Hello. I am an artist working on the first phase of a project about the history and perception of ideas and inventions.

Some of the topics I am investigating include:

-What are the most important inventions created?
-What are examples of inventions that have had a
negative or damaging impact on society?
-What kind of ideas or inventions never get produced,
or get put on the market?

I am asking other individuals to participate in my
project by answering a series of questions on these
topics in an on-line form. This information will be used as text components in
both a dynamic Flash web piece and a robotic video
installation. Responses from the on-line form will
determine what images and video clips will be created
and used in the pieces.

Please participate in my project, by filling out the
form at: http://www.kristenbaumlier.com/goodidea

OR WRITE YOUR ANSWERS HERE!

THANKS.

Kristen Baumlier

The written language.

The Guttenberg Press.


Humans are the worse invention that ever was made, they do nothing but destroy, consume, fight, greed, lie , cheat and steal.

Baumlier - I don't think any invention is good or bad - it's a tool. Can be used for good or evil.

Cosmic - ah, yes, and animals are pure and noble-hearted? Certainly, one animal'd never, ever kill another?

Best - Fire, electricity, the wheel.
Worst - convenience meals, might aswel be eating the cats shit, and microsoft programmes(microsoft works is the best oxymoron ever)

best - transportation

worst - propaganda (the untruthful, misleading type :p)

Worst invention: Religions and gods

Best: Speech/Language

Baumlier - I don't think any invention is good or bad - it's a tool. Can be used for good or evil.

Cosmic - ah, yes, and animals are pure and noble-hearted? Certainly, one animal'd never, ever kill another?


At least animals maintain a population control, make little pollution, live with nature and don't try to destroy it and they respect one another. They don't lie, cheat or have greed.

Best: as douglas adams once noted, "the cat flap (or doggy door)... a door within a door". Absolutely brilliant.

Worst: New Kids on the Block, nothing else comes even close except possibly MS Windows.

EDIT:
At least animals maintain a population control, make little pollution, live with nature and don't try to destroy it and they respect one another.

god thats funny, they maintain population control because a bigger animal near by makes them or they eat themselves out of food. Without predators or limits to food their as gluttonous as us and their population would explode. They don't control their population, their population is controlled for them... big difference.

They respect each other? Christ this need to anthropomorphize drives me crazy. They respect each other in the sense that rival gangs respect each other. In other words, watch everyone continuously and if anything so much as glances at you sideways either kill it or run away.

LOL, respect indeed!.

Best invention: the transistor
Worst: atom bomb

Best: atomic clock
Worst:GloFish (http://www.glofish.com/)

At least animals maintain a population control, make little pollution, live with nature and don't try to destroy it and they respect one another. They don't lie, cheat or have greed.

How can you say animals respect each other? That's anthromorphic nonsense. It's also pretty hard to lie or cheat without the ability to speak, and as for animals not having greed ... some primates maintain harems.

EDIT: I have to agree with Enigma. While I believe inventions are generally tools that don't have an intrinsic moral value, the GloFish has absolutely no utilitarian value, so we've basically gone from having the pokemon, a little digital simulation of nature, to the GloFish, which is basically a pokemon in the flesh.

best things lets see.. well me for 1, the transistor, mp3 encoding

[QUOTE=StarOfEight]How can you say animals respect each other? That's anthromorphic nonsense. It's also pretty hard to lie or cheat without the ability to speak, and as for animals not having greed ... some primates maintain harems.


Greed isn't found in nature as humans knows it. Animals do things for survival not because they are greedy. Ever see an animal kill for the "sport" of it like humans do? Ever see animals make themselves become extinct like humans cause? Humans go into an area and develop it destroying all that nature has made over millions of years and doesn't care at all about the harm they are doing yet humans are supposed to be smarter than animals this shows they have much to learn.

Just because they are smarter does not mean that humans are not short sighted and destructive in their actions and thoughts.

Cosmic - that's absurd. Animals don't have nearly the ability to manipulate nature we do. I'll grant that humans have a long history of using that ability in short-sighted and/or stupid ways, but to say that animals are morally superior for not doing something they can't do is ridiculous.

Animals don't decapitate other animals except for food.I'm just saying this planet would be better off without most humans, those that do not respect nature or respect others around them. Animals do that except when hungry.

THere are inventions like dynamite that were the best inventions, it wllowed us to mine easily, blast away rock to build structures and shape our civilization. It has also been used for war and killing.

Cosmic ... animals have no free will. They can't make decisions. Assigning them moral superiority makes no more sense than assigning moral superiority to a tree or a rock. That being said, animals cannibalize, they eat the offspring of their rivals, and they engage in vicious, albeit low-level conflicts. Humans aren't the problem. What separates man from animal isn't that we're worse, but rather that we can be better. We rarely fulfill that promise, but we have it.

best - automation (computer, robots, etc.)
worst - guns, bombs

best- written language, computers
worst- guns

Best has got to be the scratch plough. Without it there would have been sod all else invented.It gave man time to invent stuff instead of spending nearly all his time gathering food.

Worst has got to be rap music

best - written language, the telescope, medical technology, the wheel, clean energy (ie: wind power, solar), the computer
worst - explosives, the political system (to a certain extent), nuclear power, dirty energy (ie: oil refineries), biological weapons

the irony is, we couldn't have developed "clean" energy sources or advance medical tech without "dirty" energy.

I know it's an irony ... that's what bothers me most of the time when I think about it

best : condoms

worst: condoms

At least animals maintain a population control, make little pollution, live with nature and don't try to destroy it and they respect one another. They don't lie, cheat or have greed.
just to let you know that humans also have population control it may not resemble that of the other animals in our kingdom but then again we do not resemble any other animal in our kingdom.
the most common way that humans control the population growth is by sickness. which usually come in a form unknown to us and before we find any cure usually millions have died. ( the bubonic plague was a relative of what we call today pneumonia, and before any treatment was develop to fight it , it had killed 25% of the population of Europe and Asia.) (AIDS is another one of those sicknesses that at the present moment is doing just that, by the time they find a cure for it at least 25% of the world population will be dead), so how do you like the way humans control population growth?

the irony is, we couldn't have developed "clean" energy sources or advance medical tech without "dirty" energy.

I was under the impression we had clean ones rather before or at the same time as the dirty ones (depending if we count a camp fire as a dirty energy source).

Windenergy has been used longer than this century. Without it half of holland would be under water. Watermills have been in use also rather long.

I was under the impression we had clean ones rather before or at the same time as the dirty ones (depending if we count a camp fire as a dirty energy source).

Windenergy has been used longer than this century. Without it half of holland would be under water. Watermills have been in use also rather long.

very true, but neither could have been refined to the efficient versions we know and use today without more potent power sources and heavy industry. The old versions work fine if you need to grind grain but they aren't useful for much else, certainly nothing on a large scale.

Not necessarily best, but order of invention: a friend says we made a big mistake inventing the wheel before we invented contraception.

very true, but neither could have been refined to the efficient versions we know and use today without more potent power sources and heavy industry. The old versions work fine if you need to grind grain but they aren't useful for much else, certainly nothing on a large scale.

Like I said before. God create earth and the dutch created holland. And they did that with windmills. That is rather a grand project for a primitive energy source.

I think human is the only mammal that would eat man's own species...

anyway, best invented by mankind: humanity itself
same goes for the worse

doesn't make sense ~_~

The best would writing since language is inherent to human beings.
The worse would definately be WMD.

I think human is the only mammal that would eat man's own species...


You may think that, but reality says otherwise.

Think about mice...think about a mouse litter...think of a mouse mother...think of how the mouse eats the litter...think of another mammal who not only eats their own species, but also their own young.

Like I said before. God create earth and the dutch created holland. And they did that with windmills. That is rather a grand project for a primitive energy source.

yes, there's no question the dutch knew windmills but lets not go over board, they just pumped water and made flour. Certainly it was useful in a limited way but once steam power came along, they dumped wind like a skanky girlfriend. It was just too unreliable and inflexible (they couldn't be used for more than a handful of specific jobs).

Best- The US constitution including Bill of rights
Worst-The History of Juris Prudence relating to corporations rights.

This reminds me of Donnie Darko, I think he said soap or something along the lines of that.