RDH - The Way We Live Now: The Ten Best Innovations of the Modern Age (Supplemented by the Ten Most Overrated)

The Way We Live Now: The Ten Best Innovations of the Modern Age (Supplemented by the Ten Most Overrated)

March 1, 2008

Let's get right to the lists; that's where the fun is.

THE TEN BEST INNOVATIONS OF THE MODERN AGE

10. The nonsmoking restaurant and bar. I love cigarettes as much as the next person, but now that it's been years since I last smoked one I realize they were a trick and that if you remove the stimulant (at first and second hand) you lose your appetite for the drug—in a matter of weeks.

9. The digital watch. This is a particular boon because if the modern world is about anything, it's about strangers. And when a particular stranger asks you for the time, it's nice to be able to say "8:21" instead of something like "about twenty past"—which sounds too casual and might invite further conversation.

8. The concept of reusable shopping bags as an environmental imperative. Unless you're specifically buying cheap plastic bags that you intend to someday throw away, reusable bags are a great idea.

7. Subarus with permanent all-wheel drive. Especially if you live in a snowy, hilly region, you will appreciate these cars. Honda Civics are no different from Subaru Imprezas until you need the extra traction. And don't worry: Subarus can easily exceed the speed limit, and they play all genres of music. Best of all, you don't have to have a college degree to own one.

6. Pasta sauce in a jar. Remember when your grandmother used to stew and skin tomatoes just to make a sauce? Maybe not. But it's not the seventies anymore, either. Move over Ragu and Prego and say hello to dozens upon dozens of special varieties. Vegetarian? No problem. Environmentalist? Go organic.

5. The wide-mouth can. Before the advent of the conveniently scored lid, there wasn't any problem: everybody knew how to use their church key to make two holes in the top of the can—one for liquid and the other for air. The pull tabs introduced in the 1960s—the ones you could choke on if you weren't careful—tried to compensate for the lack of this second hole with the length of the opening. The modern stay tabs that soon followed were safer, but the rounder hole was too small. Of course, anyone's free to punch a second hole in the lid, but by the late 1990s, thanks to Coors, we had the option of the wide-mouth can. This patented option is now—at least in the United States and at least on the beer can—somewhat standard.

4. Delivered pizza. This innovation is really more of an opportunity taken. Pizza, as we all know, is good hot or cold, and if you own a conventional oven it can, Lazarus-like, be brought back from the dead—hours or even days postmortem. If you don't quite see what I'm getting at, compare french fries. If McDonald's delivered, they'd have to average about three minutes from deep-fryer to your front door or the fries would be DOA, enjoyable only with extra salt and tons of ketchup—preferably while blotto.

3. The mobile telephone. There's no longer any technological barrier to remaining in touch even when you've been abducted by strangers—and this is a huge relief.

2. Unicode. Now it's possible to put any character into any document anywhere. For an example of this, see this sample vignette (notice the sideways U characters).*

"Mr. Harper, aren't you forgetting something?" You mean beef jerky? Well, that's more of an example of market saturation and packaging than out-and-out innovation.

1. Velveeta cheese. Ordinary cheese is good, but it tends to be either too hard or too soft and when it goes bad, it really goes bad. In the same vein, it's either too subtle—like mozzarella, which is really only good with lots of salt and/or the addition of a salty meat like pepperoni or sausage—or too bold (think gorgonzola). Velveeta, on the other hand, can be enjoyed straight out of the box or melted over anything. And unlike ordinary cheese, it's either good or it's not. When it's not, it turns darker and becomes hard—but only on the outside: simply cut away the dark areas and enjoy the remainder.

THE TEN MOST OVERRATED INNOVATIONS OF THE MODERN AGE

10. Wireless keyboards and mice. You have to stay close to your monitor anyway so you can see what you're typing and clicking on. Wireless technology is impressive in direct proportion to how far away one device is from the other.

9. Portable electronic book readers. Books take an awfully long time to read; it's nice to spend this time with a nicely bound sheaf of paper—one that's maybe passed through many other hands. And if you need a portable computer, why not get one with a full-size keyboard, so you can type like a normal human being?

8. User-selected ringtones. Fun at first, but the illusion of creative stewardship over your own life soon fades into the ordinary.

7. Designer eyeglass frames. These have managed to give especially hip people an updated look, but for many of us they're no magic bullet.

6. The gel bicycle seat. The seats on conventional diamond-frame bicycles are too small for adult human beings, and gel doesn't change that. Imagine going to a dinner party and being offered a bicycle seat as a perch. No, only Lance Armstrong and his ilk can manage to enjoy something like that.

5. Motorized shopping carts. Great for some, they tend to encourage sloth and foster a sense of entitlement in others.

4. Velcro fasteners for shoes. On the one hand, these are a guaranteed way to delay the onset of shoe-tying abilities in young children; on the other, they serve as a disincentive among the elderly to wear nice-looking shoes.

"But what about the iPhone?" The iPhone isn't exactly an example of innovation but of miniaturization. It's a little like those tiny bicycles in some circus acts—we're amazed they can actually function like the real thing.

3. Gas-powered snow removers. These planetary scourges, in addition to being noisy, contribute to global warming in two ways: (1) by being gas-powered, and (2) by removing snow. Smart people wait until springtime comes. What's your hurry, anyway? Need to get to work? Don't bother, you're burning up the planet enough as it is.

2. Blow-dryers for hands in public restrooms. Germophobes need a paper option so they can protect themselves from touching the door when they exit the restroom.

1. ATMs. These have a way of not giving out money if you don't have money and of giving out money even if you shouldn't be taking out money.

The focus of these lists is probably too narrowly skewed toward food and gadgets, but these days that's where the innovation seems to be.

*I don't bother to represent that character in the body of this essay because it's not guaranteed to be compatible with whatever you're using to read this page. Here's a test: ⊃. Were you able to see a sideways sans-serif U ("tipped over" on its side to the left; i.e., the mathematical symbol for superset) on your browser? Write to me and let me know.