[OT] Ten Technologies That Deserve to Die

[dave_o]

I agree that we should not have nuclear weapons. Oppenheimer said it himself -- "I am become Death, destroyer of worlds." They, to me, are the Ultimate Bad Idea (TM). Humans should not be given such an easy way to destroy Earth.

But, what's done is done, even though they do deserve to die.

 

[Zappo]

Agree on nukes. It'd take an act of god to make them vanish, but hey one can hope.
Coal power... eh, yeah it would be good to be rid of it. Propose an alternative.
IC engine. Nope; current alternatives either just aren't good enough, or require billions in infrastructure before being usable. Besides, even if you use electricity of hydrogen - well, you have to generate that power somewhere. In a plant. Which will likely use coal or gasoline.

Incandescent lights. Propose an existant, valid alternative - everyone can imagine some future technology.
Land mines. Hell yeah. Most stupid weapons after nukes.
Manned spaceflight. Weeell, I reckon this is more a case of postponing it. With current tech, manned spaceflight isn't worth the risk and expense (even factoring in the species-wide ego boost we get from it ).

Prisons. Yeah, OK, imprisonment doesn't really work for rehabilitation. Propose an alternative (and no, preventing them from driving isn't an alternative).
Cosmetic implants. Dude, don't like them, don't use them; they are cosmetic. No point in wishing them to disappear. Besides, growing flesh isn't currently feasible. Again, anyone can imagine a future tech...
Lie detectors. Agree; they are inaccurate, but if they worked it would be even worse. The privacy of one's thoughts should be absolute.
DVDs. Again, propose an alternative.

Overall, I don't agree on a lot of points, mainly because he fails to provide a viable alternative. I can name not only 10, but 100 things that don't work as I'd like them to, but unless I have a better idea, it's pretty pointless.

Here's what I'd like to put to sleep - limiting myself to stuff on which I can make an informed comment:
Floppy disks (give me a more flexible CDR format and filesystem instead).
IPv4 (address space is coming to an end; switch to IPv6).

 

[Brown Jenkin]

We need to get rid of cubicles. There are few things worse than being kept penned up in a cube farm.

 

[Darrin Drader]

This guy is clearly a technophobe. While I can understand the combustion engine, I think his stance on DVDs and space travel is, well, stupid.

 

[Zerakon]

I like nukes, they bring some spark to life. ... I for one support nukes.....

Land mines too...

Prison....I've never been but I'm glad those who are there have been put there. ... Most are unable to be rehabilitated. I say keep them there.

Please tell me that you were joking with all of the above.

 

[Dark Jezter]

Nice social commentary disguised as a technology article.

I agree with the above poster: This guy is talking out of his ass. Take away a person's driver's liscence instead of sending them to prison? Yeah, that's gonna be SO effective. His reasons for eliminating land mines and nukes shows that he knows little to nothing about military strategy.

He also accuses DVDs and CDs of being extremely fragile and prone to scratches, fingerprints, and dust. If you take good care of CDs and DVDs, though, they can last virtually forever; I have a couple of Audio CDs that are 15 years old that still work perfectly.

EDIT: If I could choose one technology I'd like to see die, it would be cell phones. I've lost count of how many times I've almost gotten into a car wreck because some moron was paying more attention to their phone than the road. Not to mention all the times I've been in a movie theater and some person didn't know that their cell phone had an "off" button.

 

[buzzard]

Honestly I think the man who wrote the article is an idiot. I think there's only about one thing on the list which I could barely agree with, and even then I certainly don't think it's a problem. I'll just go down the list:

1) Nuclear weapons. Ok everybody is going to go with the "they're evil" schtick. Fine. However let's look at history before them. Before nukes the great powers would make war on each other regularly. WW I and WWII killed many millions of people. While nukes have this potential, they also are scary enough that the great powers no longer make war on each other. I rather suspect the US and USSR would have fought a very large and very nasty war in the absence of this invention.

2)Coal power: yes, it isn't perfect. However it is cheap and plentiful (of course cheap is a function of plentiful). People better find a way to replace it before they get the idea of getting rid of it. We're about to have natural gas prices go up something like 70% due to increased demand, so that's a no go. Maybe our friend the writer can just renounce electricity in his life, and do his part.

3)Internal Combustion Engine- as stated here- no good alternatives.

4)Incandescant light bulbs- no good alternatives (stated already).

5)Land Mines- current research on these will change things enough that they won't be the same problem. However land mines, while nasty, are important militarily, which is a fact that the author shrugs off.

6)Manned Spaceflight- sure we haven't solved a number of technical hurdles, so let's give up. Let's make sure there is no frontier for the future. I guess this fits in with the live in the dark philosophy.

7)Prisons- this man should put his crack pipe down before he gets 3rd degree burns. The obvious idiocy of this point is too much to even discuss.

8)Cosmetic Implants- who cares?

9)Lie Detectors- this is the only one which I can support in any way, but even then it doesn't really matter. They don't work reliably. The only problem of the devices is a misplaced belief in their reliability.

10)DVDs?!? OK I'm a nut and didn't mind laserdiscs, but DVDs are certainly more convenient. His objections are peurile nonsense.

I really wonder why anyone would let this idiot have a forum to prove his foolishness.

buzzard

 

[Cthulhu's Librarian]

Just to put a little more perspective on where Sterling is coming from:

Some technologies are so blatantly obnoxious that the human race would rejoice if they were summarily executed. A humorist and science fiction writer offers some candidates.

(emphasis is mine)

Bruce Sterling writes these columns from time to time in various media (online, various tech journals, popular scientific journals, etc), from his perspective, and with the intent to provoke a reaction, good or bad. Sometimes you need to read much more into the articles to see that while he says things need to change, he knows its not going to happen anytime soon.

 

[buzzard]

Just to put a little more perspective on where Sterling is coming from:
(emphasis is mine)

Bruce Sterling writes these columns from time to time in various media (online, various tech journals, popular scientific journals, etc), from his perspective, and with the intent to provoke a reaction, good or bad. Sometimes you need to read much more into the articles to see that while he says things need to change, he knows its not going to happen anytime soon.

This does not lead me to forgive him for writing drivel.

However it does serve a purpose in that I have another author to avoid wasting money on.

buzzard

 

[Mercule]

Three little words...

"Digital Rights Management."

And two more...

"Trusted Computing."

These not only deserve to die, all of their families deserve to go with them.

Sing it, brother.