Almost all the global society-altering creations i can think of FROM THE PAST 100 YEARS are from America. I highly doubt that’s true, so I’m looking for counter-examples.

To clarify, I’m looking for items on the level of:

  • the internet
  • rock music
  • nuclear weapons
  • ai
  • airplane flight (older than 100 years)

And clearly I’m not just including things that improved the world.

The best ones i can think of are (I think):

  • Rocketry (Germany)?
  • Cheap tech manufacturing (Asian countries)?

EDIT:

Actually rocketry has been around much longer than 100 years. Even the category of “modern rocketry” begins in the late 1800s. Source: https://www.grc.nasa.gov/www/k-12/TRC/Rockets/history_of_rockets.html

EDIT 2:

A further explanation of what level I’m talking about.

There has to be a clear before and after, and it has to directly and quickly effect most of the world. For example the Internet. There’s life before the internet, and there’s life after the internet, which are both very different.

As opposed to for example if someone makes a groundbreaking foundational research discovery that effects the entire realm of their field of study, but doesn’t quickly and directly create a difference in most people’s lives, then it doesn’t fit the category.

  • ji88aja88a@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    2 months ago

    origins of wifi started in australia… the centre differential , black box recorders, cochlear implants, the pacemaker, rotary clotheslines, spray on skin

  • Luke@lemmy.mlEnglish
    0·
    2 months ago

    Since many other comments have focused heavily on technological inventions, I think it makes sense to add some notable cultural impacts on society as well. As with most of the technological inventions mentioned, cultural forces also don’t come out of nowhere and arguably have been around for a lot longer than 100 years, but I think it’s pretty obvious that society within the past 100 years has been and still is being massively affected by the following concepts that did not originate in the USA:

    • feminism
    • civil rights movement (usually seen through a US-focused lens, but is happening everywhere)
    • gay rights movement (esp. in the 1990’s and beyond)
    • gender-spectrum concepts
    • widespread influence of evolutionary theory (even the word “meme” came from a British biologist’s book about evolution)
    • Glowstick@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      0·
      2 months ago

      All extremely important, but are all way older than 100 years, or have no single country that created it

  • bstix@feddit.dk
    0·
    2 months ago

    Here are some.

    • Antibiotics (Germany)
    • Bluetooth (Denmark)
    • C++ (Denmark)
    • DVD (Japan)
    • Electric clock (UK)
    • Graphene (Canada)
    • Helicopter (Russia)
    • Linux (Finland)
    • Penicillin (Scotland)
    • TNT (Sweden)
    • Wegovy (Denmark)
    • Glowstick@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      0·
      2 months ago

      Penicillin IS an antibiotic. They aren’t two different things. But yes, that’s a fantastic one.

      Bluetooth, although not quite on the same level as i was asking about, still is a decent one to list.

      C++ was created by a dane, but was created by an American company in America - https://techhistorylab.com/complete-history-of-cpp-from-1979-to-today/

      Dvd was a multi-national creation - see history section https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DVD

      Electric clock is over 100 years

      Graphene is a cool material with a lot of potential but so far isn’t close to changing the world - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphene

      Helicopter is a good one. Interestingly it was a step-wise multinational evolution, but which doesn’t seem to include the US. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helicopter

      Linux is made by an American as a personal project for himself while he was in Finland for a few years. Definitely not a Finnish creation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Linux

      TNT is over 100 years

      Wegovy wasn’t created by a Dane, but glp-1 was first discovered by a dane. Discovering it is obviously a crucial first step, but that’s an entirely different thing than turning it into a medication which happened decades later by other people. See history sections https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jens_Juul_Holst and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glucagon-like_peptide-1 and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semaglutide

      • bstix@feddit.dk
        0·
        2 months ago

        If you nitpick your own suggestions the same way, you’ll find that nuclear weapons were made by Germans in America and that rock music is a rip off of blues which is from Africa, and so on.

        All inventions are based on knowledge that comes from somewhere else. It’s the exchange of knowledge that pushes inventions forward. It is very rarely the country of where that person had his or her ass situated at the time of the patent application that caused the invention.

      • gsx@discuss.tchncs.de
        0·
        2 months ago

        Linux (the Kernel) was started by Linus Torvalds. He is still Finnish citizen and holds the US citizenship since 2010. So I would clearly say it’s a Finnish invention. Or citing your source: “Linux began in 1991 as a personal project by Finnish student Linus Torvalds to create a new free operating system kernel.”

  • gsx@discuss.tchncs.de
    0·
    2 months ago

    RCDs, the first patents were from the 1900s from Germany and the US, but the first usable designs were build in the 1950s in South Africa and Germany.

    Probably the device that has saved the most lives while working tinkering on the residential electrical system.

  • autriyo@feddit.org
    0·
    2 months ago

    Does the Linux kernel count? The very first versions where released while Linus Torvalds still studied in Finland.

  • autriyo@feddit.org
    0·
    2 months ago

    I’ve looked into some things I could think of, and alot of them are partially invented by Americans or the first viable design was patented by an American…

    For example: The interaction of light hitting something an creating electricity was first observed by someone from France, but the first viable design of a solar panel was patented by an American.

    Similar for carbon fibers, or handheld power drills. Computer tomography was first realized by two people, one of them African-American.

    Or the things where invented more than 100 years ago. (Cars, for example)

    • Glowstick@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      0·
      2 months ago

      I don’t understand how a few of you are so completely misunderstanding this post. I’m literally asking for specific examples that are counter to my current understanding which i assumed was wrong, specifically so that i could learn a LESS biased us-centric view.

      But frankly, overall y’all didn’t do a great job, and I’m somewhat disappointed. There were a small number of HUGE ones people listed which were fantastic examples, but a lot of people listed a TON of incorrect items that when i looked it up turned out not to be from the country they claimed, or obviously weren’t on the same world-changing level as the topic was about, or were over 100 years old.

      I’m literally asking for information to learn to be LESS us-centric

  • folaht@lemmy.ml
    0·
    2 months ago

    Capilliary democracy,
    or whatever it’s called that Deng Xioaping has introduced.

    I’m talking about layered elections + civic exams.

    Liberal democracy has campaign fraud in it practically by design,
    thus the will of the people becomes the will of the oligarchs right after every election,
    and not even the will of domestic oligarchs for most countries.

    Marx’ idea of democracy hardly got off the ground.
    Lenin’s idea of democracy had the unintended consequence of turning the General Secretary of the communist party as its most powerful position soon after he died.

  • hoagecko (he/his)@sh.itjust.works
    0·
    2 months ago

    Invented in Japan in 1999, i-mode is a remarkable technology for connecting mobile devices to a wide range of web services.

    It’s well-known in Japan that this invention, not the iPhone, was the first to enable games, email, emojis, and selfies on mobile devices.

    I believe that the Japanese girls of the early 2000s who created this culture are the greatest hackers who shaped the smartphone era.

    Super Galapagos - Matt Alt’s Pure Invention https://blog.pureinventionbook.com/p/super-galapagos