Most Important Invention in the Past 2000 Years (URL)

• The contraceptive pill (Colin Blakemore, Susan Blackmore, Kenneth Ford).
• Concepts of democracy, of social justice, and the belief in the possibility of creating a society free from the oppressions of class, race, and gender (Steven Rose).
• Scientific method (Joseph Traub, David E Shaw).
• Smell is not necessarily a property of a chemical (Marvin Minsky).
• Quantum theory (Phil Anderson).
• Space travel (Reuben Hersh).
• Western classical music (Howard Gardner).
• The battery (Daniel C Dennett).
• Hay (Freeman Dyson).
• The computer (William Calvin, David Haig, Lawrence M Krauss).
• Internet (Roger Schank, John C Dvorak).
• Domestication of the horse (Stephen Budiansky).
• City (Richard Saul Wurman, Steven Johnson).
• Christianity and Islam (Stewart Brand).
• Universal Turing Machine (George Dyson.
• Atomic bomb (Marney Morris).
• Zero (V A Ramachandran).
• Basket (Jeremy Cherfas).
• Calculus (Bart Kosko, John Maddox, Verena Huber-Dyson).
• Anesthesia [anaesthesia] (Stuart Hameroff, Ellen Winner).
• Copernican theory (Michael Nesmith).
• Paper (Clifford Pickover).
• Electrification (Margaret Wertheim)
• The spectroscope (Richard Dawkins).
• The telescope and
  the theory of evolution by natural selection (Christopher G Langton).
• The steam engine (Eric J Hall).
• Godel's Incompleteness Theorem (Clay Shirkey).
• The Hindu-Arabic number system (Keith Devlin, George Johnon) [Zero above]
• Philosophical skepticism (Luyon Chou).
• Languages (Antonio R Cabral).
• The printing press (Henrik Hertzberg, Philip Campbell, Raphael Kasper, Mike Godwin, Leon Lederman, Leroy Hood, Lew Tucker).
• Gutenberg's movable type (John Allen Paulos, Garniss Curtis).
• The concept of information as a commodity (David Berreby).
• Public key cryptosystems (Charles Simonyl).
• Building autonomous tools (Piet Hut).
• Late 20th century health care (James J O'Donnell).
• Reading glasses (Nicholas Humphrey). [my favorite]
• The human ego (Jaron Lanier).
• Distributed digital archive [the bit] (Terrence Sejnowski, James Bailey).
• Distillation (Ron Cooper).
• Clock (W Danniel Hillis).
• Social structure that guarantees steady flow of invention (John Baez).
• Television (Viviana Guzman, David Buss).
• The unconscious mind (Stephen Schneider, Sherry Turkle).
• Free will (John Horgan).
• The control group (David Mayers).
• We are not alone (Don Goldsmith).
• Static Electricity (Arnold Trehub).
• Secularism (Jay Ogilvy).
• The eraser (Douglas Rushkoff).
• The non-implemented 33-year English Protestant calendar (Duncan Steel).
• Telecommunications technology (Tom Standage).
• Digital ecosystem (Andy Clark).
• The concept of education (Stanislas Dehaene).
• Nothing worth mentioning (Eberhard Zangger).
• The electric light and the aspirin (Marc D Hauser).
• The symphony orchestra (Julian Barbour). [Western classical music]
• Board games (John Henry Holland).
• Double entry accounting (Gordon Gould).
• Gatling gun (Bob Rafelson).
• Science (Milford H Wolpoff).
• Does what I do effect the order of the universe in any important way, in any way that effects its order? (Mark Minsky).
• The computer and the atomic bomb (Dan Sperber).
• The mirror (Tor Norretranders).
• Flying machines (Richard Potts).
• The idea of continued scientific and technological progress (John McCarthy).
• Chairs and stairs (Karl Sabbagh).
• The electric motor (Rodney Brooks).
• The Neolithic revolution (John R Searle).
• The notion of representation (Lee Smolin).
• The concept of evolution (Paul W Ewald).
• Waterworks (Carl Zimmer).
• Genetic sequencing (Robert Shapiro).
• Intergenerational passing of information (Philip Brockman).
• Technology (Howard Reingold).
• The idea of an idea (George Lakoff).
• Discovery of childhood and invention of universal schooling (Robert Provine).
• The thermionic valve (Peter Cochrane).
• Organized science (Samuel Barondes).
• probability theory (Christopher Westbury).
• Alessandro Volta's electric battery (John Rennie).
• Text (Randolph Nesse).
• The telescope (Brian Greene).
• The notion that people can govern themselves (Esther Dyson).
• The utility of electricity (Delta Williams).
• Energy control (Joseph LeDoux).
• The pill
  the gun
  hydraulic engineering (Maria Lepowsky).
• Distributed networked intelligence (John Brockman).