Batteries leading to mobile electronics. Fundamentally changed the nature of the industrial revolution from capital equipment to consumer products. Not to mention that all the domestic technology like clothes and dish washers, robotic vacuums, and modern AC were born in the post war period.
> long distance communication
Digital telecom (transistors, protocols, the internet, etc.). Telegraph and early radio versus the internet - IMO that's like comparing chemical rockets to a warp drive.
> automobiles
Ubiquitous air travel. What was once a months long trip for the middle class is now a day long trip for anyone who can save a thousand bucks. It's impossible to convey just how world changing that is.
> refridgeration
Biotech and genetic engineering leading to the green revolution increased our carrying capacity to over 7 billion. Globalization that allows us to have seasonal produce at any time of year.
> IMO that's like comparing chemical rockets to a warp drive
Warp drives don't exist.
I think you underestimate the impact of chemical rockets. And telegraphs.
The telegraph made it possible for information to travel around the world within a day. "It's impossible to convey just how world changing" it was.
> .. Globalization ...
Globalization dates from at least the East India Company.
Modern agriculture also requires a non-sustainable use of fossil fuels, destroys ecosystems to raise meat animals more cheaply, and generates huge monocultures tempting the next great blight. "Genetic engineering" also includes making farmers economically dependent on the patented seeds from a small number of seed companies.
Speaking of which, post-war air conditioning, combined with cheap power from fossil fuels, meant that millions could move to places like Phoenix or Los Vegas and live in houses with styles meant for, for example, Cape Cod, rather than local vernacular architecture like thick adobe walls. Gigatons of CO2 emissions, to maintain a certain style, and because tearing down forests for stick building is cheaper in the short term.
The problem with all these counterpoints is that they take an initial change eg. automobiles and offer a "more" version e.g. air travel.
At some point, it's just going to come down to a difference of opinion over which transformation(s) were more qualitative and which were more quantitative. Suffice it to say that I regard all of your counterpoints are quantitive changes, and all of my original points as qualitative.
I acknowledge that there are different opinions about this.
> The problem with all these counterpoints is that they take an initial change eg. automobiles and offer a "more" version e.g. air travel.
The same can be said for every one of your examples. Automobiles: horsepower, but more! Like, literally. Last time I saw a car ad, they used the word horsepower. A century later.
> At some point, it's just going to come down to a difference of opinion over which transformation(s) were more qualitative and which were more quantitative. Suffice it to say that I regard all of your counterpoints are quantitive changes, and all of my original points as qualitative.
What makes automobiles qualitative and airplanes quantitative? That sounds very hand wavy.
It is a bit hand wavy. To take the travel example ... it wasn't that long ago that only a tiny percentage of people would ever have considered a journey beyond what could be accomplished on horseback (or even on foot) with all supplies being carried (except perhaps water).
Over time various forms of "mass" transits steadily increased the ease (and thus possibility) of taking longer journeys, but always on a schedule decided by the transport operator.
The development of the automobile (and the infrastructure that it requires) eventually changed this to make it feasible for an automobile owner to undertake almost arbitrary journeys without reference to a transport operator's schedule, and without requiring relatively unusual levels of "explorer-ness" as would have been the case of foot and horse travel.
So there was an inflexion point somewhere at which independent long distance travel switched from being something done only by a tiny percentage of people to something that was quite accessible.
That (for me) is the qualitative change.
Air travel is the quantitative change layered on top of that, which makes the possible distances and destinations of such travel more expansive.
It's hard to say. Even before automobiles we had penny farthings and early bicycles, before that we had handcarts, and before even that we had animal-driven wagons. Likewise before electrification, humans were already using water power in the form of water wheels for everything from sawing wood to grinding flour. When I look back at history, I realize that humans have been innovating for millenia, so it's really hard to say if one thing was more "innovative" than another.
The first automobiles were less of a qualitative change from horses than the change to modern automobiles. They were less reliable than horses with more limited range.
The first versions of most technologies are typically less of a qualitative change over their precursors. Even with computers, that's largely true. I'd say that's rarely a sensible metric to use.
> Electrification
Batteries leading to mobile electronics. Fundamentally changed the nature of the industrial revolution from capital equipment to consumer products. Not to mention that all the domestic technology like clothes and dish washers, robotic vacuums, and modern AC were born in the post war period.
> long distance communication
Digital telecom (transistors, protocols, the internet, etc.). Telegraph and early radio versus the internet - IMO that's like comparing chemical rockets to a warp drive.
> automobiles
Ubiquitous air travel. What was once a months long trip for the middle class is now a day long trip for anyone who can save a thousand bucks. It's impossible to convey just how world changing that is.
> refridgeration
Biotech and genetic engineering leading to the green revolution increased our carrying capacity to over 7 billion. Globalization that allows us to have seasonal produce at any time of year.