What is an underrated invention—something like the paper clip, but as impactful as the toilet?

Scott Douglas Jacobsen asks Rick Rosner to name an underrated invention with outsized impact. Rosner begins with the coffee machine as a daily, underappreciated convenience, tracing popular consumer shifts from instant coffee to Mr. Coffee to Keurig. He then widens the lens to modern technological “phase changes,” arguing the smartphone has reshaped society at planetary scale since the iPhone’s 2007 debut. From there, he emphasizes escalating complexity in world-changing tools, from cars to wearable computers and implanted medical devices. Rosner concludes that the integrated circuit is the invisible keystone of modern life, enabling near-constant human interaction with computing.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: What is an underrated invention—something like the paper clip, but as impactful as the toilet?

Rick Rosner: One invention almost everyone uses daily and rarely appreciates is the coffee machine.

Before Keurig, there was Mr. Coffee, which people loved in the 1970s and 1980s. Before that, there was instant coffee—crystals dissolved in hot water—which produced an inferior drink but was fast and convenient. In the 1950s and 1960s, that mattered.

Coffee technology may not be underrated, but it is ubiquitous.

I also prefer the paper clamp to the paper clip. Trump once mentioned it in a speech, holding one up and talking about how much it would hurt to get caught in it, which was ridiculous, but so is most of what he says.

Beyond that, the smartphone fundamentally altered society—for better and worse. The first iPhone appeared around 2007. Now there are roughly as many smartphones in the world as there are people. That is a genuine phase change.

In general, the world-changing inventions of today are vastly more intricate and complex than those of the past.

The automobile was a world-changing invention, and even early cars were complex, though nothing like modern vehicles with all their added systems.

An iPhone, by comparison, is orders of magnitude more complicated than a car. Much of what we now take for granted consists of wearable computers. That alone has saved countless lives.

About 1% of the population has computer chips implanted in their bodies—mostly pacemakers, but also cochlear implants and insulin pumps. Those insulin pump patches worn on the arm almost certainly contain computer chips.

In my house, there were no computer chips until 1974. The first chip entered my home when my father bought a simple four-function calculator.

Now, there are hundreds of chips in the average household, with combined computing power far exceeding the total computation performed by everyone during World War II.

An invention that has fundamentally changed everything—and which we barely notice—is the integrated circuit. It has transformed nearly every aspect of modern life.

Most people, when awake, do not go more than a few minutes without interacting with something that contains a computer chip. That is the single most transformative development of this century.

Rick Rosner is an accomplished television writer with credits on shows like Jimmy Kimmel Live!, Crank Yankers, and The Man Show. Over his career, he has earned multiple Writers Guild Award nominations—winning one—and an Emmy nomination. Rosner holds a broad academic background, graduating with the equivalent of eight majors. Based in Los Angeles, he continues to write and develop ideas while spending time with his wife, daughter, and two dogs.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen is the publisher of In-Sight Publishing (ISBN: 978-1-0692343) and Editor-in-Chief of In-Sight: Interviews (ISSN: 2369-6885). He writes for The Good Men Project, International Policy Digest (ISSN: 2332–9416), The Humanist (Print: ISSN 0018-7399; Online: ISSN 2163-3576), Basic Income Earth Network (UK Registered Charity 1177066), A Further Inquiry, and other media. He is a member in good standing of numerous media organizations.

Photo by Christin Hume on Unsplash

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