Sep 16 2006

The Birth of Gadgets

Posted by Geezer as Gadgets

I was thinking the other day…. you know, there was a time in the history of the Universe when Gadgets simply didn’t exist.

I mean really, unless you consider the Universe itself a gadget, the first 99% of our Universe’s history was gadgetless. Then, you start getting these cool little biological gadgets. I would say that the first true gadgets to appear in history were the ones associated with the first organisms. Gadgets for reproduction. Gadgets for motility. Gadgets for energy retrieval.

Once evolution kicked into gear, new biological gadgets appeared. Flying gadgets, swimming gadgets, defense gadgets.

But it wasn’t until humans came around that we really started getting technological gadgets. I suppose that the first human gadgets were the ones used for hunting and fighting. Piercing devices. Not sure if you’d really call those gadgets, since they were so simple. Fire…now that’s a gadget that we discovered…but a pretty damned cool gadget.

Things started to really take off when humans learned how to mechanize the world. Gadgets to farm. Gadgets to track the number of sunlit hours during a day. Gadgets for faster transportation. Gadgets to travel on water….and collect fish.

Then we got gadgets to reproduce books and gadgets to precisely track the time. Gadgets to automate mundane tasks and do things better than humans could alone.

And today we live in a world of gadgets. Gadgets to cool our homes and entertain our evenings. Gadgets to challenge our minds and take a load off our feet. Gadgets to speed up our days and make them more productive. Gadgets to make us wealthy, while we sleep at night.

The history of gadgets…how, oh how, did we get this wonderful world of gadgets. And boy am I glad to live in such a world.

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10 Responses

Mr Butterscotch
16|Sep|2006

The Internet - an amazing technological communications tool (and gadget - either a porn-filled dystopia or a great land of wonder. Intersting how some gadgets are a double edged sword… I’d also put atomic power/harnessing the atom in there as well… along with some military inventions (including incendiary bombs and landmines).
Quimby
16|Sep|2006

Yeah, this was sorta just a post off the top of my head. I’d like to develop this idea and actually come up with a list of the greatest gadgets of all time.

Mr. B, you up for using the comment section here to brainstorm ideas for a new post on “Greatest Gadgetrs of All Time”????
Quimby
16|Sep|2006

What I meant to say is: “This post is lacking in concrete specifics. We should try to come up with a list of specific gadgets in historical order.”
Mr Butterscotch
17|Sep|2006

Yo Quimby, count me in. I guess you’d need to break down the gadgets into two types (at least). You have functional gadgets including cars, trains, planes etc but then you also have lifestyle gadgets such as toasters, DVDs etc.

From there, I guess you could branch down, or write them in chronological order. My preference however would always be to write about the lifestyle stuff - though none of them would have been possible without the functional ones which came first! Of course a lot of gadgets have a military history in there somewhere too… Always an interesting point.
Mr Butterscotch
17|Sep|2006

For the record, my top gadgets in no particular order would be:
The computer
Internet/WWW
The CD (data and music)
Toaster
Microwave
Coffee maker
(and of course power stations to create the juice to make these things work).
Quimby
17|Sep|2006

I like the distinction between functional and lifestyle, but I’m not sure why a toaster is lifestyle rather than functional. Lifestyle, in my view, would be things that are primarily entertainment and/or fashion based. So iPods, Moto RAZRs, DVDs would be lifestyle.

Functional gadgets are going to be the ones that help with life’s necessities or manual labor. Anything that cooks or prepares food is going to be functional.

Of course, many of the lifestyle gadgets are in many senses functional. Phone communication servers a functional role. But the fact that we use cell phones today for mostly for leisure activities would make them lifestyle.

Of course, one could even argue that “play” itself, from an evolutionary perspective serves a functional role. But then we’re getting too philosophical!
Quimby
17|Sep|2006

Banging devices (Hammers, Grinders)
Piercing devices (Spears, Swords, Knives, Staplers, Needles)
Warming devices (Fire and its fuel)
Digging devices (Shovels, Ploughs, Backhoes)
Communication devices (Letters, Radio, Phone, Internet)
Visual devices (Cave Paintings, Art, TV, Film)
Time devices (Sun Dial, Calendar, Watch/Clock)
Transportation (Horse, Wheel, Carriage, Car, Plane, Rocket)

When you read “Film” it should be translated as the devices that support film (DVD, iPod, etc.)
More to come….
Mr Butterscotch
17|Sep|2006

That’s quite some list - however I’d still say that toasters etc would be lifestyle rather than functional. If you have a cooker/grill or combi you can toast things on that. I know from my student days you don’t need a toaster, much like espresso machines they are a nice addition however.

Play as functional? How so? Apart from understanding oneself and relationship building etc? I mean if we’re talking about how play evolved when humans started to have free time rather than surviving, and we moved to living…
Quimby
17|Sep|2006

Well, play is functional in the sense of releasing chemicals that are healthy and regenerative for the organism. It also encourages social bonding which plays a survival function for some organisms.
Mr Butterscotch
18|Sep|2006

On the subject of gadgets - do you think blu-ray/HD DVD will really make much difference? Obviously DVD was a big jump in that we have a never-downgrading format unlike VHS, but now we’re looking at a jump that seemingly won’t change much, unless you have a great TV to go with it.

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