Heres a question that I have no idea the answer to.

Pick the 10 most important/beneficial inventions to man in the last 100 years. How many had a profit motive attached to them?

This will probably be more interesting as its own thread. We can take the results back to the other.

This is running from a false premise that inventions are unique and special snowflakes conceived in isolation by lone inventors in moments of genius -- makes a good late night TV ad for the gullible but has never been remotely true. The golden idol of private, profit-motivated development, the transistor, still wouldn't have existed without extensive public work preceding it nor massive public funding to its parent company.

Latex condoms, another important commercial development, aren't strictly a new invention but did provide an important transition point in reproductive control.

Sulfa is another good case, it was first discovered by Bayer, but the Pasteur Institute (not for profit) that made it an effective medication.

Automobiles (the modern basis invented in ~1880, but existing in some form since the invention of steam engines centuries prior) are outside of the scope but would be another good candidate.

Public-funded or non-profit organizations:

Jet aircraft (massive public subsidies)
Nuclear technologies and energy (invented at universities and commercialized only with massive public subsidies, in fact, LANL, CANDU, INL, et al, were still the biggest innovators despite post-commercialization)
Electron Microscopes (public invention, private production)
Polio vaccine (NFP)
Anti-malarials (NFP)
Penicillin (NFP)


Privatized development models are great at taking a technology from concept to mass availability in a short amount of time. They are terrible at coming up with anything really new -- risk is not profitable because most experiments fail; the most wildly successful commercial enterprises in medicine were discovering existing compounds, not synthesizing new ones.

There's plastic. That wasn't bought to widespread use until this past century.

Here's a question. If something is discovered by a non-profit group, but would have never ended up available to the public without private development, can we discount the importance of the profit motive?

Take the Internet. If we survive much longer as a race, history will probably hold the Internet up right beside Gutenberg's movable type. Nothing in centuries has so fundamentally changed how we communicate, from personal communication to how we get our news.

Though we might not have the Internet without DARPA, is there any question that the profit motive was key in bringing us the Internet as we know it? Without the profit motive, there would've been no EverQuest, no vBulletin, and probably not even residential Internet access to begin with. Without the profit motive driving innovation, we could never have had this discussion.

Jet aircraft (massive public subsidies)

I see your jets and raise you the Wright Brothers. Kitty Hawk was one year too long ago, but it's close enough.

Without those private businessmen developing heavier-than-air flight, you don't have to worry about jets.

I see your jets and raise you the Wright Brothers. Kitty Hawk was one year too long ago, but it's close enough.

Without those private businessmen developing heavier-than-air flight, you don't have to worry about jets.


Those private businessmen were in the bicycle business, heavier than air flight was a passion with no profit motive. The fact that profit ends up being one of the results does not a motive make.

Here's a question. If something is discovered by a non-profit group, but would have never ended up available to the public without private development, can we discount the importance of the profit motive?




The Integrated circuit would be one of those, San. Proposed by Dummer, working for the Ministry of Defense, it wasn't until Kilby actually built one in 1958 that the idea had merit. But he was working for Texas Instruments, hence the 'evil profit monster' enters the scene.

Still, I'd say micro computers probably rank within the top 10. Otherwise, the Internet would just be a buncha tubes going nowhere....

Those private businessmen were in the bicycle business, heavier than air flight was a passion with no profit motive. The fact that profit ends up being one of the results does not a motive make.

Just because they had passion for it doesn't mean you can discount the importance of profit in bringing their passion to life. If they didn't care about the profits, they wouldn't have been so quick to patent it and turn it into a business.

How about using microwaves to cook food? How many billions (trillions?) of hours has that saved since inception?

Just because they had passion for it doesn't mean you can discount the importance of profit in bringing their passion to life. If they didn't care about the profits, they wouldn't have been so quick to patent it and turn it into a business.


They weren't that quick to turn it into a business...it took them around six years or so to do that. Concerning R&D, in later years it was seriously lacking. So much so that it ended up moving them out of aircraft manufacturing altogether.

If their motivations weren't profit based, why did they ever seek patents, incorporate The Wright Company, claim royalties on the planes, etc? There's no way you can consider their contributions public sector or public funded.

Synthetic rubber?

I think you are confusing the hope to profit off your interests with being only interested in profit.

If the profit is what makes it possible to pursue the interest, can you discount its importance in driving the innovation?

The Wright brothers clearly managed to invent a method for manned flight without profit, qed?

They couldn't have even begun without the profits from their bicycle business.

Discounting that since it's not directly related, there's no way they would've been able to ramp up to the later, powered flyers if they hadn't monetized their passion. Not only that, but profit motives from things like government contracts and prizes certainly did drive the direction that they innovated in.

They couldn't have begun without tools either, but we hardly ascribe their work as evidence of the ideological triumph of saws and lathes.

I'd venture to say technology wouldn't be what it is today if it weren't for the space race, the cold war, and in general mankinds need to conquer and spread all profit motivated to some extent be it monetary or dominance.

This is an interesting thread though and I am enjoying reading it good idea to split and make it its' own.

They couldn't have begun without tools either, but we hardly ascribe their work as evidence of the ideological triumph of saws and lathes.

And the rest? I admitted that wasn't specifically relevant myself.

edit: The reason I mentioned that to begin with was that it illustrates their background and mindset. They were businessmen. They weren't idealistic thinkers who created this thing in a vacuum and then found the joys of Capitalism.

Monetary profit isn't necessarily a bad thing. What is bad is then it becomes the ONLY reason to do something.

Wilber and Orville wanted to fly. They just happened to make a few bucks along the way.

Monetary profit isn't necessarily a bad thing. What is bad is then it becomes the ONLY reason to do something.

Wilber and Orville wanted to fly. They just happened to make a few bucks along the way.

I don't think anyone thinks profit is a bad thing or a poor motivation for developing/inventing something. It is however a bad thing when something that would be very beneficial for the common good is shelved because it is deemed to not be profitable. Not everything has to make money.

And I think thats the issue. We are a society out of balance. Greed has been elevated too highly and profit has become all the encompassing goal. Fuck everything else... profit. Lie, cheat, steal, hurt, destroy.. do whatever you have to. Its okay if in the end your balance cheat shows a profit and your shareholders are happy.

The same morality we see in the "gangsta" culture we see in the corporate culture... they just use different language.

Seems like the system has definately moved to a Neo-fuedalism.

the Surfs(ordinary citizens) only exsist for the exploitation of the King(corporate america)

I think I have to go along with a combination of the personal computer and internet. The printing press allowed ideas to be saved in a mass media and shared world wide over the time it took to ship books; the internet and personal computers allow those ideas to be shared almost immediately and saved not in a room or building full of shelves, but on a device that takes up less space (in my case) than a case of beer.

Communication has been radically changed across the planet by internet access, and the resulting off-shoots. Our ability to keep up with the events in Iran post election is a glaring example of the impact it has had.

And yes, we could say it is due to the chip, or break it down some other way, but my head would hurt too much going that route.

What do we consider beneficial?

The internet might be considered to have the greatest impact on culture, worldwide, if we can think of it as one invention. Not only facilitating communication and commerce, but even driving and creating new culture - for better or worse.

What about cell phones? From emergency communication to keeping worried parents happy, the current generation - all of us - has a hard time imagining a world without them. Combine them with mobile internet becoming more popular and egads!

I'm not feeling like I have time to come up with 10, so I'll just pick 2.

The shipping container.
I strongly recommend The Box. Before, it took manual laborers days and weeks to unload and load shipping vessels. Everything had to be touched by hand - getting it from the factory, to the truck that drove it to the port (maybe if the load wasn't a full truck-load, it needs to wait at an intermediate warehouse until there was a full truck load), by hand getting it onto a ship, by hand getting it off the ship at the destination, by hand loading it onto a truck, but hand unloading it at the destination. Inventing the shipping container reduced the cost of getting a product to market by about 98% and made the global economy possible. A lot of people lost their jobs along the way, and a lot of cities that depended on trade lost huge parts of their economies (like NYC). It became cheaper to ship things across the world than to ship them across a state.

What used to take dozens of workers many days unloading can be done by one man operating a crane in a matter of hours.

The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger (http://www.amazon.com/Box-Shipping-Container-Smaller-Economy/dp/0691136408/)

The Manhattan project.
This project wasn't just about making big bombs. Lots of technology had to be invented along the way. Including the technology needed to refine chemicals to extreme purity. If it weren't for the Manhattan project, semiconductors would have taken a couple more decades to be invented as the purity needed would not have been invented until much later. The system of national science labs set up for the scientists to work were also the system of labs that developed stuff like the internet. The technology needed to deliver nukes was the technology that NASA started with.

Smidget inspired me...

The Train, ChooChoo Train, Iron Horse. So few people can move huge amounts of cargo or people.

And I think thats the issue. We are a society out of balance. Greed has been elevated too highly and profit has become all the encompassing goal. Fuck everything else... profit. Lie, cheat, steal, hurt, destroy.. do whatever you have to. Its okay if in the end your balance cheat shows a profit and your shareholders are happy.

The same morality we see in the "gangsta" culture we see in the corporate culture... they just use different language.

I think you're right about this.

People hoarding money for the sake of having money defeat the entire point of money in the first place. You try to tell most people that money isn't real - that it's just a fluid system of barter - and they'll give you that blank stare like when you tell them you don't watch American Idol.

Money has become an end instead of a means for many.

I'm a firm believer in "saving for a rainy day". But you are right, a lot of people don't understand it's not the money, but what it allows you to acomplish that is the real power.

And I don't watch American Idol.

Smidget, good point about the Manhattan Project. I got a wild hair a few months ago, and looked up on Wikipedia all of the nuclear accidents that took place during that time, and was very suprised at how few there were.

At one time, they actually had to put the bombs together by hand, using special shims to keep the two hollow spheres of beryllium apart during the process. The process was called "Tickling the Dragon's Tail". Talk about having nerves of steel!

http://www.military.com/Content/MoreContent1/?file=cw_nuclear_slotin

That's a good link to one of the more well known incidents.

Lets not forget the impact "Open Sourcing" has had on the internet revolution.

You almost do have to define most important.

Most important for industry? Cargo containers might be a fair bet.

For culture? I still vote Internet.

For medicine? Not sure

The list goes on...

It is an interesting question. I realize we start to break the timeline, but the earliest engines made cars possible, which really helps to lead to many engineering ideas for aircraft. Aircraft lead to space flight, which could well become one of the most important inventions in the future. Or individual components perhaps, like the microprocessor, lead to so many other great inventions.