Instead is has been the likes of
the discovery of fire, the club, flint tools, agriculture, the longbow,
motors, gunpowder, the atom bomb, anæsthetics, disinfectant, TV, computers
and genetics
i.e. technologies which have fundamentally
changed the way we live.
and because technology is fun.
Another candidate that changes the world and the way one lives is money (and I like that too).