How come we don't have a Einstein / Edison/ Tesla/ Curie/ Newton in our time? Has all the great/ important/ useful discoveries and inventions been made already?... or what?
by 
Marky Mark
ANSWERS: 25
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....and who was the person who invented computers and the internet, please? +5
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I wonder the same.....sorry my answer doesn't help, but maybe they are here now, figuring out more complex matters, which take more time. Now things are more complicated because we already have the basics, and its time to build on those.
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Because "Gen. WHY" is lazy. +2
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I would disagree. I think Stephen Hawking, theoretical physicist, has made tremendous contributions to the field of Cosmology and Quantum Physics. His genius is without question and his perseverance under tremendous physical disability makes him one of my heroes of science in our time.
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Well according to the majority of US citizens, Obama can walk on water. Does that count?
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I think it's because the human race in general is more educated now so there are many bright people inventing/creating new things and so it's harder to stand out.
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The newest groundbreaking scientists are still in the making. You never get a full grasp of their discoveries and knowledge until after their life is over.
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Alot of those discoveries that had quite big impacts dont get fully recognized until some time after. Coupled with the fact that experiments take more and more and more people to run nowadays.... It's hard to be able to give recognition to a single person. However, there are people like Weinberg, who united String Theory, I suppose.
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My hypothesis is that we do have brilliant inventors, physicists, mathematicians, and others, but we don't hear about them because they're not celebrities (actors, athletes, or pop musicians). - What passes for "news" on nearly every cable channel today is half a dozen sensational headlines concerning celebrity scandals. Remember these? (Most are old b/c I haven't kept up): • Natalie Holloway disappears and may have been murdered. • Terri Schiavo is in a permanent coma, and every celebrity Republican from the president on down is summoned to "save" her. • Michael Jackson goes for last moonwalk. • Robert Blake shoots wife • Roman Polanski to be extradited for rape. - If a cute blonde white girl gets raped or murdered, Nancy Grace will be all over it for weeks, with Anderson Cooper hot on the trail. - Any network that dared to devote more than 15 seconds to a bright scientist with no athletic career or movies to his credit would lose 90% of its viewers (and ratings) overnight. - Sadly, we're stuck on dumb.
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Firstly, Edison doesn't really fit with the others: he was an inventor and entrepreneur, many of whose inventions were already latent (and some he allegedly stole). So the other three are spread across three centuries, so we would only be "due for" another one now. But I think a lot of the "low hanging fruit" of scientific research have been picked. We understand the world on our scale, both in space and time, pretty well. The areas we don't understand are the very large (the whole universe) and the very small (subatomic particles) and the very long ago (the Big Bang). Inevitably, discoveries in these areas are not going to be so dramatic. And, because they are so far from our common experience, they require complicated and expensive equipment to investigate, which brings along huge teams of scientists.
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Sir Timothy John Berners-Lee the Brit who was the inventor of the world wide web doesnt qualify? This has surely done more to aid communication and share learning then anything else in the recent past. Stephen Hawking, (another Brit)Cosmologist and physicist has also advanced scientific knowledge hugely. He has been awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest American Civilian award. +5
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Most discoveries in our time are brushed under the the rug until they are approved for the general public and then its not viewed as a discovery but more an advancement...usually being in science or digital technology
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Stephen Hawking, anyone?
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or what
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I think that the people who are unlocking the code behind DNA are opening a new window of understanding of living things that is also truly revolutionary.
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How about the human genome project? Or the world-wide web - an invention that was given away for free to the world? Another thing - many new discoveries or inventions today are in fields so esoteric that few of us can comprehend their importance.
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We do appear to be rather new-valuable-invention-compromised. Some of them seem to go off in a bizarre direction too. But maybe that is what the people of older times also thought. Also, a lot of 'old' inventions, which have been worked and re-worked to death by later generations, are starting to turn around and bite us on the butt.
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Times have changed with technological sophistication. Now individual efforts couldn't bring in so much of great results. It has to be a collective effort of several exceptional individuals under a mission leader that could being in any new invention or discovery. There are plenty of research projects underway all around the world. Mostly funded by the governments or corporations. Corporations take patents on the inventions of their inhouse research teams. Governments keep the results for themselves mostly for use in defense related industries. The scientific spirit is very alive and kicking - only the focus has shifted from individual effort to collective efforts.
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We have tons, but we're a society that's so overly concerned with what's going on in our electronic devices that we don't take the time to stop and look up from them to notice all the cool things that are going on around us.
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Military Inteligence steals them and their work away from the public eye... jusy kidding that would never happen in THIS country hahahahaha +5
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http://www.inventube.com/ooojay/blog/ AND www.patentpages.com/6913248 I'LL LET YOU DECIDE = ARE WE ALL GONE?
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The mapping of the human genome was huge. Most research is funded by large corporations and the individual is lost in the mix. There is Steven Hawking.
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There are plenty of great minds at work in the world at this moment. They are just not the pop icons of the time. Take a look at TED.com. you will find many great minds.
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You don't read much, do you?
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I think the opposite is true! There is soo, so much happening that even the fantastic receives little notice. Laptops many time more powerful than house sized mainframes when I was a youth, Miniaturisation in electronics. We now all carry cel phone capable of more range wise than backpack sized field radios in the vietnam war! Mine also has a camera, GPS with compass and functions as a moden for my (mobile) internet connection, info storage... lp's and tape have ben superceeded by flopies, then CD's and DVD. Flash units now hold more data than whole mainframes when I was a youth. We take the internet for granted, but frequently forget how new it is! Even 20 years ago it was in its infancy! Energy efficiency and alternative energy have all seen huge advances, Genetics was already bme mentioned All of these and more had to be thought up and developed by the Einsteins of our time for them to become reality!
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