by Michelle Lentz
Last week Time Magazine released their Top 50 Inventions of 2008. I love this list. It covers fun, unexpected, and brilliant ideas – ideas you might not think of as an invention. After all, as time changes, we’ve moved past the expectation of printing presses and cotton gins and instead, we’ve got the Orbital Internet and a moving, dynamic skyscraper.
Here are some of my favorites that were listed:
4 Hulu.com: Did you think of this as an invention? I didn’t but it certainly has changed the way I watch TV. Although I was bemoaning the other day that I couldn’t access Hulu content offline for when I’m in-flight.
15 Dr Horrible (direct-to-web supervillain): Notable for so many things, including viral marketing, the fun but silly plot, and the sheer number of legal downloads, both paid and free.
20 The Everything Game – Spore: I really need to get my hands on a copy of Spore. Everyone I talk to just raves about it. Have you evolved your creature today?
32 Facebook for Spies (A-Space): Even Spies need a social network. It’s a way for agencies such as the FBI, CIA, and NSA to actually communicate with each other instead of stepping on each other like they do in the movies.
42 Disemvoweling: I love that this is considered an invention. I would have sworn it was “invented” last year over at BoingBoing.net, but my time may be blurring. Disemvoweling is letting trolls comment on your blog, bt rmvng ll thr vwls.
Some of the inventions listed fall into the amazing category, such as the Hadron Collider, the Global Seed Vault, and smog-eating cement. Other inventions are wonderfully useful such as made-in-transit packaging for food, airborne wind power, a biomechanical energy harvester, and green crude fuel. Time even included the Obama campaign as an invention, citing their amazing use of the Web and viral marketing, using campaign funding to run a campaign for the new millenium.
Time chose, as the #1 invention, the retail DNA test. Retailing for $399, the test makes it easy – and accessible – to identify more than 90 traits for which you, or your children, may be at risk.
What are your favorite inventions of 2008?
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