Technology that should be killed off?

[Thermodyne]

http://www.bcentral.com/articles/isy...d=msn&LID=3800

Wow, this should make for a good debate

[General Woundwort]

1. Nukes - sure, it would be great to memory-wipe the know-how to make these things, but it ain't gonna happen. Nukes are now necessary evils in that they must be used to deter those who would use them on you - and that only for those who do not have homicidal/suicidal death wishes...

2 & 3. Coal and gas-powered technologies - research should be going into developing alternates for these things, indeed - but our civilization has become intrinsically dependent on both plentiful electricity and personal mobility (both direct by-products of fossil fuel technologies), so until those alternatives are on-line, coal and gas ain't going away either.

4. Incandescent light bulbs - replacements are already widely available.

5. Land mines - again, another nasty weapon that would make the world a nicer place if it just went away - but don't bet on it happening.

6. manned spaceflight - uh huh, like that's going to get panned on these Boards.

7. Prisons - there's something to be said for this. Heinlein's whipping Posts, anyone?

EDIT - Oops, wasn't done yet...

8. Cosmetic implants - in a culture that celebrates youth and vanity? Another "ain't gonna happen".

9. Lie detectors - I sometimes wonder why they still don't use gypsy fortune tellers...

10 DVD's - sounds like somebody just doesn't want to pay to upgrade his movie collection...

[ October 24, 2003, 17:50: Message edited by: General Woundwort ]

[geoschmo]

RE: Dvd's

Most loathsome of all is the fiendish spam hard-burned into DVDs, which forces one to suffer through the commercials gratefully evaded by videotape fast-forwards.

Umm, maybe the Disney dvd's my kids watch are different then whatever movies this guys has, but I can skip all the ads at the begining by hitting the menu button on my remote. Don't they all work this way? The only thing I can't skip over is the FBI warning about illegal duplication. Admitadly that's annoying, but it's not all that long and doesn't really qualify as spam.

[Arkcon]

Yeah, I saw this before. Kinda inane in my opinion. Lot's of "not gonna happen" and "alternatives already available", so what's the point.

One thing, nukes make it possible that we wake up one morning with Washington, D.C. or Paris gone? M-kay, see, if he wanted to make a point with that, he should have picked places people would be sad to lose.

Thank you everybody and good night!

[Suicide Junkie]

It shouldn't be "manned spaceflight" but more "current shuttle tech/ideas".

We need to use simpler and cheaper surface-to-orbit boosters, and then have some nice orbital tugs waiting (solar sails, ion drives or spinning cable stations)

[Cyrien]

Oi. There is quite a big of ignorance in some of the arguments he made.

Easy to make conventional weapons do what nukes do? HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Just a few of the smaller nukes around today have more firepower than every conventional munition ever detonated in the history of the world. This is orders of magnitude. You can't just make conventional weapons stronger.

And on and on with the others as well.

I am sure many others here like the two prior posters can cover most of it with the flaws inherent in his argument.

Technologies die when they die because they become obsolete not because we make a list of things we think we don't need anymore.

And some of them are obsolete now... and eventually they will die. But you can't force it to happen.

[ October 24, 2003, 17:59: Message edited by: Cyrien ]

[Renegade 13]

Whoever wrote that article needs to have his head examined. Simply wishing technologies were gone won't make it happen. So many of the quoted technologies are in everyday use by a large percentage of the worlds' population.

Take internal combustion engines for example. Sure, it'd be great if they were replaced with hydrogen or fuel cells. But the Last I heard, the commercially available hydrogen cars Ford is planning on selling won't even be available until something like 2009, and will cost approx. $1.5 MILLION!! I don't know about you but I don't know anyone with 1.5 million to spend on a car. It's simply not practical.

This of course is only one example of the lack of reasoning and logic that went into that list. Some of you have already mentioned other points, and will no doubt show some more. We need to live in the real world, not a fantasy. (unless that fantasy is SE4, then its all good )

Renegade

[narf poit chez BOOM]

before you get to annoyed at him, didn't he essientally say it was a joke?

[Instar]

I disagree with most of his points. He fails to even provide sources for any of his points, no hard numbers, nothing. I read this in Discover magazine or maybe MIT Tech Review, and I heartily disagreed.

[narf poit chez BOOM]

A science fiction writer's irreverent take.

like i said, your taking him to seriously.