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.

  • bstix@feddit.dk
    6·
    2 days 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)
  • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
    33·
    3 days ago

    Sputnik, Vostok, the artificial heart, the math behind modern multi-stage rocketry, and space rovers were all invented by the Soviets.

    • Glowstick@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      19·
      3 days ago

      First satellite! Yes! Great one!

      As for the rest, they don’t meet the criteria. I don’t know what vostok is and a web search doesn’t show anything. And the others aren’t on the same level of world-changing, even though they’re extremely important and impressive

      • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
        18·
        3 days ago

        Vostok 1 was the capsule that contained Yuri Gagarin, the first man in space. All of these were critical advancements in space flight and science. What is the criterion for “world changing” that doesn’t include the numerous critical advancements in space?

        • Glowstick@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
          19·
          3 days ago

          Again, first satellite! Great example! And an absolute first achievement in rocketry!

          First man in space is close, but it’s not as world changing, more of a synthetic goal post that was reached. There’s no actual border between space vs not space, it’s just a synthetic line we drew arbitrarily at exactly 100 km.

          But a satellite is an altogether different thing. That’s the first thing humans ever pushed up that didn’t immediately fall back to earth after it stopped being pushed upward. A true and massive achievement, and that achievement created brand new world-changing technologies in communications, created breakthroughs in almost all branches of sciences, changed how we humans live through gps, and all the zillion other world-changing advanced that flowed as a direct immediate consequence

          • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
            11·
            3 days ago

            Surviving in space and successfully returning from orbit is absolutely an incredible achievement that spurred on the space race.

            • Glowstick@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
              44·
              3 days ago

              I agree, but it’s not a world-changing breakthrough. There had previously been humans extremely high up, but they just didn’t cross above the synthetic threshold we randomly drew

              EDIT

              Nope, i was totally wrong. I did some reading and it’s clear that Yuri’s flight was absolutely world-changing

              • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
                8·
                3 days ago

                That’s why I am asking what counts as “world-changing,” as most people would consider the first man in space to be world-changing.

                • Luke@lemmy.mlEnglish
                  6·
                  3 days ago

                  Especially considering that Yuri Gagarin’s flight inspired generations of people all over the world after him to a probably immeasurable extent. If the OP wanted “global society-altering”, then that certainly qualifies.

                • Glowstick@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
                  31·
                  3 days ago

                  I did some reading and learned a bunch of stuff, and now i see that you’re right and I’m wrong. Yuri’s first spaceflight does in fact totally qualify, completely. I was under the misunderstanding thinking that he was the first to cross the synthetic goal line into space but i assumed that previous attempts were close-ish but not quite to the same altitude. Nope. I just learned that he DEMOLISHED the previous altitude record by an order of magnitude, 32 km vs 320 km, and that all previous flights were using atmosphere conditions to power their flight. You’re totally right, Vostok1 was a totally world-changing achievement

              • Glowstick@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
                11·
                3 days ago

                And i just realized i have to remove my item from my own list, because the wright brothers flight was more than 100 years ago

    • Glowstick@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      31·
      2 days 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

  • GMac@feddit.orgEnglish
    182·
    3 days ago

    Sorry but i dont think America has given the world all that much in he grand scheme of things. 100 years seems an arbitrarily short timeline - even my local pub would be a long way from qualifying for that.

    Arpanet was American, leveraging a lot of research, particularly from the UK and France. The internet though? you have the thank a Brit for that; Tim Berners-Lee was responsible for the birth of the interconnected hyperlinked network we called the internet.

    The US did however invent many other recent and society altering things like enshittification, the rot economy, surveillance capitalism, felony contempt of business model, fake taxis, fake hotels, the billionaire class, and social media, the privatised prison system and its legalised slave labour force, and Epstein island. I’m sure i could think of more if i put my mind to it.

    For some things invented elsewhere you could start in Scotland.
    Some of these will predate 1926, but pretty much all are still pretty important in daily life.

    Scots invented television, the telephone, mri machines, refrigerators, mammal cloning, penicillin, disposable contact lenses, ATM machines, colour photography, the flushing toilet and the s-bend that stops it stinking, hypodermic syringes, steam engines, fingerprinting, vacuum flasks, pneumatic tyres, tarmac, and lightbulbs.

      • GMac@feddit.orgEnglish
        37·
        3 days ago

        I think we have a semantic disagreement there. The world wide web was another term for the global interconnected network also know as the internet. Arpanet wasn’t scalable to the internet until Tim’s work.

        But if that’s your only point of dispute with my comment i think we think more in common than we disagree.

        • treadful@lemmy.zipEnglish
          91·
          2 days ago

          The World Wide Web is Hypertext and the Hypertext protocol. The Internet is the network it runs on. It’s not just semantics. The WWW is not interchangeable with the Internet.

          Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn invented TCP/IP, which is the primary protocol of the Internet. And the physical network derives from APRANET, which are all American.

    • Glowstick@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      16·
      3 days ago

      Regarding your last paragraph list, you seem to be under major misapprehensions. I looked through the initial 3 items and none of them were invented by a scot, and so there was no reason to even check the rest.

      And of those 3 I looked into, they all either had multiple countries involved in its creation, all of which had Americans as prime participants, and or had Americans as the sole originator.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_television

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_telephone

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_magnetic_resonance_imaging

      • GMac@feddit.orgEnglish
        9·
        3 days ago

        My apprehensions are fine thanks. You’re just not looking very hard.

        Inventor of the television - John Logie Baird https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Logie_Baird

        Inventor of the telephone - Alexander Graham Bell https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Graham_Bell

        On the MRI - per the wikipedia link you posted but may not have read thoroughly. “During the 1970s, a team led by John Mallard built the first full-body MRI scanner at the University of Aberdeen.” I’ll grant I could have been more specific.

        If you want to argue invention exists at the point of theory instead of physical creation, then i suspect you will struggle find much that wasn’t posited, theorised, described or conceived in some way before America was colonised.

        American exceptionalism is a thing…

      • Trebuchet@europe.pub
        4·
        3 days ago

        Piggybacking on @GMac’s excellent comment, here’s some additional detail:

        Alexander Fleming (Scottish) - penicillin

        John Shepherd-Barron (English) - ATM (although this was a synthesis of many previous inventions/ concepts from other countries)

        James Clerk Maxwell (Scot) - colour photography

        Da Vinci (modern day Italy) - contact lenses

        Alexander Cumming (scot) - S-bend

        Various nationalities helped develop the internal combustion engine

        Robert William Thomson (scot) - pneumatic tyre

        • Glowstick@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
          25·
          3 days ago

          Penicillin - fantastic one!

          Atm - sure, i suppose it meets the criteria. Its not quite to the same level of societal change i was talking about, but it certainly did significantly change how people go about their day around the world. So it totally counts.

          All the rest - are over 100 years old

          But the penicillin one is ultra life-changing all around the world

  • IWW4@lemmy.zip
    181·
    3 days ago

    Gun Powder and Paper were invented/discovered in China.

    While no one person or entity invented Algebra, the first time it was ever conceived as an independent organized science was in Bagdad, when it was a Persian city.

    The battery was invented in Italy.

    Again while it evolved over time a scientist in China is credited as discovering the cure for Malaria.

  • yenahmik@lemmy.world
    12·
    3 days ago

    Somewhat small, but I’d say one of the most useful inventions that is used by literally everyone…the ballpoint pen was invented in Argentina.

  • autriyo@feddit.org
    11·
    3 days ago

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

  • fta@lemmy.zip
    9·
    3 days ago

    LEDs - Japan

    Quantum physics - international but Germany is fair attribution early on

    As you indicated, most recent advances in manufacturing - Japan, China, Taiwan, Korea. This is the biggest imho.

    China’s recent battery tech I think could be amazing, and I wouldn’t lump that under manufacturing.

    GLP-1 (we’ll see where this goes) - Denmark but also USA

    We’re definitely still missing so many :)

    • Glowstick@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      29·
      3 days ago

      Even if so, that’s not on the same level. That’s just a continuously advancing technology, not a particular creation. The level I’m talking about would be the creation of rail road technology altogether.

      • Luke@lemmy.mlEnglish
        201·
        3 days ago

        It does begin to feel a bit like you’re moving the goal posts for what you consider “world-changing” as you comment more on this post. If the first man in space and high speed rail are “just incremental progress”, then why do rock music and AI count for you? Everything humans have ever done is accomplished incrementally using the accomplishments of prior human ingenuity.

  • Luke@lemmy.mlEnglish
    7·
    3 days 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
      25·
      3 days ago

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

  • Dæmon S.@catodon.rocks
    7·
    3 days ago

    There’s a Brazilian saying, “Catapulta não é motor” (“catapult isn’t an engine”). While the Wright brothers surely contributed with substantial knowledge to the field of aviation, airplanes are a Brazilian invention, invented by Alberto Santos-Dumont.

    There’s even a joke only Brazilians (or non-Brazilian people very knowledgeable of the cultural uniqueness across Brazilian regions) could readily understand: one of the major proofs that airplanes are Brazilian is the naming “TREM de pouso” (landing gear). For context: Santos-Dumont was born in the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais, a state very known for its unique accent and dialects such as using “trem” (train) for “thing”, as in “pode pegá ess-trem fazenfavô?” being “Mineirês” for “Posso pegar essa coisa, por gentileza?” (“can I have this thing, please?”), so whenever something lacks a proper name/definition, Mineiros (those born and/or living in the state of Minas Gerais) are very likely to call it a “trem” (e.g. “eita trem bão”, “oh, what a nice/good thing!”). Source: I’m Brazilian and also been residing in the state of Minas Gerais.

    !asklemmy@lemmy.ml

    • Glowstick@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      16·
      3 days ago

      The wright brothers absolutely were “standing on the shoulders of giants”, but they were the first to create heavier-than-air flight.

      • arthur@lemmy.zipEnglish
        2·
        2 days ago

        The main contribution of the Wright brothers is the controls used on aviation (pitch, yaw and roll). About being the first, Santos-Dumont is recognized by Fédération Aéronautique Internationale as the first flight with witnesses. Splitting hairs here, the english word “airplane” is less specific than the french word “avion”. All avion are airplanes, but to be an avion the machine needs to be able to take off and land by its own means, and that’s the point where the first flight of the Wright brothers are missing. And as they kept secrecy on what they were doing, we don’t know exactly when they introduced each innovation on their machines. But to me, that doesn’t matter much actually. Heavier-than-air flights are more like a collective effort IMHO with the Wright brothers, Santos-Dumont and many others contributing to create the aviation.

  • folaht@lemmy.ml
    51·
    2 days 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.