Which Modern Technologies, If Invented Sooner, May Have Led to Less Tyranny Through the Ages?

It's always a fascinating "what if" game, and the answer is always "yes" to the question of "would it have changed history?" The real problem is "How"! The law of unintended consequences invariably kicks in. So it's fun to hypothesise, but we will never know.

I have a completely unprovable view that somehow, every technological invention arrives at approximately the right time. For example, suppose antibiotics had been developed 200 years earlier - a real possibility. Population would have boomed as it has in the last century, but the agricultural revolution was still 200 years away. So the benefits of antibiotics would have been wiped out by mass famines!

But antibiotics were not produced until mid 20th century - just as a revolution was taking place in agricultural methods.

Here's a good closer. The Chinese had "gun powder" for centuries but never invented guns! Suppose they had!

What modern technologies...hmmm...the rail gun, the flying-ostrich bomb, broccoli (the amount of deaths that causes each year is phenomenal!) and a MacDonald's burger.

Gatling gun