What innovation has changed your life the most?

[Different Socks]

It is funny how people don't realize that innovation is all around us. It is not just gadgets. For example these high tech fabrics like silnylon have made hiking so easy. That is not terribly different than calling for a shuttle instead of hitching. Either way you have made your life a lot easier. It seems like for some folks that if it runs on electricity it is bad and they just want to criticize people, but take their high tech camping gear away and they would probably not be able to do all this.

Just to let you know I wasn't criticizing anybody, just saying how I feel.

Aren't we doomed when it's clear we need consumer products all the time, especially tech products?

A study was done in which all communication devices were taken away from a group of 25 people. They had results by the end of the first day--Every person exibited the signs of a heart attack.

[Different Socks]

Cool story bro. Nice job asking a meaningless question so you can rant. Disappointed you didn't end it with HYOH.

Again, simply stating how I feel about what I see around me all the time in the modern workld, not to mention what I read about on here in regards to the large numbers of people that say that simply can't live w/o their cells, Ipods, kindles, GPS, etc when they go hiking. Whatever happened to being out ther just "to be"?

[Different Socks]

I spend a moderate amount of time in the woods on backpacking trips and know this---
** The first step out of the car with a heavy pack on the first day of an 18 day trip is the best feeling in the world, despite the weight. The weight itself is the price of freedom. The cleanse begins.

** Nature herself, who I call Miss Nature, is the place humans have spent the great majority of their time as a species---it's only been until recently that we have "left" nature and sought the indoor life. Then came the gadgets. So, getting out into nature comes easy for some of us and allows us to reclaim our neanderthal roots, etc.

** It's all about bag nights and becoming a Nature Boy. The act itself is the cleanse. So, you find these sorts sleeping in the backyard every night or living in yurts or tipis or figuring out ways to devote a lifetime to living outdoors---minimal work with maximum bag nights. Some of the lucky ones are cleansed and refreshed but never emerge.



This is very true. No matter how deep you go into wilderness or for how long, there will always be 87,000 jets flying overhead every day and helicopters buzzing and distant traffic noise and the hateful roar and whine of the mufflerless motorcycles. The only time I ever experience a "true wilderness" noise wise is either in a ridgetop windstorm, a heavy rainstorm, sleeping by a waterfall or inside a major blizzard. You could be living out in a loin-clout with a bone thru your nose and still you'd be bombarded by near constant airline traffic. And I hear that 30,000 drones will be flying overhead, too.

To really get away from these gadgets you have to enter a storm like the Blizzard of 1993. I was living in a ridgetop NC tipi during the storm and it shut down syphilization as we know it and put us back to 10,000 BC for a week. THEN we had silence.

Good reply!

[Different Socks]

We get it. You like to hike without interactive electronics. Cool. Good for you.

Neither do I. Just don't feel the need to start a troll-bait thread.


As other said, though,for day to day use, the sheer amount of info (Da Google!) I can get from a device that fits into my pocket is amazing. Of course, we mainly use it to look at photos of LOL cats or Justin Bieber videos...but hey!

Not doing a troll bait thread. Not my intention. Simply stating what I am thinking or what i wish to say. It's funny it's suggeted to post like this and yet there are posts about where to pee or crap?

[Different Socks]

We get it. You like to hike without interactive electronics. Cool. Good for you.

Neither do I. Just don't feel the need to start a troll-bait thread.


As other said, though,for day to day use, the sheer amount of info (Da Google!) I can get from a device that fits into my pocket is amazing. Of course, we mainly use it to look at photos of LOL cats or Justin Bieber videos...but hey!

Not trying to start a troll bait thread. I don't like those either. Just saying what i am thinking. It's funny how it's suggested to not post things like this, but posts about crapping and peeing and other disgusting things is okay?

[aficion]

The automobile. I would have never gotten to the trail without it.

[shakey_snake]

John Muir and the National Park System?

[Lone Wolf]

friggin' Spam singles!

[Tuckahoe]

The whole of human history is the story of change, innovation and the march of technology. Each and everyone of us lives on the shoulders of someone else's innovation, and none of you can survive without that advance.

[Spirit Bear]

I would say the micro chip. That modern day invention has had the most impact on my life. It spawned the personal comptuer, laptops, Ipads, Iphones. It spawned the Ipod or mp3, whichever you use. Then as a result the internet took off and every year the internet seems more user friendly for practical day things.

Without the invention of the microchip, none of these things would be functioning today.

It's our modern day equilivant invention to the combustable engine.

[Dogwood]

What innovation has changed your life the most?

Innovation can come in many ways and pertain to many different things. Two of the most innovative things that occurred in my life are:

1)Realizing and HAPPILY accepting that I DO NOT AND WILL NOT ever know everything. Doesn't keep me from trying to know everything though!

2)What's right or acceptable for me may not be the same for everyone(anyone) else. Heck, I sometimes find it difficult finding what's right or accptable for me.

[Pedaling Fool]

The automobile. I would have never gotten to the trail without it.

I was going to say that; also many couldn't complete a thru-hike without slackpacking significant portions of the trail.

The internal combustion engine makes nature tolerable; gets you there comfortably and outta there when it just gets to be too much.

[Dogwood]

It seems like for some folks that if it runs on electricity it is bad.....

And the other half believes that if it runs on electricity it is good.....

Kinda like. walks on two legs - bad. walks on four legs or has wings to fly - good.

[NotYet]

I found out about The Keeper in 2000 and the Pstyle in 2012. Both of these low-tech innovations for women have had a dramatic and positive effect on my life.

[Dogwood]

The internal combustion engine makes nature tolerable...

That's not what the Native American Indians believed. Seemed like they were doing more than a little OK living in a harmonic coexisting realtionship with nature up until all this "innovation" started ocurring.

The internal combustion engine contibutes to the obliteration of nature too.

[Jefe]

The internal combustion engine makes nature tolerable...

living in a harmonic coexisting realtionship with nature

Let's ask the mastadons what they think about that statement. Humans are takers, no matter what their skin color. Just use everything up in the area then move on to somewhere new...

[GoldenBear]

> In my mind, the development (by the Swiss at CERN) of the WWW was one of the most crucial ones in my lifetime

The internet was in existence for many years before http.
http://www.zakon.org/robert/internet/timeline/
It wasn't fun trying to remember if a URL started with telnet:\\ or ftp:\\, but we WERE able to find stuff using Gopher and Archie.

And the development of http did not involve any Swiss citizens. Tim Berners-Lee worked at CERN when he developed it; but he was born in London, graduated from Oxford, and was working for an English software company when he became a fellow at CERN. His own words describe what happened: "Creating the web was really an act of desperation, because the situation without it was very difficult when I was working at CERN later. Most of the technology involved in the web, like the hypertext, like the Internet, multifont text objects, had all been designed already. I just had to put them together."

Also, note that www sites were almost a fringe part of the internet UNTIL a practical browser -- namely Mosaic from the University of Illinois -- to be developed.

[Tipi Walter]

The whole of human history is the story of change, innovation and the march of technology. Each and everyone of us lives on the shoulders of someone else's innovation, and none of you can survive without that advance.

This sounds like an apologist for dystopia.

The internal combustion engine makes nature tolerable...

That's not what the Native American Indians believed. Seemed like they were doing more than a little OK living in a harmonic coexisting realtionship with nature up until all this "innovation" started ocurring.

The internal combustion engine contibutes to the obliteration of nature too.

Totally true. The love affair with gasoline and the rolling couch is flourishing here in the good old USA. I count myself as one of the many gas huffers and throttle lovers so I have to balance it out with many days a month walking. The almighty Engine is worshipped cuz it's everywhere---ATV's in the woods, snowmobiles in the snow, drones in the sky, jets and choppers, ad crapium. Most Americans hate walking and therefore you end up with blowfish with pineyes behind the wheel. At least there's hope in this---

http://www.latimes.com/news/nation/n...0,785399.story

[Tinker]

I like my SUL Gravity Deflator that makes everything weigh 75% less than it really does..

Other than that it's a tossup between my phone and GPS. Those are the only 2 gadgets I take besides my SPOT which I can do without but my wife can't.

I just made your first sentence lighter by taking the "t" off of weight . Something may weight something else, but only if you put it on top as in "I weighted down the ground sheet with a rock so it won't blow away".

Alll things have a weight. That means that they weigh something.

Fwiw, I'm sort of attached to my car as far as getting to and from trailheads.

[Tinker]

The automobile. I would have never gotten to the trail without it.

Beat me to it..........I'm getting used to it.