Vote: What Are The Most Important Inventions Of The Last 25 Years?

The best of the Best of What's New

| Published Dec 5, 2012 8:01 PM EST

Technology

Vote: What Are The Most Important Inventions Of The Last 25 Years?

There was no shortage of impassioned debate when we gathered to anoint the top 25 innovations in the history of Best of What’s New. But a dozen editors locked in a room can only get you so far. How do you rank the best of the best – the iPhone versus the Large Hadron Collider, the TiVo versus the Chunnel? How do you name the one product that has affected more, lasting change than all others? That friends, calls for a smackdown.

Over the next week, we’ll be tallying your votes through five rounds of head-to-head matchups (thanks to our friends over at Grantland whose Wire character smackdown inspired us). Rounds 1-3 pit products against their kin in four divisions: Vehicles, Science & Technology, Electronics, and The Internet. The ultimate goal: to name the most important product of the last quarter century.

And so today we begin with round one: 32 innovations enter, 16 will move on. You may cast only one vote per matchup, so deliberate carefully. This poll will close Thursday, December 6, at 16:00 Eastern time.