The Wonders of the Modern World

The seven wonders of the modern world may be less spectacular than their ancient counterparts but they undoubtedly serve a more utilitarian purpose.

The CNN news group recently organised a poll on its website asking readers to vote for the greatest wonder of the modern world. In the conviction that the challenges of our era are not confined to architecture but extend to science and technology, CNN nominated seven modern engineering and scientific wonders and invited visitors to its website to state which they considered the most wonderful of them all.

Two of the seven nominations are CERN creations, which is in itself a remarkable achievement. Alongside the World Wide Web, invented at CERN in 1990, the Organization’s other contender was the LHC particle accelerator. Even more impressively, they came in first and second in the poll. The World Wide Web took 50% of more than 7300 votes cast overall. Although there is a certain logic in the Web coming top in a poll on the Web, there’s no denying that it’s one of the most spectacular discoveries of recent years, attracting hundreds of millions of users every day. With 16% of the votes cast, the LHC particle accelerator was a worthy runner-up.

The 611 voters who were without an opinion secured the third place, behind the two CERN winners, for “None of the Above” (8% of the votes cast). In fourth place was the development of Dubai (7%), followed by the bionic arm (also 7%), China’s Three Gorges Dam (5%), the Channel Tunnel (4%) and France’s Millau viaduct (3%).

February 2007