Originally Posted by Conan

I disagree. We might assume that because we can't imagine life without them, but why does that mean it would have been figured out eventually regardless? It'd be a total butterfly effect and society would have developed in a completely different direction.

That being said, when someone is of a certain school of thought and carries that thought further, it's far more likely that eventually someone else would have carried that same thought to the point of inventing a telephone.

That's how it is with most things. People are influenced by other inventions or ideas and simply elaborate on them. So in that sense, I'm sure we'd have something very similar to the telephone (if not the telephone we all know) because Morse Code and other inventions and movements were in place and being expounded on in that time.

In regards to music, it's silly to argue that "somebody would just do it anyway" because, again, that butterfly effect would mean that it may have taken longer to happen and the musical world (and as a result, society) would have been different in many ways. So, no, your favorite band probably wouldn't exist. But you wouldn't care.