The Belfast Telegraph recently unveiled a list of 101 gadgets that changed the world. Though the Abacus comes in at number one, mobile technology certainly makes a showing on the list:

10. Blackberry, 1999

Ask the average office worker they think of their Blackberry and they will variously call it a boon and a curse. Developed by the Canadian firm Research in Motion and unleashed in 1999, the gizmo has provided legions of roaming desk jockeys with a hotline to their inboxes, and enabled armies of bosses to keep employees digitally shackled to their swivel chairs. The addictiveness of the device led it to be dubbed the "Crackberry".

37. GPS, 1978

Determining your location used to require such cumbersome devices as a map, compass and ruler. Now a single press of a button (and up to 32 satellites) will pinpoint your precise position to within a couple of metres. Great for explorers, paramedics and pilots – not so good for unwitting Latvian lorry drivers sent on cross-country wild goose chases by budget sat-navs. Developed by the US military in the 1970s, the Global Positioning System has been globally available since 1994.

54. Mobile phone, 1947

There are more than two billion mobile phones in the world, and the EU is home to more "cells", as the American's call them, than people. It is difficult to quantify the economic and social impact of the device – of all the gadgets in the average person's arsenal, it is surely the one we would be worst off without. Those who disagree can blame Bell Laboratories for their invention; the firm introduced the first service in Missouri in 1947. Widespread coverage in Britain did not begin until the late 1980s.

76. SMS, 1992

Linguist purists H8 txtspk. The Short Message Service (SMS) has developed the thumbs of a generation of communicators who have devised their own shorthand, textspeak, to stay in touch (and uncover extra-marital affairs). The British engineer Neil Papworth sent the first (unabbreviated) text 15 years ago. It read: "MERRY CHRISTMAS". Their popularity exploded in the late 1990s and now in the UK alone we send millions every day (a record 214 million last New Year's Eve).

How the Blackberry is 44 places higher than the cellphone itself is a bit of a head-scratcher, but the list still makes for an interesting read.

101 Gadgets That Changed The World (via 160 Characters Association)