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Ask HN: What technologies still impress you most today?

12 points by bkudria ↗ HN
I had a moment of amazement the other day while I was putting in my contacts - these flimsy plastic disks allow me to see, and we can manufacture them with quite amazing precision.

A lot of technology we use every day is really quite amazing, if you stop to think about it. What technology has amazed you recently, and why?

14 comments

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mixmax
Cars. Making a box that will carry 4 people around at 80 mph is a pretty neat accomplishment. Doing it comfortably, safely, and at a a competitive price is an amazing feat of engineering and optimization.
melling
Would it be wrong to say we're ending the first decade of the 21st century and I was really hoping for a lot more tech. Most of us grew up on sci-fi. I'd say we're a little behind schedule. "Sorry Dave, I can't do that." is a pretty old movie quote.
anigbrowl
Transistors. The sheer complexity and speed of what can be achieved by stacking together a large number of electrically activated switches never ceases to amaze me.
myaccount
I agree. The fact that Moore's Law has held true for so long has made transistors the most important technology.

In terms of world changing technology, the Deion Sanders Hot Dog Express is a close second to transistors: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zZyGaVNihK0

MaysonL
The scientific method. It works on just about any problem you're able to apply it to.
mrlyc
I still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea.
nfnaaron
Having been to the moon.
mikhailfranco
The truly impressive thing about getting to the moon, was that it happened only 66 years after the Wright brothers got off the ground. The presence of two world wars during the intervening period is not entirely coincidental.
jason_tko
The fact I can sit in a cafe, wirelessly connect to the internet, then connect to the office through my VPN, and then log into a virtual machine that doesn't even physically exist.
jacquesm
Technology will only really amaze you when you have to do without it for a week. Or even just an hour. Even the most basic stuff is so far beyond what you personally would be able to re-create starting from scratch, even with all your knowledge that it might as well all be science fiction.

We're standing on top of a nearly endless layercake of invention, unable to even conceive any more of what it would be like to stand on the plate the cake rests on.

We'd probably last for about 15 minutes. But since the heart of the question is 'recently', I'd have to pick abs, without it I wouldn't be writing this.

zbyszek
A relative of mine recently had heart surgery of a type that is fairly routine nowadays. But when I think of the fact that you can pull apart someone's rib-cage, stick knives into their heart and then put it all back together again such that the person is walking about not long after, I am still impressed.
fezzl
The world wide web, for being so relevant to many things I do.