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What are world-changing creations made by a country other than the US? (lemmy.world)

submitted 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) by Glowstick@lemmy.world to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

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Almost all the global society-altering creations i can think of FROM THE PAST 100 YEARS are from America. I highly doubt that's true, so I'm looking for counter-examples.

To clarify, I'm looking for items on the level of:

the internet
rock music
nuclear weapons
ai
~~airplane flight~~ (older than 100 years)

And clearly I'm not just including things that improved the world.

The best ones i can think of are (I think):

~~Rocketry (Germany)?~~
Cheap tech manufacturing (Asian countries)?

EDIT:

Actually rocketry has been around much longer than 100 years. Even the category of "modern rocketry" begins in the late 1800s. Source: https://www.grc.nasa.gov/www/k-12/TRC/Rockets/history_of_rockets.html

EDIT 2:

A further explanation of what level I'm talking about.

There has to be a clear before and after, and it has to directly and quickly effect most of the world. For example the Internet. There's life before the internet, and there's life after the internet, which are both very different.

As opposed to for example if someone makes a groundbreaking foundational research discovery that effects the entire realm of their field of study, but doesn't quickly and directly create a difference in most people's lives, then it doesn't fit the category.

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[–] lukecooperatus@lemmy.ml 8 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Since many other comments have focused heavily on technological inventions, I think it makes sense to add some notable cultural impacts on society as well. As with most of the technological inventions mentioned, cultural forces also don't come out of nowhere and arguably have been around for a lot longer than 100 years, but I think it's pretty obvious that society within the past 100 years has been and still is being massively affected by the following concepts that did not originate in the USA:

feminism
civil rights movement (usually seen through a US-focused lens, but is happening everywhere)
gay rights movement (esp. in the 1990's and beyond)
gender-spectrum concepts
widespread influence of evolutionary theory (even the word "meme" came from a British biologist's book about evolution)

[–] Glowstick@lemmy.world -4 points 1 week ago

All extremely important, but are all way older than 100 years, or have no single country that created it