HereBruce Sterling offers up a list of 10 technologies that he thinks the world needs to get rid of. In short, his list is
Nuclear weapons - too dangerous, overkill anyway for real-world use
Coal-based power (I can see it coming already) - too polluting, uses nonrenewable resources
Internal combustion engines - same, plus inefficient
Incandescent light bulbs - better called “heat bulbs”
Land mines - too sloppy to be militarily necessary, kill/maim civilians
Manned spaceflight - its own reward, impractical
Prisons - inefficient; other ways to control/monitor people
Cosmetic implants - simple vanity
Lie detectors - hopelessly unreliable
DVD’s - not really permanent, spam-filled, will become obsolete
I’ll agree with him about nuke weapons, but not at the expense of nuke power.
Fossil-fuel power or engines, yes, but replacement technologies aren’t obvious yet.
Light bulbs, yes, them too, gotta be more efficient and cheap devices.
Land mines, no argument there either, and thanks to some dedicated activists for raising world consciousness about them.
Manned spaceflight, hell no, not everything has value measured only in immediate economic practicality. We need to do it because we need to do it.
Prisons, sorry pal, there’s no substitute for those who really do need to be locked up, but there may be some who don’t.
Cosmetic implants, not across the board, but ones that aren’t obvious are rare, and there are real needs for prosthetic ones.
Lie detectors, yes, total quackery.
DVD’s, no, the problems aren’t with the technology.
So whaddaya think? What lives and what dies? Any other proposals?
I’ll add a couple:
Cathode ray tubes. They die eventually, and take up space in landfills and attics, and they’re toxic.
Disposable packaging. Simple marketeering, waste of nonrenewable oil, fill up landfills
“Gee, let’s make a connection and send digitized information from my machine to yours, and yours will receive it and convert it to analog, print it out on paper, then discard the digital version from memory”. “Gee, why email a computer-generated text-based document when you can convert it to bitmap and take up 18 times the file size with non-searchable blobs of bitmap-pixels?” “Gee, nothing like the graphical fidelity of black and white to represent a pictoral image, especially to contrast the reds and blues on this form or show the face on that driver’s license.” “Well, golly, almost no one has a computer of their own, but everybody nowadays has a FAX machine”
This guy has obviously never heard of Project Orion.
Yes, because walking is a much better and faster way of moving around.
I don’t see how you can call prisons a “technology”.
So?
Eventual obsolescence is hardly an argument against incorporating something. Should we all ditch our Pentium 4’s because they’re eventually gonna make Pentium 5’s?
How is it an overkill for real world use? It’s been used twice already.
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Land mines still have a place in the military. Mines today can be produced to go inert or explode after a pre-determined amount of time avoiding the problems we’ve had with mines killing people decades after the conflict has ended.
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Such as?
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Sometimes, but in all cases?
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Uh, how many technologies are not really permanent? This doesn’t seem to be one that “must die.”
Magnetic media - They are unreliable, prone to mechanical failure and just soooo last century. Floppies have been on their way out for a while, but they just won’t die! Hard drives will soon be replaced by flash memory modules.
I was also going to add fax machines. If fax technology penetration had only been delayed by 5 years there never would have been any installed base for faxes…everyone would expect scanned jpgs. Yeah, fax technology would have been great for 1950. They waited 40 years to implement it, just when it was almost but not quite obsolete.
Exactly how are DVDs “spam-filled”? Yes, the ones that force you to watch a 5 minute preview are awful, but the vast majority take you right to a menu, where you can watch whatever you want. The coerced ad ones are awful, but that isn’t the fault of DVDs.
Oh, let me add some more bad technologies. Dial-up modems. Floppy disks. Digging naturally occuring diamonds out of the ground. Canned vegetables. Antibiotics added to animal feed. Thick screen TVs. Taking 3 hours to get to the airport, check your bags, go through security and wait in line, for a 2 hour plane flight. PDAs.
I believe the world would be a better place without any music-recording technology. When hearing music is not important enought to people to go to the trouble of performing it themselves, or to the expense of paying others to perform it, music at best is not as appreciated as it should be and at worst is an almost unescapable nuisance.
tschild, books shouldn’t be allowed, just because people can’t be troubled to write their own stories, and learn things from first principles. They should pay the expense of having experts teach them directly or storytellers perform for them. The written word at best is not as appreciated as it should be and at worst is an almost unescapable nuisance.
Sound reasonable to you ?
Cell phones on golf courses (and restuarants, and the left lane of the freeway, and grocery store lines, and…). Or at least the USGA should institute a new golf rule: 18 stroke penalty if your phone rings on the course or if you use it to make a phone call.
What the heck is wrong with fax machines?
If the other person has a computer with e-mail access, I send an e-mail. If not, I send a fax. And sometimes I have to very, very quickly whip up something handwritten and have it on their desk really fast. Later we can exchange finished documents. It’s a matter of having choices.
Oh, and if you do away with dial-up modems, you automatically deprive me of internet access. I do NOT have an alternative at home: neither CATV of Greater SJ nor Verizon Telephone of PR feel it’s worth it offering me reliable broadband.
Similarly, from that top-10 list, I see that some of the choices are not about the technology per se, but about the implementation. DVDs, prisons, manned spaceflight, and the internal combustion engine may be given suboptimal applications in the current marketplace (e.g. the private gas/diesel automobile; the Space Shuttle program; Regional Code Enhancement) but they could be properly managed. As for “cosmetic implants”, what the heck business of his it is if Brittney gets new boobies?
I’m still disturbed by the propensity to ditch perfectly good, useful technology just because something more whiz-bang is around. I don’t think that was the spirit of the list.
Autodialers used by telemarketers.
Car stereos that emit sound about 105 dB.
E-mail address harvesting software used by spammers.
Walkie-talkie cellphones.
Automotive electrical systems that allow one to slap on 18 bazillion gizmos, which really have no purpose other than to vainly disguise the fact that the car they’re installed in and or on, is utterly bland and shapeless looking.
I’ve got more, just give me time to think of them.
