this post was submitted on 12 Aug 2026
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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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[โ€“] GMac@feddit.org 10 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

My apprehensions are fine thanks. You're just not looking very hard.

Inventor of the television - John Logie Baird https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Logie_Baird

Inventor of the telephone - Alexander Graham Bell https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Graham_Bell

On the MRI - per the wikipedia link you posted but may not have read thoroughly. "During the 1970s, a team led by John Mallard built the first full-body MRI scanner at the University of Aberdeen." I'll grant I could have been more specific.

If you want to argue invention exists at the point of theory instead of physical creation, then i suspect you will struggle find much that wasn't posited, theorised, described or conceived in some way before America was colonised.

American exceptionalism is a thing...