Gallery: The Top 25 Innovations of the Last 25 Years

"The 14-year effort to complete the Large Hardon Collider was only half the battle."

Interesting typo there -- Freudian slip?

Your list is biased in favor of late breaking technologies, some of which are exciting but are largely unproven and, at least so far, haven’t changed lives and may be meaningless in the long run, or meaningless except to those who see value in random statistics like “world’s tallest building”.

A “great innovation” isn’t just a great idea, but something that revolutionizes lives, not just a few, but everyone’s. Something that opens the door to a new way of thinking. You’d have to keep the examples somewhat general, like digital music and antilock breaks. But the spy drone, protease inhibitors, compact fluorescent bulb, gas plasma TV are not really innovations, they’re simply interesting strategies, but all use existing technologies.

Likewise, the Internet was the innovation, not the browser. Mosaic is simply one of hundreds of tools used to harness the Internet, any one of which is innovative in it’s own right, like internet radio streaming devices. The Canon EOS 5D Mark II is another example of a technology, digital photography. It’s digital photography that is the innovation, not any particular camera.

You’d have to list the human genome project as one of the greatest innovations of the last 25 years (rather than the Sequencer 20 System, which is an example of this technology).

The Burj Khalifa skyscraper is not one of the 25 best innovations of the last 25 years. It doesn’t change anyone’s life.

The Mars Curiosity and Sky Crane are not innovative. These did not change lives or introduce a new way of thinking. The Mars Curiosity is the third rover, and will make no significant discoveries beyond that of the first two rovers. Most of what we know about Mars was ascertained from satellite imaging and telescopic spectroscopy from Earth, which is what made the first rover possible in the first place.

Great innovations would include such things as the personal computer and microwave oven, which satisfy a better definition of “greatest innovations” than your article suggests, but are older than 25 years. However, I might include the tablet, since it alters the PC experience significantly.

Where ABS really shines is on my motorcycle.