of China but it is not tech oriented but politically.

CMOS lithography, green revolution

Porn.

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