What is the most important piece of modern technology in your life right now?

Clean drinking tap water.

Shocking but true. The smartphone. Lol

It’s importance might just be a fantasy borne out of mindless attachment to it. Still trying to figure that out but I have began reviling this thing. lol

My (Bluetooth) headphones.

Definitely my smart phone. I only acquired one, about 6 years ago. But I use it for everything. News, weather, entertainment, porn, phone calls, email etc.

I could live without it, but it is very convenient. Especially with Google. My family bought a set of encyclopedias, back in the 90’s. They used to be a treasure trove, of knowledge. Now, they are practically worthless…
These smart phones, replace cameras too.
Mine, has a compass, tidal charts, Google Earth, a guitar tuner, Pandora, YouTube, any number of streaming services, star charts, a calendar, a calculator, an alarm clock, GPS. I could get more, if I wanted.

It’s an amazing device.

@RedDeerGuy1 good answer.

^You have to assume that though. One day, I realized that my tap water, was brown. I called the water company, and they said that there had been a break in the line somewhere. They said they’d have it fixed soon. This was last summer. Ironically, right before a hurricane hit. Talk about bad timing. I had not yet filled all of my containers, in case the storm would miss us. At that point, I had 2 days before the storm figured out what it was going to do, and a mandatory evacuation had already been ordered, so I nowhere to even buy water.

I’m well prepared. I have a bottle of PotableAqua, and a LifeStraw, so I would have been ok, but was a surprise to see that my water supply had been compromised. If it wasn’t for the color difference, I wouldn’t have thought there was a problem with the water. 97% of my liquid intake, is from my tap water…

For me, it’s my car. I have about 40 miles to commute to work, and I couldn’t do that on public transportation. I mean, I could but it would take hours and cost a lot of money. I need the work to get the pay and the health insurance and earn the pension.

I like the phone but I need to get to work to get the phone.

If transportation, is relevant, planes should be right up there with cars…

Integrated circuits

I particularly like air conditioning and inside plumbing.

The cable box with built in wi-fi router.

The Apple Watch we got my 85 year old father. It has alerted us to two falls. Because of it I can sleep at night.

Yo.. Dog..

When I was going into the uncharted land of chemo I bought a Apple watch to: first, make a app that could control plex from my watch, and second, text my sister if I hadn’t moved for 6 hours.

The movement app never really worked well, but I think the newest version of watchOS has a api for that. I could revisit the premise if you think that could be handy for your dad.

We need a definition for “modern” .... if we are talking pre-industrial then water systems, and sewerage and artificial light from candles and oil lamps.
Industrial era, powered by fossil fuels brings us steam-powered manufacturing and then electrical production.
Transistors blew the doors off communications and automation.
The internet is about 50 years old, and the WorldWideWeb that most people think is the internet is about 25 years old.
My favorite hobby, playing theremin, would not be possible without modern electronics and electrical power.

Laptop.

@dabbler I have a couple homebrew theremins. Can’t say I’m any good at playing them though.

@ARE_you_kidding_me Did you make your theremins? What designs did you use?
I have four of them, two were kits, but I didn’t design any of them. I do repair and calibrate/tune Moog etherwaves, and am a pretty good amateur player.

@dabbler I did, some of the first from scratch projects just out of tech school. The one I still use to make music is based on the 144 from art’s theremin page if I remember right. I changed the output to patch directly into a mixer or amplifier. I’m surprised the page is still up, it’s been almost 20 years. When I played in bands we would patch it through a bunch of effect pedals to make just about any crazy background noise you could think of.

@johnpowell You are writing watch apps? I would love that! Thank you!