Everything in our world that does not come from nature is a direct result of either invention or innovation. Inventions are ideas that have been turned into new devices or systems. During our everyday lives, we are surrounded by inventions. Some inventions are more significant than others. Some inventions have revolutionized the way in which we live.
Inventions have both positive and negative impacts. The automobile, for example, is an invention that illustrates this well. The automobile allowed for people to travel independently. This meant that they could go where they wanted to, whenever they wanted to. It was also much quicker than a horse and buggy or a bicycle. But, as time marches on, we are seeing many of the negative impacts of the automobile.
First of all, we are greatly depleting our natural resource of oil. Next, automobile exhaust puts many polluting fumes into our air. There are many other negative impacts relating to the automobile, but the positives must being outweighing the negatives, because this is one of America's most widely used means of transportation.
Humans, animals, and the plants are often impacted, both positively and negatively, by our inventions.
When inventions are improved, they are referred to as innovations. Innovations are improvements made to existing devices or systems. Most of the technologies that we use today have been innovated from their original design. For example, look at the innovation of writing instruments:
Some other examples of invention and innovation pairs would be...
VCR to DVD player
Computer to Laptop computer
Pencil to Mechanical pencil
Standard computer mouse to Optical computer mouse
Fire to Light bulb
Light bulb to LED (Light Emitting Diode)
Can you think of some others?
