greatest technological inventions of the past 25 years

Spike Lee has said the reason he went to film school was because it was the only way for him to get time with editing machines and other equipment. If only he had Final Cut Pro. Computer based non linear video editing systems allowed users to ability to edit their video with the same precision as licensed professionals. Nowadays, even professionals use digital non linear systems like Final Cut and Avid, replacing an editing system that s been in place since Ben Hur broke box office records.

But what good would home video editing be without the ability to record your own content? Sony attempted to give consumers a camcorder based on its Betamax standard, but... it was Betamax. The camcorder as we know it popped off two years later when VHS camcorders hit the scene. Porn would never be the same.

Ever since Kodak modified a Nikon SLR body and passed it off as its own, the digital SLR field has grown tremendously. It s the de facto standard for all photographers worth their weight in developer fluid. Working like a regular single lens reflex camera, light enters the lens, reflects off the pentaprism, and hits the image sensor instead of film. DSLRs brought down the cost of being a photographer, making dark rooms, sadly, a thing of the past.

What s better than one processor? More than one processor. Duh. The only problem with having multiple processors in your comp is the amount of heat the two chips can produce. This is where multi core processors come in. The core of a processor is the part that does all the work, so a chip with two cores can do double the work. That is, if the software can support it. And in 2010, most do.

Who still listens to the radio? Well, we do when we re on the road, but even then we wish we had satellite radio. Being powered by a geostationary space based satellite means you can listen to the same Sirius or XM radio station from New York to Miami without hearing the same Taio Cruz song 18 times along the way.

We may be showing our age with this one, but fuck it. Every time we see a StarTAC, we think about how crazy it was the first time we saw one. It was so small, so futuristic, so damn fly. After General Telephone & Electronics lost the patent for its Flip Phone a house phone with a flip down microphone Motorola tried to snatch it up before launching the phone that would change the game.

It may seem like digital HDTV is just now starting to take off, but it s been around since the mid 90s when MIT, working along with a group of TV companies, developed a standard for digital high definition broadcasting. It s changed the way people watch TV. Imagine having your big ass TV with no HD channels to support it?

There was a time when people used to only verbally communicate with each other. Then came instant messaging. The earliest form of IM ing came about with Internet relay chat, which allowed people to communicate in forums and channels. Building onto that were peer to peer systems like ICQ and AOL Instant Messenger, which allowed people to connect directly to each other. It also gave guys the courage to spit game to girls they would never even look at it in real life. Play on, playas.

It took a while for digital cameras to catch on, but once prices dropped in the mid 90s, the market exploded. What used to cost a couple stacks now costs a couple c notes. It has become one of the most viable consumer tech segments, with brands offering entire multi tiered lineups and a camera for each and every price point. The only bad thing about everyone having a digital camera? It s increasingly hard to get drunk and not have it wind up on the Internet the next day.

True photo philes may decry the lossy image file format that has come to dominate digital photo distribution, but where would we be without it? Without the JPEG there would be no Facebook, no online photo galleries, no easy way to save the photos you took with your digital camera, and no easy way to download porn. We owe a lot to the JPEG.