Where Would We be Without Them?

The announcement of this year's Nobel Prizes reminds us of the amazing discoveries and inventions that have taken place in our lifetimes. The prize for physics went to the inventors of digital imaging, without which much of our inspection technology could not exist. Practical applications of that innovation would have proved impossible without one that came before. Buckminster Fuller referred to the digital optical disk (CDs and DVDs, for example) as the greatest invention of our civilization since movable type because for the first time all information was identical. Look around you. On what other developments have we built our technological society? Which one(s) do you think were most important — and why?

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