[iliis]

Oh, trains are pretty fundamental and changed a lot. But a device so small it fits into your pocket, let's you communicate in real time with almost everybody, takes pictures and even movies (and sends them around the world), precisely calculates not only time but your location on the whole earth, can recognize speech, songs, books and other stuff, is able to translate fast between common languages, oh, and it let's you access the whole knowledge of our entire species wherever and whenever you want...

I mean, I love railways, I really do, but compared to a thing like our cell phones? It would even be possible (altough quite cumbersome), to entirely live just from this thing! (Do some programming/webdesign/consulting/whatever to make money, order food and everything else online and you don't have to do anything else.)

[timthorn]

Clearly mobiles enable much faster communication - but in terms of societal change I believe the railways were much more important. Not only did it enable news/mail to travel much more quickly, but for the first time large numbers of people could easily visit areas beyond their immediate neigbourhood, and goods could be transported large distances within a day. It revolutionised farming and enabled the growth of cities.

[scott_s]

Railways were more of a fundamental change than where smart phones are now. (Note I'm allowing them to be a more fundamental change in the future.) Not because of individuals taking the train, but because it allowed goods to be mass transported easier - it built fundamental infrastructure. Smart phones aren't part of fundamental infrastructure (yet!).