Britons: iPhone eighth most important invention — ever In the British mind, the iPhone is a more important invention than the automobile, calendar, or hot water, though not as important as its immediate forebears: the telephone, personal computer and the internet. A Tesco Mobile survey of 4,000 consumers aged between 18 and 65 placed the iPhone eighth out of 100. As might be …
.. what a load of old rubbish the survey is.
>>Strikingly, Britons found the iPhone to be a more important invention than either the flush toilet (9) or toilet paper (22)...
Let's change the question to: "Would you rather be without an iPhone, or access to a flushing toilet?"
These marketing people should hang their heads in shame, the question is nonsensical.
I seem to remember one of the first things I was taught in Business and Marketing was (repeat after me) ...
Innovation is not invention, Innovation is not invention, Innovation is not invention, Innovation is not . . .
nK
Look at IMDB, almost all of the top 10 films are recent, like LOTR. Then if you look a little lower you find the genuine timeless classics. Ask this again in a few years and some other gadget will be in the top ten, and will still be less important than things that people take for granted (like vaccinations)
Odd that there are no weapons on this list. Not the nicest things but certainly important. I'd say the Flint Axe was arguably more important than the wheel. The pike, long bow, gunpowder, canon, flint lock, rifled musket, maxim machine gun, tank and atomic bomb have all had some impact on history. Obviously not quite the global impact of hair straighteners (34) but still you'd think one of those might have sneaked in at the bottom of the list.
Maybe there is a bias to things they sell in Tesco? I guess a survey of Wal-Mart customers might have seen more recognition of the importance of armaments.
I agree with you about the flint knife - but it was not mostly used for peaceful purposes as our teeth aren't sharp enough to cut hide.
Guns and grenades definitely had an impact on history - but I wouldn't count them as important or useful inventions. I can live without them.
Law is an important invention missed in the list.
Hmmm, for my top 10 I'm going to have to go old school
1)Language
2)Alphabet
3)Agriculture
4)Fire
5)Wheel
6)Transistor
7)Vaccination
8)Penicillin
9)The internet
10)The Steam Engine
IMO there is only one way to carry out these surveys. get a list of all the inventions then present the survey muppets with 10 at a time. Get them to order them from most important to least important and aggregate the results. I would also question wether an Iphone is an invention as it's more a good user interface than an invention.
I can only assume there was an iPhone app to vote for your favourite invention, as clearly any sane person (i.e. not an iTard) would have picked "Mobile Phone" or "Smartphone" rather than a brand of smartphone..
Sometimes it's embarrassing to be British, right now is one of those times.
Good grief, this list is wrong on so many levels....
- Some are innovations, not inventions (Push-up bra -> normal bra)
- Some rely on more fundamental inventions; eg Anything electronic -> The semi-conductor, or any moderm mode of transport -> ball bearings
- No weapons listed..though in the right hands, anything on this list could be, if I was being philosophical. Or creative.
- Some aren't even relevant...Space travel is an invention? Since when?
- Some are duplicates - Mascara and make-up are the same thing, surely?
But the killer of the lot is the British public, strolling about with their brains in neutral to come up with some of the entries...Post-it notes? Curtains? Did they interview my gran or something, and they merely picked out all the nouns in one of her typical 5 hour rambling monologues?
Grenades...missing from the list.
Who was surveyed? None of the reports state clearly what the survey population was, and how they were selected. Is there a hint in the link to Tesco Mobile - who happen to supply iPhones?
I assume the next will be the Ferrari survey, which discovers that a huge number of respondents think expensive motor cars are among the most important inventions. Or maybe the Durex survey ...
What a load of codswallop!
It isn't even included in yr list!
Michael Farady invented ,at the same time, both the electric generator and the electric motor.
Without this invention we would have no elecritity in our homes or businesses, no electric motors great or small.
In fact we would be still in the age of wood/coal heating, and oil/gaslamps, and steam powered factories.
Faraday's invention is key to the way we live today.
that neither the survey authors or anyone here thought of the Bessemer converter. The invention which took steel manufacture from small, time consuming, expensive batches to large scale, cheap, industrial production. Making possible every thing from tinned food to automobiles to battleships and highrise buildings.
8 iPhone
let take all the less important "inventions" related to the iPhone away
18 Camera
21 Mobile Phone
25 Google
27 Email
31 Compass
41 Calculator
46 SatNav
47 Wi-Fi
56 iPod
60 eBay
75 Head/ear Phones
82 Facebook
86 Spell check
90 Post-it Notes
92 Satellite disc
So we have a device that doesn't take pictures, can't make/receive calls, can't search the web, or connect to a wi-fi network. I can't listed to music, update my facebook status, leave myself notes, buy stolen item off the internet, can't find my way home or even figure how much tip to leave. What can it do, then?
Paperweight? Doorstop? Skeet?
Why didn't Electricity or Radio make the list?
Those that chose iPhones as the #8 most important invention ever, deserve having to eat them because without the above real inventions, they are useless lumps of PLASTIC that should be dumped down #9.
And I'd love to know who invented hot water!
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