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Man's best discovery/invention ?
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Gaffer tape: Fixes almost anything, including people who can't shut up 
So much depends upon a red wheelbarrow...
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45502/the-red-wheelbarrow
The Internet has made some things more convenient. And, it has brought us some useful features. But, when I compare life today with life before the Internet, the quality of life was actually better.
The Internet has taken a lot away from us as well. Granted most of that is because of how people have chosen to use it. But, we have in many areas lost a sense of community.
We used to apply for jobs in person, make personal contact, walk in, meet people, and have a chance to make an impression. Now many employers refuse personal applications, and require you to use a website which is usually cumbersome, and you lose that chance to make a personal impression.
People are so caught up with social media, that they rarely see any value in personal local interactions. And, a lot of them become withdrawn.
Then there's the relationship factors... Whether it's a spouse online too much, a porn addiction, too absorbed in the social media that they forget about "home" and "family", etc.
As I said, those are people's use choices coming into play. So, not necessarily the fault of the Internet, but a symptom that has become too common.
I do enjoy the positive aspects, I can find something on my own and have it shipped here from across the world. We can exchange information and ideas much easier, etc.
But, for all the conveniences it adds, there are more things that I miss about the "old" world.
I'm not saying that the Internet is "bad". Unfortunately, it has had some effects that aren't positive though. Unintended consequences.
There was something nice about the way things were in an unconnected world.
I would put the internet on a par with the invention of the printing press and the development of paper in how it has transformed culture and society.
Are you sure you're not my long lost brother/sister from another mother ? We think alike in this regard.
I'm one of those guys you will NOT see standing at an ATM if the bank branch is open. I like the human touch ... a (usually) pretty face, the smell of perfume, the smile, and the "How are you today, Mr. Luddite ?", even if I know that the interaction is scripted by JP Morgan Chase.
I cannot tell you how many golden opportunities (friendships, relationships, ... even soul mates ???) have been lost to the Internet, although the Internet can be credited with creating some relationships that might otherwise never have formed. On the whole, I think the Internet destroyed a LOT more than it created.
So, I guess it is one of those mystifying questions - we know it is the fault of how people use the internet rather than the internet itself. But can the means absolve itself of all responsibility ? When we talk of guns in a political debate, the guns are the means to commit violent crime, but ultimately the people pull the trigger. In this case, the Internet is the means and the people are the ones clicking the mouses and typing away.
Without the means being taken completely away, the means will continue to be abused.
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Systems of writing and recording knowledge - allowing us to access lifetimes worth of information without having to learn it all ‘the hard way’ - civilisations would literally not have existed without the capacity to pass down and ‘remember’ knowledge in this way...
Was going to start with a primitive tech, but since Neanderthals had language, fire, edged tools, woodworking tools, wood boats, navigation, textiles, jewelry, musical instruments, and crude glass worked out before humans cohabitated with them, man can't really take credit for any of those things.
So, DNA & the entire field of Genetics
It's so early days yet that we're only beginning to scratch the surface of the infinite morass of what is possible. But, the possibilities boggle the imagination, from fixing the human body, to enhancing it, to redesigning it completely, to issuing small scale changes locally, to permanent changes to the germ line spread around the world, bringing accidentally extinct species back from the dead or building entirely new ones, to creating the ultimate weapon for genocide or complete removal of the species from the planet. Programming natures code = absolute power. It is how our species progresses from our current primitive state, and how it reaches its end.
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I concur, although I also believe the internet (and certainly "social media") have offered more downside to the planet than the invention and subsequent ubiquity of either paper or the printing press. Among other things, the internet seems to have facilitated the seeming destruction of a human being's "time to reflect" before the perceived or real need to utter an opinion, a decision, a judgment or recommendation.
The social media aspects of the internet also seem to make us prefer binary thinking, far more so than did just paper and a printing press, but we still do live in a more complex world. The ability to foment conflict by mass communication forced into binary mode in an analog world is very dangerous. We have no idea who may launch the next war but we're prepared to blame the other guy, which seems like a recipe for terminating further human inventions and discoveries.
On balance who'd say we should agree to ditch the internet? Not I, nor most of us probably. But still it offers more problems in "best practices" than I'd say the printing press ever has done. We thought the circulation of obscene or heretical thought was a big problem back in the day, sure. But now we can spread terabytes of falsehoods in nanoseconds, or as in the case of surveillance, scoop up erstwhile private communications in similar quantities and timeframes.
There's probably some sort of comeuppance for all this over the horizon. Glad I don't know what it is! In the meantime, even if we've more or less substituted mass possession of search engine skills for actual knowledge, I'd fight tooth and nail to retain the marvel of so many people having so much useful information (including images and sound) at hand in such portable frameworks.
Ah well, that's per the grand design since the Garden of Eden
Was worth giving up a rib for, right?
Not to mention the roasted ducks or chickens.. or chunks of deer or bison.
Think of the (inadvertent?) bravery of people who discovered which mushrooms are safe to eat. I mean a bunch of guys croaking on assorted deadly mushrooms should tell you don't go there but somehow someone persevered long enough to find out there are actually mushrooms you can eat and live to tell the tale.,
Pointy Stones/Sticks: Made food sources more easily accessible and dependable. Giving the energy needed to develop a large brain. Otherwise we may have been stuck around the development level of Australopithecus afarensis.
Or eating mushrooms in Joshua Tree and staying alive with all the wildlife and sharp, pointy things.
I love criminis myself. Light as a button, but meaty like a portobello. I wash and cook down a few lbs when it's required (it's great on everything really) and the nature of mushrooms is that they give off a lot of water on their own, more so with salt, and you can use a ton of butter on them. The last time I cooked a lot of mushrooms for a brunch we had with close family I used about 3 1/3 lb of sweet cream butter (unsalted) to 8 lb of mushrooms. Very rich, of course. I think if some people at the table knew how much I'd used I'd have had a fork lodged in me. Somewhere. Butter just tastes better than anything else.
As @A.Goldberg can attest to my unhealthy addiction to shopping at Costco, I usually clean house in their sweet cream butter section unless there's a limit being imposed. The cashier's and "bag person's" face as I load anywhere from 15-40 lb of butter onto the thingamajig is priceless. At other stores like restaurant supply that's open to the public and carries European import, I'll load a similar load up and usually get told I can sign up for their B2B accounts and they'll do some paperwork and I say this is for home use and their eyes bug out.
Never had issues with other customers (first come first serve of course) but I do recall some guy calling me an "*******" for doing that a few years ago a week prior to Thanksgiving.
Now somewhat comedically to piggyback off of that, the biggest discovery I would say we have discovered, and while tongue-in-cheek, not necessarily tongue-in-cheek is....
bonking.
Seriously. If man didn't reproduce, none of us would be here to invent anything else that we already have. So happy gettin' it on, everyone!
After that, I would say fire and the wheel.
BL.
I just heard an report on NPR yesterday about the work to refornulate medicines to make them more stable, longer lasting, and requiring lower doses, something to do with protein size and using a different atom to bind them. And surgery today in many cases is light years ahead of what they were doing in the 1960s, amazing for what passes as out-patent surgery or requires just an overnight stay.
For modern commercial applications I’d list:
- Computer power shyrocketed.
- Microwave oven- amazing!
- Cell phones- which btw at least one furturist predicts they will be gone in 10 years, replaced by other devices we wear in our ears or eyes, possibly surgically attached, think brain augment.
- Automobile technology- computerization, self driving vehicles, drones.
- Medical technology and procedure.
- Large screen HD TVs.
- Electronic gaming- started with Pong, today we have VR.
- The commercialization of space
- Lots I have overlooked.