Inventions of The Decade

1. Internet: Nothing changed our way of thinking and living as much as the Internet. To find information, we don’t need to go and check out encyclopedia’s and dictionaries. If you have the world wide web at your fingertips, no question is too big or difficult. The Internet came into being in the 1990s (this information was found through Internet, ironic..). I don’t think even the inventors would have imagined that within a few decades, the Internet would be used to gather data, apply to jobs, work, and even, incredibly, make friendships and get married.

2. Cell-phone: Cell-phones were not the common entity that they are now when I was growing up. They became a necessity in India around mid-2000. The first mobile phone came into being in 1973, needless to say, that the first mobile would have been just basic calling and weighed a lot. The cell phones that we see now are sleek, can browse the Internet, become an alarm clock, remember important dates and so much more. Did Graham Bell ever think his invention would lead to all this?

3. Vehicles: I want to generalize this invention rather than making different categories like two-wheelers, four-wheelers, etc. This one invention (or the group of inventions) changed the way we lived and worked.  Travelling to new places or visiting somebody was never easier. You don’t need to travel for months on the ship to reach another continent, a few hours journey is sufficient.

4. Television: Television when it first came, was widely criticized. Nobody believed that the television would ever take the place of the beloved radio. But television, regardless of what anyone said, was like a wave of tsunami. It swept everything in its wake. And the entire world was glued. The first Television was commercialized sometime in the 1920s, but television in India did not kick start till the 1980s. In a decade, it became a household phenomenon in urban cities, and another decade saw it take its root even in rural areas.

5. Social Networking: Some twenty years back, we couldn’t have imagined sharing each and every one of our small decisions with millions of unknown people every 10 minutes. We couldn’t have imagined that we would want to pour out our joys and sorrows to people we barely know. We would have probably laughed at the idea of sharing our personal and intimate photos for the whole world to see. But Twitter, Facebook, Orkut, etc. helped us do just that. In this Internet age, no friend is ever lost through loss of address. Small mercies.

There were so many other small inventions that have helped us evolve. But I wanted to add only the most significant ones. Can you imagine life without any of these….