Perhaps. I was stretching things with the monoclonal antibodies, but the rest of them certainly seem “mundane” to me. My definition of mundane is anything that isn’t special or remarkable. Anything that feels like a part of the environment. Dictionary.com’s take on things is similar:
Can you name anything on my list that doesn’t fit?
I’d say that nothing is mundane when it’s first invented. We’re talking about things that are mundane now.
The first LED watch I ever saw was a special version made by a semiconductor company. When you pressed the big button, it displayed the time. When you pressed the little hidden button it said “Wanna fuck?”
Most non-mechanical watches still use a tuning fork, but it is made of quartz, and vibrates above human hearing at 32.678 KHz. A traditionally shaped quartz crystal tuned at such a low frequency would be huge, and the power consumed is proportional to frequency, so higher frequency rocks are not an attractive option for a watch.
As for mundane items:
Contact lenses. They were considered the height of vanity in my youth, required complicated care, didn’t work for astigmatism, and were always popping out and getting lost.(and were so expensive that this was a real crisis.)
“Sporty” wheelchairs. I remember in the early 1980’s the first time I saw a chair that was not of the traditional institutional design…I thought it was really cool. Now I rarely see the TID versions outside of institutional settings.
Radial tires. I remember debates in the press about their advisability, safety, etc…now it’s bias ply tires that are rare.
Pop-tops? Heck, I recall when aluminum cans were novel!
Lots of car related ones:
Factory cup holders in cars.
AWD/4WD vehicles were remarkable in my youth.
Air conditioning. This was only for rich folks when I was a kid…still the case last time I was in Europe. Ditto for automatic transmissions.
If by “great” you mean “20% of them never even work and of the remaining 80%, half of that will cease working once you open them after a week, regardless of how much or how little you use them or if you keep the cap on or not,” then you’re right
I’ve probably spent more on disposable pens in the past 15 years than on the two Cross pens I’ve had in that time, neither of which ever ceased working or ran out of ink (in fact, I only replaced the first because I lost it, which is why I buy disposable pens, for when I am at risk of losing my Cross.)
Bottled water
Bike helmets
Low fuel light
Reality TV
Plastic Slinkys
Retractable dog leashes
Liquid detergent
Leisure suits
The proliferation of fast food “restaurants”
Filling tires with nitrogen
Corporate sponsored sports facilities
Tip calculation tables on bills
Decaffeinated coffee (and tea)
Shucks, no one mentioned this one yet, and it came about in my lifetime: the ATM, or automatic teller machine. Back in the day, you either went to the bank during working hours to get your money, or you wrote a check. Today ATMS are everywhere, and we totally take them for granted, which makes it “mundane” I reckon.
A brand of change-sorting machine that collates and tallies the change you dump into it and returns it in more convenient form (bills, or a voucher), minus a small percentage.
That small percentage is the deal-breaker for me. I can roll my own pennies for no more than the cost of the rolls.
My problem with them isn’t the money. It is that the machines seem to be down a lot and that isn’t good when you bring $100 worth of loose change in specifically to use the machine. They usually seem to be overly popular as well. I always seem to get stuck behind the Mexican family that has saved in pennies, nickles, and pesos to send money back home. The problem is that the machine doesn’t take pesos and has to sort it and kick it out and the problem repeats itself for half an hour while I stand there (it isn’t only Mexican money. Canadian money is designed to be stealthy and it is amazing how many fake quarters and dimes the Canadians export to us to hide among real change.)
The fee is usually about 9% or less which is fine with me because there is no way I would ever be paid to wrap $100 in coins for just $9.
My contribution to this thread is peel and stick sanitary napkins. I entered puberty having to use an elastic belt which had garters that held the extended tabs of the napkin (on both ends) to more or less stay in place while enduring the monthly period. Of course, the napkin twisted, spun around and embedded itself . . . If I could have married my first package of peel and stick pads, I would have. You young girls have no idea how easy you’ve got it.
