General Discussion

The difference between a 1980 pc and a current pc is cost, speed, and portability. People at any economic level can have the same access to most knowledge and communication. If you don't see why that's different then different iphone colors, I'm sure I'm not going to convince you it's a real innovation in a few sentences, Nor will I convince you that wireless connectivity is anything special, after all, they had radios 100 years ago, and that's pretty much the same thing as streaming the President's speech live on my telephone while I'm camping.

The medical treatments for Aids, Depression, Cystic Fibrosis, heart disease, the nicotine patch, the Jarvik-7 permanent artificial heart, surgical robots and usage of the MRI, but medicine has been around along time so it's really just an "enhancement of existing technology".

As, of course, would the international space station, since it's basically the same as going to space. Nothing special or innovative about that. Human Genome Project, the UV water purifier, the robotic vacuum cleaner, cloning sheep (and human body parts), RFID, VOIP allowing people in different countries to communicate for less than Bell's $8 a minute, GPS to the masses (yes, I know the military had this concept as early as the 1960, where it was no help to essentially anyone but them), the compact disc, DNA fingerprinting, the Large Hadron Collider,

Hell, the space shuttle wasn't launched until 1981 if you want to make the argument that it's "pretty much the same" as a the Saturn 5, but then you could probably argue the Saturn 5 was just a glorified V2 rocket, which is just a glorified bottle rocket, so it's really just an "enhancement" of an existing technology.

I honestly hadn't realized you were just limiting discoveries to Americans, though so I may have to rethink my list.