[xp84]

I think you’re probably right, but more because of erroneous categorization of what is a “technology.” We take for granted technology older than like 600 years ago (basically most people would say the printing press is a technology and maybe forget that the wheel and, indeed, crop cultivation). AI could certainly be in the top 3 most significant technologies of things developed since (inclusive) the printing press. We’ll likely find out just where it ends up within the decade.

[thaumasiotes]

> We take for granted technology older than like 600 years ago (basically most people would say the printing press is a technology and maybe forget that the wheel and, indeed, crop cultivation).

The printing press is more than 600 years old. It's more than 1200 years old.

[kqr]

I think this has less to do with age and more what we are taught. The printing press, steam engine, and the wheel were repeatedly drilled into me as world-changing technologies, so those are the ones I'd think of.

But there are more. Rope is arguably more important than the wheel. Their combination in pulleys to exchange force for distance still astound me, and is massively useful.

Writing lets us transmit ideas indirectly. While singing and storytelling lets ideas travel generations, they don't become part of the hypothetical global consciousness as immediately as with writing, which can be read and copied by anyone once written.

I'd put statistics in this bucket too, its invention being more recent than 600 years. Before that, we just didn't know how useful information is in aggregate. Faced with a table of data, we only ever looked up individual (hopefully representative) records in it.

[driscoll42]

To suggest another "simple" example, Air Conditioning. It made half the world vastly more livable, and now anywhere in the world you could work every day of the year, reduced deaths and disease. At least currently, AC has had a greater impact on humanity than AI has.

[xp84]

Whoops, I clearly erred there. I meant movable type, and Gutenberg in particular. And I was operating on a Eurocentric understanding as well.