The most important invention in your lifetime is…

So I’m going to answer this question in terms of what invention I feel has had the most important impact on me personally. Not necessarily the most important global or social invention of my time. Basically I’m not doing any research, I’m just answering the question based on my life.

If you looked at me now, you’d think this was the most logically answer. And while I am grateful for the invention of the wheelchair, and in my case particularly the electric wheelchair, there are in fact other more important inventions to me.

I don’t think I’d be answering this question properly if I didn’t consider the inventions that undoubtably saved my life when I was born. Like many with my condition I was born extremely prematurely and should’ve died. So a small nod to the inventions that are the reason I’m alive.

Then it’s important to remember the ones you’re more likely to see me in, my electric wheelchair. There’s my electric bed and air mattress that I need to sleep, as well as my electric blanket which has to be the best pain killer for me personally. My comfy chair which just gives me somewhere else to sit and my shower chair, which I hope by the title is self-explanatory. Then you’ve got to remember the hoist, that gets me from a, to b, to c and sometimes d.

But the ones that I feel are the most important thing to me are those like the mobile phone, the internet, the computer. Now I know this sounds very millennial of me, if I’m getting the terminology correct. And someone’s somewhere is going to judge me for my reliance on the internet. But just remember where you’re reading this blog.

The internet, social media and the technology that exists to use them on. Provides me access and inclusion to the world around me in a way my wheelchair cannot do in such an inaccessible world. Steps do not exist on the internet.

I know social media gets a bad reputation and I understand why. But I always say it’s the way people use technology, not the technology that it is bad. While this doesn’t apply to things like guns which don’t have a good use. It applies to things like knives which clearly do, and in the case of this post, social media.

Social media lets me be the me I wish I could be in the real world. It lets me meet new people near and far, and learn all about them. It lets me keep in touch with people, that would be even more difficult to do without social media due to my lack of mobility. The internet truly is a wonder. And phones can do so much, provide so much access beyond what I use them for.

Inventions truly are a wonder. They can often be used by people in ways the person who invented them likely never imaged. They are never to be underestimated.