What 20th Century innovations will people still be talking about in AD 2200?

It's a fraught question and perhaps it's too early to tell. Who in AD 707 would have predicted that a previous century Arabian warlord would still be an important influence 1300 years later? Islam was unquestionably the most far reaching innovation of the 7th Century.

My vote for the most consequential innovation of the 19th Century is evolution through natural selection. Charles Darwin will still be a name to conjure with in AD 2200.

Runners up for most influential innovation of the 19th century would be:

--The second law of thermodynamics (usually attributed to Sadi Carnot)

--Maxwell's equations of electromagnetism

We'll still be talking about the second law in AD 2200 and engineers will still be using Maxwell's equations.

But what about the 20th Century. It's tempting to mention general relativity (Einstein) or the quantum theory (Planck, Einstein, Bohr, Schrodinger, Heisenberg and many others). These were not merely scientific advances; they influenced the way we think.

Another possibility is Einstein's E = mc squared. If you live in Hiroshima or Nagasaki you have no doubt about the importance of what Stephen Hawking called the world's most famous equation.

But my vote goes to the start of the biotech revolution. I cannot think of any 20th Century innovation that will have more far reaching consequences. Names like Watson & Crick or Craig Venter will still be known to educated people in AD 2200.

Anyone else have any other ideas?

It's tempting to mention Hitler as an important influence. However, tragic as his advent was for those involved, he was at the end of the day a minor Teutonic warlord.

What was the most influential innovation of the 20th Century?

For that matter does anyone here dispute my nomination of Darwinian evolution as the most important innovation of the 19th Century?

What do OO readers think?

Perhaps by AD 2200 the bizarre cult of a serial killer called Che Guevara will have blossomed into a full-blown religion to rival Islam.

I await the 'resurrection' sightings of Che... along with Elvis.. and the glazed eyed "Revolutionaries" who, like social lemmings just caste themselves off the cliff of History and reason... plunging into a hopeless oblivion.. never to be remembered.

They fail to learn from Lenin... who discovered to his shock and disillusionment that 'the workers' were not that interested in revolution..so he decided to GIVE them one anyway...for their own good. 20,000,000 or so corpses later...(after all, he wasn't going to let all that internal exile, imprisonment and reading of revlutionary literature go to waste now was he)

In the wasteland of hopelessness, people reach out to the ever increasingly embellished memory of Che Guavera..the santized legend...

Perhaps those of us who know Christ, will be saying "Remember when that Steven wrote about what we might be thinking in 2200...back then in 2007" and look around at the glory of Heaven, the Light of the world and the good Shepherd

stevenlmeyer,

Thank you for raising a very interesting topic.

You mention Hitler and he obviously can't be denied. Hitler's contribution was to halt all ideas of a scientific utopia that had been held prior to WWII. This is discussed in Ernst Van Alphen "Caught by History: Holocaust Effects in Contemporary Art, Literature, and Theory" - a scholarly work, extremely well researched and documented.

Perhaps we should also add "the Pill" - especially for those women in third world countries, whose life expectancy has now risen.

Thus, we cannot omit Carl Djerassi, emeritus professor of chemistry at Stanford University, and awarded the National Medal of Science for the first synthesis of a steroid oral contraceptive - “the Pill”. A member of the US National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences as well as many foreign academies. Djerassi also received some six other awards for different work and also the Priestly Medal.

A true renaissance man.

Apart from these achievements he has written works of “science in fiction” exploring such issues as personal conflicts faced by scientists in their quest for scientific knowledge - to date he has written five novels and six plays which have been produced in a number of countries. His work has been translated into ten languages.
Djerassi founded Djerassi Resident Artists Program near Woodside, California, of residences for artists in visual arts, literature, choreography and performing arts, and music, with over 1500 artists from this program.
www.djerassi.com

Quite a number of scientists not only write novels, but also plays, which have been produced. The use of serious theatre and science topics to not only inform the public but to raise issues such as science and technology’s impact on the modern world, debate and exploration of ethics has proven both important and popular overseas. Universities, such as CUNY’s “Science and the Arts”, and elsewhere in the US, Europe and the UK have established graduate centres facilitating this; indeed not only universities, but also academies, and theatre organisations themselves.

cont ...

Unfortunately, for those who have tried to introduce this into Australia, it lays dead in the water ...

I would certainly think that Norman Borlaug's legacy would vastly outweigh most others. Whether he will be more famous then than now is a mystery of course, but then many people are more noted well after their deaths when it realised what they have done for the world.

Not a hope of Charlie Darwin being remembered in 2200. Mankind will well and truly be involved in Christs Millenium Kingdom by then. Look...at the signs of the times. A great increase in wars, earthquakes, famines and diseases just before The Lord gets back (Luke chpater 21). A great increase in crime just before Jesus gets back (2 Timothy 3). A microchip ID system for the right hand or forehead (Revelation 13:16-18/14:9-11) before Jesus gets back. The microchip propaganda is loose on the earth right now! I believe Charlie Darwin was once a born-again christian who later went off, through someone elses back advice. A monkeys uncle be Charlie.