By Alexia Hope

Copyright researchsnipers

In a provocative analysis published in Frontiers in Psychology, scholars John Protzko and Jonathan Schooler explore the roots of the “kids these days” phenomenon. That is, older folks’ perennial complaints about the declining quality and general waywardness of the generations who come up after them.

As Protzko and Schooler note, these complaints stretch back centuries, if not millennia. They tend to revolve around the corrosive influence of new technologies, which younger people tend to adopt more readily, and fade as those technologies move into the mainstream.

“Complaints about the printing press, corrupting people with bombardments of information, were largely limited to when the printing press was a newer societal advance,” they say. Back in Socrates’ day, over a thousand years before the advent of the printing press, writing itself was seen as a newfangled evil.

Of course, the written word and mass printing — itself now in danger of obsolescence — were remarkable innovations that changed the world for the better. More recent innovations are no exception, no matter how little thought we give them from day to day. These five, for example, quite literally changed the course of human history.

1. Wireless Internet

The Internet famously began as a communications network for highly credentialed professionals — academics, military brass and all the rest. In the early 1990s, entrepreneurs like EarthLink founder Sky Dayton smoothed the way for regular folks to get online too.

Early solutions popularized by Sky Dayton and others used existing “wired” telecom networks, but it wasn’t long before mobile connectivity took off. Dayton, in fact, was an early pioneer in that space. In 2003, he described how he used a wireless network to stay in touch with his wife during an unexpected travel snafu.

“I took out my laptop and connected to the airport’s wireless Internet network. While checking my email, I started exchanging instant text messages with my wife back home. At the same time, I had a hand-held wireless Internet device with a camera attached to it. After breaking the news that I’d be home late, I took a picture of my face and sent it to her with a Valentine’s Day message,” Dayton said.

Dayton went on to note that the activity he described was already a common occurrence less than 10 years after mass Internet adoption. But even an early-aughts techno-optimist like him would have trouble imagining how the digital world would look a quarter-century on.

2. Superstrong, Lightweight Glass

Your phone wouldn’t be the same without it. In fact, without a fix for brittle, cumbersome screens, the smartphone economy might never have taken off at all.

Some glass engineers (yes, that’s a thing) think we can do better still, perhaps enough to render screen protectors unnecessary. In 2024, university researchers in Japan reported a possible breakthrough that could enable nearly unbreakable glass using a counterintuitive approach: glass-strengthening molecules that act more like a fluid than a solid.

“Interestingly, the movement of atoms and molecules within glass can relax internal stress, making the material more resistant to fractures,” said Makina Saito, an associate professor with the graduate school of science at Tohoku University.

When will this superstrong glass appear in your pocket? Stay tuned.

3. Indoor Plumbing and Municipal Sanitation

Well, obviously. But when was the last time you really gave thought to what happens after you flush the toilet?

If you live on a municipal sewage system, the water and, well, everything else begins a winding journey to a centralized wastewater treatment plant. On bigger systems, that journey can take days, even weeks. Inside the treatment plant, a dizzying series of processes sanitize (somewhat) and purify the water, so that by the time it’s released back into your local surface water supply, it poses no threat to human health or the environment.

4. The Modern Electric Grid

Memorably described as the most complex machine devised by humanity, the modern electric grid is mind-boggling in its scale and intricacy. The more you know about it — the innumerable nodes; the bespoke, high-precision equipment; the hair-trigger sensitivity of power flows — the more amazing it is that it works at all.

5. Satellite Navigation

There’s something to be said for having an innate sense of direction, but let’s not kid ourselves. Satellite navigation is a godsend in unfamiliar territory, and also when every second counts on your regular route home. It wouldn’t be possible without a network of increasingly cheap, impressively reliable positioning satellites perched high above Earth, eternally triangulating.

A Golden Age, Warts and All

With all the doom and gloom in the discourse these days, it’s far too easy to overlook the amazing things humanity is capable of. Each of these technologies is a reminder of the power of human ingenuity and technical progress. Let’s hope, too, that they’re merely a preview of what’s to come.