there is no great introduction here, the question is:

What is it that had the greatest influence on our (collective) human development?
Let’s use the past as if it was a puzzle to solve, and apply acute cognitive (self) observation to answer this.
Look high and deep and far.

Wherefrom cometh that intuition to act in a way that is most beneficial to our human progress?

How long should we look back in time into the human past?
So far back, obviously, that we get a clear picture of the energy that was responsible for igniting the flurry of human progress that we are experiencing.
Are one hundred years enough? Perhaps? Will that show what principles and ideas are at work pushing the frontier of our human ability and knowledge with such devoted pace and resilience?

Progress is born out of the notion that when you think hard and long enough about any idea in your head, you will be required to manifest it.
So beware when you dream something up. Progress directly comes from doing that dream.
We humans also think? and insist that we have a choice, before the almighty unknown, as to what we do and how we react to something.

“We have! Don’t panic.”
This pacification tagline pronouncing that we have a choice has become the most sought after slogan wrapped in legal controversy on the advertorial altar, unobtainable even by the rarest jewels of judiciary brilliance.
“We have! Don’t panic” is (pro)claimed by moi.

We have an idea. We drop the idea.
We have an idea. We drop the idea.
We become an idea. The idea takes control and fuels itself.
It is always good grounding to know what the original question that brought the idea about was. That’s the idea’s manifest of its purpose of existence.

So what had the greatest influence?
Which propellant in the evolutionary cocktail kick started humanity into this dynamic era of modern day with so such vigor and intensity?

Did we arrive at a philosophical vertice-verge-corner, this very privileged viewpoint into existence, and from there the vision became clear?
Were we ignited to become the deities of our destiny by the words of the great philosophers, thinkers, and gurus?

Art is the hatching egg of creativity.

Something crystallized into focus and reflected into irresistible action.

What was that ‘thing’ that got us humans so frenetically deliriously going, when in comparison the stone-age must have lasted forever?
Can we go back to try and understand what energy that was, and what fed it?

Living life, – with ever greater awareness?

That nearly sounds hedonistic with a paradisical encore.
Addictively, good-feelings must have a lot to do with celebrating our humanity in imaginative ways.

Eventually, the momentum demanded a certain backbone structure to progress with ever greater speed.
This necessitated communication between parties that was faster than the Inca runners (Chasquis) or horseback messengers so we could organize parties for even greater celebrations in even more imaginative, fascinating ways of paradisicality.

Was the need for communication then the trigger?
Was the requirement for tranporting ‘stuff’ becoming a high-profile issue?
Surely communication and transport have catapulted us forward letting us implement our grandest ideas like none other?
As one part grew others followed to make the whole work.
i.e. agriculture, food science, textile, manufacturing, medical, academic, scientific, engineering, technological, financial, software, … all these parts were infected with tremendous growth and they contributed significantly in rolling the ball of progress faster and faster.

What are the one or ten that stick out as the greatest influencers?

There was a sudden rising awakening that we could do anything if we really tried. As if intrinsically sealed in some covenant.

Communication today: satellite, radio, 4K 3D TV, smartphones, books, the internet, tablets, video’s, gigabyte transfer rates and terabyte volume, must have been difficult to imagine in 1917. Communication is all encompassing and has mutated into something incredible and indispensable.

Communication has brought us together and transportation makes the experience tangibly real.

Our achievement on the transportation side is bespoke spectacular, breathtaking, beautiful, incredible… We are superstars in the transportation field and data transportation is crazy-frigging-unimaginably-ginormous and has by far the largest demand.
On earth, you can have something delivered to your door within 12-48 hours from just about anywhere. By plane, ship, car, truck, bike.
You can drive a blow-my-hair-back Italian sports car and your partner can drive the German version of ‘ein wildes Auto,’ tamed to respond, oh ja, like crazy artworks from a thesis project of motion.
And don’t get me started on airplanes, these graceful creatures of our meta-imagination.
Any motion that transports something could be viewed under the heading of transportation. Deliberate transport only, please.
A private jet in transportation is like an island in real estate, a yacht is like a ranch.

Transportation and communication are more than roommates. The one without the other is unthinkable and inseparable.
They are vehicles of imagination.

To answer the question one would have to look back, see the stuff that stuck out and that made an impact and imagine the future along this line and trend.

What is next?
Imagine and predict from vision.

Here is where it gets interesting.
We are in a position to deduct, predict, postulate, even imagine, based on data from the past.
Each individual of us can formulate his/her future by looking back and imagining a path.
Of course, the future is unpredictable but it is a guaranteed given and we can influence it.

If we don’t know the ‘what’ and ‘where to,’ which many of us don’t, then the past might give some clues how our pudding of reality should be like.
Sweet, no?
Anything to do with communication or transportation has amazing potential. Elon Musk thinks so too.