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What are some of the best or worst inventions in your opinion that have changed, affected, or impacted the world and people in general for the good or the bad?
Sliced bread.
The smartphone
Best invention for many reasons
And worst invention for other reasons including the tumah that it’s all filled with and much more
Three things were shown in fire to Moshe Rabbenu, machtzis hashekel, the levana, and the menorah. They can all be used for good or bad as fire, money, time and the Torah.
Television was one of the worst inventions until the Internet came out and outranked it as worse.
Where does it say that the levana was shown in fire
And the menorah wasn’t shown in fire it was made from throwing gold in the fire
1. Saran Wrap.
2. Liquid Prell.
I have to agree as it does not mention others besides the machtzis hashekel in fire and not mention it at at all in Menochos (29,1). It mentions sheratzim which I don’t see its benefit. They all say ‘zeh’ so they were shown to Mpshe Rabbenu but whether in fire or not I don’t know.
Scotch
Penicillin, indoor plumbing, cars, are among the most useful l can think of
Worst would be the Internet, nuclear and biological weapons, and ivrit
Smallpox vaccine was one of the best.
significant ones, ordered by time, more or less, not dividing into bad and good:
wheel (Amerindians did not), alef-beis, paper, military horse saddle, growing beans with wheat (responsible for growth of Northern Europe and Ashkenazim), long bow, printing press, marine chronometer (enabled measuring longitude and actually going to an exact location), steam engine, electricity, cotton gin (American thingy), radio, federal reserve (economic stability), Kalashnikov, potential functions and support vector machines (first serious machine learning technology), PC, Netscape browser (rather than internet, making it available to non-geeks), altavista search engine (first working one), zoomI thin Bava Metzia talks that things are not usually bad by themselves, depends on who and how is using them. Nuclear weapons ended WW2 in Pacific quickly and probably prevented USSR from occupying a lot of countries thereafter. Internet gave a lot of poor people access to information and education; people in China access to less filtered news. Jewish kids can get access to quality professional education without stepping into a campus with a lot of noreshkeit; people in Brooklyn can write on YWN about what they hate without leaving their heder.
RW: The smallpox vaccine literally saved tens of millions of people.
worst: gunpowder, nuclear energy, alcohol, social media
best: antibiotics, printing, writing, anesthesia, alcoholUnfortunately according to the Gemara, humans are on list of bad things invented.
rw: smallpox was far deadlier and its vaccine was far more a lifesaver than the Covid vaccines.
It doesn’t say Hashem made a mistake cv”s. It says נח לו לאדם שלא נברא, that it is better off “for a person”, to have never been created. This means that from our limited vantage point, it appears to us as if it is so, because we have more of an opportunity to fall than to rise to greatness.
@ujm – Smallpox vaccine, which was created in 1798 did not stop the peak of the 2510 deaths of small pox as that peaked in 1902 – according to the CDN. So that wouldn’t necessarily be the greatest invention unless you benefited from that vaccine monetarily.
Better off means easier not better as we would earn a nehameh dekesufa, bread of shame getting rewarded and not doing anything.
What about polio vaccine of Jonas Salk, a Jew?
I forgot fertilizer (Fritz Haber) in ~ 1910 – saved billions of lives from starvation. On the least of most forgotten greatest inventions. Stricken out of history for being a German patriot during WW1 and inventing poison gas. He fully did teshuva though for his German sympathies before his death in the 30s.
Best invention: Indoor plumbing. People take it for granted. My mother grew up in a little town in Eastern Europe and she had an outhouse in her backyard. She’d tell me about having to visit the outhouse in the middle of the night in the winter.
Worst invention: Social media. It gives a voice to people who really shouldn’t have one.
Best Inventions: Penicillin and antibiotics.
I agree with the indoor plumbing.
I was on the way to Mezhibiz and needed a restroom. Lo and behold there was only an outhouse.
It was DISGUSTING. UUGGGGGGGGHHHHHHH.
Indoor plumbing= best invention ever!!!!
Worst invention- social media, covid vaccineAdd credit cards to the bad list
RW- You know why?
Because it made a lot of enemies.
People seriously believe that if you are anti-vax you are spreading disinformation and causing the virus to continue and if you are pro-vax then you are out to kill the world and force everyone to give over their rights.
It made people believe that anyone on the other side is out to get them and hates them.
Worst invention ever vaccine- it divided and bought hate to an already divided world.
Let’s hope that as Jews we can put this aside and love each other despite views on covid, masks and vaccines.indoor plumbing – invented at least 2,000 years ago in Rome, but Rashbi criticized all their inventions. But people lived with outdoor plumbing and had no problems with it. So your disgust would not exist without being exposed to indoor plumbing. Another one of Roman inventions – well-paved and straight roads: using several layers of different materials and special instrument and work process to make roads precisely straight and digging up the obstacles.
Credit cards – credit in general enabled society to live way better, and Jews were in front of this banking revolution for centuries. Without credit, men would need to work 10-20 years before getting a house and then marrying.
Covid vaccine – I think saving millions of lives is worth irritating people who do not believe in them. You speak like a gemora that saving one life is saving a whole world is not in your religion.
best: the toilet (no more going to outhouses!!!!!)
@Always Ironically, The institute founded by Fritz Haber, Deutsche Gesellschaft für Schädlingsbekämpfung mbH (Degesch), developed Zyklon A and later Zyklon B, directly based on his prior research.
Yes, I mentioned Haber’s connection to poison. He stopped at home after testing gas on the western front on the way to eastern, and his wife committed suicide because of this issue… He was one of the last Jews still employed in Germany – due to his stature, and he made a huge effort to help his fired employees to find jobs in other countries. Weitzman invited him to rehovot, but he died in Switzerland from a heart attack
Light? Chagiga 12, Hashem hid it so it will not be misused by reshoyim. Whether it is laser, nuclear, or radio….
The internet. Al Gore rarely gets credit for his role in the most transformational technology since Guttenberg and the printing press.
Dorah,
No worries, Al Gore has already taken plenty of credit for creating the Internet, just one of the many lies he’s told. The Internet was created in 1969 and Gore sponsored some bills in the 1980’s.
Dofi: Well not exactly….Most computer scientists would consider January 83 as the official start of what we know today as ” the Internet” For over a decade prior to that time, there were various computer “intranet” networks of varying scale that did not have a standard way to communicate with each other. The creation and commercial availablility of a new communications protocol called Transfer Control Protocol/Internetwork Protocol (TCP/IP) is generally considered the starting point although I’m sure there are other milestone dates earlier that could be invoked. But I’m equally sure Al Gore will take credit for those as well.
Latest increased appreciation: drones and molotov cocktails
A few points:
1. Indoor plumbing, and, by extension, public sanitation has saved more lives than all the doctors, medicines and vaccines ever developed. While the Romans were innovators, the concept fell into disuse after the fall of Rome and was not revived in Europe until the late 18th Century of the Common era.
2. Wile the Romans were great innovators in engineering, all and other fields. Their most important invention, one that, even today, the world today would be very different without, is one that very few people recognize as a Roman invention. The Romans invented concrete. Where would we be today without it?Lifetime Kollel
In the 1960s there was this growing fear of a “population bomb”. With medical advances ensuring that almost all children live to adulthood, the population exploded. Which was a great thing. Until people realized that there all these extra mouths to feed and just as much arable land as there was before. Panic set in and charts predicted that it will be twenty years until we can no longer feed everyone and be forced to resort to drastic measures.
Enter Norman Borlaug.
By genetically engineering food crops, like corn and wheat, Borlaug invented a way to produce far more food on just as much farmland as before. The crisis was solved and this unassuming Norwegian-American scientist quietly saved the world.
best invention :YWN coffeeroom
worst : my filter which normally keeps me out
Best invention : velcro shoes
worst: rebbes and teachers who confiscated them in school
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