If you ask me? Mobile/WiFi internet… The way and amount of time we use our phones had changed A LOT since their diffusion. I guess the release of the iPhone changed our idea of what a phone is too

Edit: when I say modern world I’m referring to the last 50 years. So stuff like “the electricity” or “the telephone” doesn’t count.

  • rekabis@lemmy.ca
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    1
    ·
    4 months ago

    Antibiotics.

    Their discovery and development is what has directly enabled our sudden rise from 2B to 8B humans in only about a century. Without antibiotics, we would likely still be under 3B humans world-wide. Yes, disease really did kill off a lot of humans back in the day.

    Graph out the human population over the last two centuries, and you can even see the very decade when Penicillin use became widespread, along with doctors washing their hands and other basic hygiene tasks.

  • dilute6474@feddit.de
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    0
    ·
    edit-2
    4 months ago

    I read that washing machines had a big impact, manual washing of clothes could take a full day of work.

  • simple@lemm.ee
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    0
    ·
    4 months ago

    It depends on what you mean by piece of technology I guess, since what we have now is a culmination of thousands of awesome tech over the last few hundred years.

    If I were to choose one thing, I’d say the telephone. It’s the predecessor to the internet, and suddenly communication between people was instant rather than messages that’d take forever (or morse for the places that had it).

    It probably changed the world forever, being able to talk to someone in a completely different country and share something quickly.

    • CYB3R@lemm.eeOP
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      0
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      4 months ago

      I can’t call in 2024 the era when telephones came out “modern” anymore

      • Fondots@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        4 months ago

        To be fair, you didn’t say it had to be a modern technological invention, just that it impacted the modern world