# The Indoor Plumbing Test ![rw-book-cover](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fdd816ae0-3451-40c1-b9d8-a30b13918360_500x756.jpeg) ## Metadata - Author: [[Freddie deBoer]] - Full Title: The Indoor Plumbing Test - Category: #articles - Summary: insert summary - My notes: - Summary: The author critiques the exaggerated claims about AI's importance, comparing it unfavorably to essential inventions like indoor plumbing. They argue that AI's current capabilities are limited and often overhyped, serving mainly to automate mundane tasks rather than transform human life. Ultimately, the author believes that significant advancements will come from other fields, like biomedical science, rather than AI. - URL: https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/the-shitting-in-the-yard-test - Source File: web-only ## LLM Chats ## NotebookLM ## LLM Audio ## Highlights > Years ago, I think in 2010, Business Insider invested a great deal of hype and hoopla into a list they developed of the one hundred most important inventions of all time. I have tried and tried to find a link, including via the Internet Archive, but no dice; I’ll chalk it up to linkrot, the endless deterioration of the web over time, Business Insider’s paywall, and their convoluted publishing history. You’ll have to take my word for it that, in a list that was released with great fanfare, they rated the iPhone as the most important invention of all time. Not antibiotics, the plow, or alternating current, not anesthesia or the lightbulb, but the iPhone, which tooks a bunch of things that already existed (cellular telephone service, email on the go, a touchscreen) and put them in one remarkably profitable package. The Business Insider list isn’t alone in putting the iPhone so high on ranked lists of human achievement. There’s plenty you can find, including [a British survey](https://www.theregister.com/2010/05/19/top_100_inventions_of_all_time/) that put the iPhone at number eight, ahead of the internal combustion engine, or [this](https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/29/podcasts/hardfork-iconic-100-technologies.html?) *[New York Times](https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/29/podcasts/hardfork-iconic-100-technologies.html?)* [podcast](https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/29/podcasts/hardfork-iconic-100-technologies.html?) which puts the iPhone at number three, although the list seems to be partially tongue in cheek. There’s a lot you could ask about such a choice, including epistemological questions inherent to putting a cellphone above the electricity-generating technologies that power it. But my visceral response to this kind of thinking - and even aside from ordinal lists of importance, the smartphone-supremacy attitude is very common - is to say, wow, these people must really enjoy shitting in the yard. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jjxz8035hv6c3sbdw2qw2q61)) - Tags: [[technology]]