The Pyramids are the biggest mystery, the LHC has the potential to be something incredible if it actually does what it's supposed to instead of being a multi-billion dollar money pit under Geneva, and the Internet would be a contender if it weren't for all the assholes on it. Written language and the moon landing seem the most logical, but I went with the one where we actually stepped foot on an alien body for the first time in the entirety of all known life.
So yeah. The moon. It's still our greatest achievement, which is kind of sad given that it was over 40 years ago and we've advanced technology so much since then. But our big leap with that technology is the cell phone and easy access to pornography.
Written communication, I would say. I understand that it evolved instead of just sprouting up from some genius's mind, but it's still incredible that we can even deliver simple messages to each other, let alone describe entire stories and events in minute detail simply with some squiggly symbols.
Even if written communication isn't the greatest, it's certainly the most influential. Without it, we couldn't have got anywhere.
Going to the Moon is extremely impressive BUT the Pyramids were built before the time of machinery. Yeah, we (humankind) went to the moon with a computer less powerful than a modern calculator but those Egyptian bitches built all that shit by HAND. Where did they get the blocks? Who knows... I imagine being able to build the pyramids took multiple decades to complete.
Moon is cool and all, but it was a political statement of the Cold War, hence there being zero movement on that front in half a century.
The internet is by far the greatest achievement. All the cat videos on Youtube clogging it does water down its potential, but the ability to communicate with anyone within a few seconds is crucial to our current society. The internet was the singularity of the 20th century, it irrevocably changed what it meant to be a human on the planet Earth. Obviously, not everyone uses it to write to people in China, Africa, Antarctica and Australia all at once, but the mere possibility it has created has united us, at the very least economically.
@nintendoeats: Yeah. That guy is an annoying little cockroach, and I'm surprised Aldrin kept his cool for as long as he did. There aren't too many people more deserving of a punch to the face.
Dude- goin' to the moon. It was literally (metaphorically) a giant leap for mankind... or it should have been. GET ON IT, NASA! (or rather, private programs funded by renegade billionaires)!
@mazik765: Certainly some of them depend on others to exist, but they each represent some kind of significant leap forward or exercise in human ingenuity/will/cooperation.
You invaded Lunarian ground and claimed it as your own. That amounts to a declaration of war, and you're really fucking lucky that I didn't follow through on that.
Without written communication, none of those things are possible.
Written communication is a way for us to travel into other people's minds and read their thoughts, even if they are across the world, even if they are from a different era. It's pretty much mankind's first time travel method.
You say that as though I was born on Earth and traveled to the Moon, something I doubt would be possible given the technology available in the 17th century.
What I also suggest putting up there is the Voyager missions.
These happened shortly after the Apollo missions and have sent exploration probes through a grand journey of our solar system and beyond. They've pretty much gave us our current basic understanding of our solar system.
Think about it this way - going to the moon is such a tiny distance compared to going past Neptune or Uranus. And right now, the Voyagers are still functioning and transmitting data from outside of our solar system. Plus, they have a golden record with human language, music, and thoughts put onto it!
If I trust my video game forum of choice for anything, it is in deciding the greatest achievement of man kind.
Hmm, maybe you're right. Perhaps we should ask some scientists to conduct a study to determine the objectively correct answer.
Back to seriousness, it seems to me that our greatest achievement is really just the one that we are collectively most proud of, so asking a bunch of people that are united by something completely unrelated to education or economic standing is actually not a bad way to go about it.
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