Almost all the global society-altering creations i can think of FROM THE PAST 100 YEARS are from America. I highly doubt that's true, so I'm looking for counter-examples.

To clarify, I'm looking for items on the level of:

• the internet
• rock music
• nuclear weapons
• ai
• airplane flight (older than 100 years)

And clearly I'm not just including things that improved the world.

The best ones i can think of are (I think):

• Rocketry (Germany)?
• Cheap tech manufacturing (Asian countries)?

EDIT:

Actually rocketry has been around much longer than 100 years. Even the category of "modern rocketry" begins in the late 1800s. Source: https://www.grc.nasa.gov/www/k-12/TRC/Rockets/history_of_rockets.html

EDIT 2:

A further explanation of what level I'm talking about.

There has to be a clear before and after, and it has to directly and quickly effect most of the world. For example the Internet. There's life before the internet, and there's life after the internet, which are both very different.

As opposed to for example if someone makes a groundbreaking foundational research discovery that effects the entire realm of their field of study, but doesn't quickly and directly create a difference in most people's lives, then it doesn't fit the category.

Gun Powder and Paper were invented/discovered in China.

While no one person or entity invented Algebra, the first time it was ever conceived as an independent organized science was in Bagdad, when it was a Persian city.

The battery was invented in Italy.

Again while it evolved over time a scientist in China is credited as discovering the cure for Malaria.

Nokia phones (Finland)

That's not nearly on the same level. The first commercially successful cell phone was the dynatac 8000, a phone made by an American and in the American market

WAY longer than 100 years ago.

High speed rail is usually credited to Japan.

Ahh I missed that identifier.

Even if so, that's not on the same level. That's just a continuously advancing technology, not a particular creation. The level I'm talking about would be the creation of rail road technology altogether.

Sputnik, Vostok, the artificial heart, the math behind modern multi-stage rocketry, and space rovers were all invented by the Soviets.

First satellite! Yes! Great one!

As for the rest, they don't meet the criteria. I don't know what vostok is and a web search doesn't show anything. And the others aren't on the same level of world-changing, even though they're extremely important and impressive

Vostok 1 was the capsule that contained Yuri Gagarin, the first man in space. All of these were critical advancements in space flight and science. What is the criterion for "world changing" that doesn't include the numerous critical advancements in space?

LEDs - Japan

Quantum physics - international but Germany is fair attribution early on

As you indicated, most recent advances in manufacturing - Japan, China, Taiwan, Korea. This is the biggest imho.

China’s recent battery tech I think could be amazing, and I wouldn’t lump that under manufacturing.

GLP-1 (we'll see where this goes) - Denmark but also USA

We’re definitely still missing so many :)

There's a Brazilian saying, "Catapulta não é motor" ("catapult isn't an engine"). While the Wright brothers surely contributed with substantial knowledge to the field of aviation, airplanes are a Brazilian invention, invented by Alberto Santos-Dumont. There's even a joke only Brazilians (or non-Brazilian people very knowledgeable of the cultural uniqueness across Brazilian regions) could readily understand: one of the major proofs that airplanes are Brazilian is the naming "TREM de pouso" (landing gear). For context: Santos-Dumont was born in the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais, a state very known for its unique accent and dialects such as using "trem" (train) for "thing", as in "pode pegá ess-trem fazenfavô?" being "Mineirês" for "Posso pegar essa coisa, por gentileza?" ("can I have this thing, please?"), so whenever something lacks a proper name/definition, Mineiros (those born and/or living in the state of Minas Gerais) are very likely to call it a "trem" (e.g. "eita trem bão", "oh, what a nice/good thing!"). Source: I'm Brazilian and also been residing in the state of Minas Gerais.!asklemmy@lemmy.ml

The thing is that we created the UN to stop doing this stupid nationalism thing. We wanted to create an organizational structure to facilitate work with other nations to develop advancements together.

Again, first satellite! Great example! And an absolute first achievement in rocketry!

First man in space is close, but it's not as world changing, more of a synthetic goal post that was reached. There's no actual border between space vs not space, it's just a synthetic line we drew arbitrarily at exactly 100 km.

But a satellite is an altogether different thing. That's the first thing humans ever pushed up that didn't immediately fall back to earth after it stopped being pushed upward. A true and massive achievement, and that achievement created brand new world-changing technologies in communications, created breakthroughs in almost all branches of sciences, changed how we humans live through gps, and all the zillion other world-changing advanced that flowed as a direct immediate consequence

Surviving in space and successfully returning from orbit is absolutely an incredible achievement that spurred on the space race.

The wright brothers absolutely were "standing on the shoulders of giants", but they were the first to create heavier-than-air flight.

Somewhat small, but I'd say one of the most useful inventions that is used by literally everyone...the ballpoint pen was invented in Argentina.

LEDs invented, yeah i think that meets the mark, good one.

I agree, but it's not a world-changing breakthrough. There had previously been humans extremely high up, but they just didn't cross above the synthetic threshold we randomly drew

EDIT

Nope, i was totally wrong. I did some reading and it's clear that Yuri's flight was absolutely world-changing

The Web was invented by an Englishman working in Switzerland.

And i just realized i have to remove my item from my own list, because the wright brothers flight was more than 100 years ago

It does begin to feel a bit like you're moving the goal posts for what you consider "world-changing" as you comment more on this post.
If the first man in space and high speed rail are "just incremental progress", then why do rock music and AI count for you?
Everything humans have ever done is accomplished incrementally using the accomplishments of prior human ingenuity.

Humble invention but i think that counts!

That's why I am asking what counts as "world-changing," as most people would consider the first man in space to be world-changing.

Especially considering that Yuri Gagarin's flight inspired generations of people all over the world after him to a probably immeasurable extent. If the OP wanted "global society-altering", then that certainly qualifies.

I've looked into some things I could think of, and alot of them are partially invented by Americans or the first viable design was patented by an American...

For example: The interaction of light hitting something an creating electricity was first observed by someone from France, but the first viable design of a solar panel was patented by an American.

Similar for carbon fibers, or handheld power drills. Computer tomography was first realized by two people, one of them African-American.

Or the things where invented more than 100 years ago. (Cars, for example)

Sorry but i dont think America has given the world all that much in he grand scheme of things.
100 years seems an arbitrarily short timeline - even my local pub would be a long way from qualifying for that.

Arpanet was American, leveraging a lot of research, particularly from the UK and France. The internet though? you have the thank a Brit for that; Tim Berners-Lee was responsible for the birth of the interconnected hyperlinked network we called the internet.

The US did however invent many other recent and society altering things like enshittification, the rot economy, surveillance capitalism, felony contempt of business model, fake taxis, fake hotels, the billionaire class, and social media, the privatised prison system and its legalised slave labour force, and Epstein island.
I'm sure i could think of more if i put my mind to it.

For some things invented elsewhere you could start in Scotland.
Some of these will predate 1926, but pretty much all are still pretty important in daily life.

Scots invented television, the telephone, mri machines, refrigerators, mammal cloning, penicillin, disposable contact lenses, ATM machines, colour photography, the flushing toilet and the s-bend that stops it stinking, hypodermic syringes, steam engines, fingerprinting, vacuum flasks, pneumatic tyres, tarmac, and lightbulbs.

Since many other comments have focused heavily on technological inventions, I think it makes sense to add some notable cultural impacts on society as well. As with most of the technological inventions mentioned, cultural forces also don't come out of nowhere and arguably have been around for a lot longer than 100 years, but I think it's pretty obvious that society within the past 100 years has been and still is being massively affected by the following concepts that did not originate in the USA:

• feminism
• civil rights movement (usually seen through a US-focused lens, but is happening everywhere)
• gay rights movement (esp. in the 1990's and beyond)
• gender-spectrum concepts
• widespread influence of evolutionary theory (even the word "meme" came from a British biologist's book about evolution)

Does the Linux kernel count? The very first versions where released while Linus Torvalds still studied in Finland.

The wheelie bin

That's a powerful one. Great example.

RCDs, the first patents were from the 1900s from Germany and the US, but the first usable designs were build in the 1950s in South Africa and Germany.

Probably the device that has saved the most lives while working tinkering on the residential electrical system.

Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web, not the internet.

Origins of the weekend are over 100 years. And the sources I can find place the modern concept of the weekend either as coming from America or as developing concurrently in multiple countries.

https://daysoftheweek.org/history-of-the-weekend

Social security is way older than 100 years.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welfare_spending

All extremely important, but are all way older than 100 years, or have no single country that created it

origins of wifi started in australia... the centre differential , black box recorders, cochlear implants, the pacemaker, rotary clotheslines, spray on skin

Regarding your last paragraph list, you seem to be under major misapprehensions. I looked through the initial 3 items and none of them were invented by a scot, and so there was no reason to even check the rest.

And of those 3 I looked into, they all either had multiple countries involved in its creation, all of which had Americans as prime participants, and or had Americans as the sole originator.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_television

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_telephone

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_magnetic_resonance_imaging

I did some reading and learned a bunch of stuff, and now i see that you're right and I'm wrong. Yuri's first spaceflight does in fact totally qualify, completely. I was under the misunderstanding thinking that he was the first to cross the synthetic goal line into space but i assumed that previous attempts were close-ish but not quite to the same altitude. Nope. I just learned that he DEMOLISHED the previous altitude record by an order of magnitude, 32 km vs 320 km, and that all previous flights were using atmosphere conditions to power their flight. You're totally right, Vostok1 was a totally world-changing achievement

Piggybacking on @GMac's excellent comment, here's some additional detail:

Alexander Fleming (Scottish) - penicillin

John Shepherd-Barron (English) - ATM (although this was a synthesis of many previous inventions/ concepts from other countries)

James Clerk Maxwell (Scot) - colour photography

Da Vinci (modern day Italy) - contact lenses

Alexander Cumming (scot) - S-bend

Various nationalities helped develop the internal combustion engine

Robert William Thomson (scot) - pneumatic tyre

I think we have a semantic disagreement there. The world wide web was another term for the global interconnected network also know as the internet.
Arpanet wasn't scalable to the internet until Tim's work.

But if that's your only point of dispute with my comment i think we think more in common than we disagree.

My apprehensions are fine thanks. You're just not looking very hard.

Inventor of the television - John Logie Baird https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Logie_Baird

Inventor of the telephone - Alexander Graham Bell
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Graham_Bell

On the MRI - per the wikipedia link you posted but may not have read thoroughly. "During the 1970s, a team led by John Mallard built the first full-body MRI scanner at the University of Aberdeen." I'll grant I could have been more specific.

If you want to argue invention exists at the point of theory instead of physical creation, then i suspect you will struggle find much that wasn't posited, theorised, described or conceived in some way before America was colonised.

American exceptionalism is a thing...

Have you tried to destroy a Nokia 3310?. Case closed.

Universal free health care.

Penicillin - fantastic one!

Atm - sure, i suppose it meets the criteria. Its not quite to the same level of societal change i was talking about, but it certainly did significantly change how people go about their day around the world. So it totally counts.

All the rest - are over 100 years old

But the penicillin one is ultra life-changing all around the world

Absolutely! Fantastic one! Truly a society-altering creation!

Nokia was the first mobile phone manufacturer to include a game (snake) on their phone.

Invented in Japan in 1999, i-mode is a remarkable technology for connecting mobile devices to a wide range of web services.

It's well-known in Japan that this invention, not the iPhone, was the first to enable games, email, emojis, and selfies on mobile devices.

I believe that the Japanese girls of the early 2000s who created this culture are the greatest hackers who shaped the smartphone era.

Super Galapagos - Matt Alt's Pure Invention
https://blog.pureinventionbook.com/p/super-galapagos

Capilliary democracy,
or whatever it's called that Deng Xioaping has introduced.

I'm talking about layered elections + civic exams.

Liberal democracy has campaign fraud in it practically by design,
thus the will of the people becomes the will of the oligarchs right after every election,
and not even the will of domestic oligarchs for most countries.

Marx' idea of democracy hardly got off the ground.
Lenin's idea of democracy had the unintended consequence of turning the General Secretary of the communist party as its most powerful position soon after he died.

The World Wide Web is Hypertext and the Hypertext protocol. The Internet is the network it runs on. It's not just semantics. The WWW is not interchangeable with the Internet.

Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn invented TCP/IP, which is the primary protocol of the Internet. And the physical network derives from APRANET, which are all American.