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Hearing from the leaders of the tech world is always revealing, and very often surprising. In our second annual Silicon Valley Insiders Poll, a panel of 101 executives, innovators, and thinkers weigh in on some of the biggest technological, political, and cultural questions of the moment.
So when we ran an unscientific poll of leaders and thinkers in tech, we had to ask: Which technology do you wish you could un-invent? What innovation do you think should go "back in the box" and be banished forever?
The two winning responses were: selfie sticks and nuclear weapons.
But let's go through some runners-up first.
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/11/what-would-you-un-invent/413818/
Which inventions would Soylentils like to un-invent?
(Score: 5, Interesting) by number6 on Friday November 06 2015, @09:06AM
Find an alternative material for making sealed roads; something based on natural eco-friendly ubiquitous substances.
Also, discourage ownership of cars which need bowling-alley-smooth roads to be driven on.
Then, re-architect and re-define what a city and its elements should look like; find a way to combine rural self-sufficiency and farming practices with modern urban existence.
(Score: 3, Informative) by mendax on Friday November 06 2015, @10:13AM
Such an alternative has been used for over 100 years. It's called concrete. It's hard when it dries, it gets harder as it ages, and it's recyclable. It also lasts decades if properly maintained. In California, the state recently paved over some concrete on I-80 that was laid down in 1945 and was in pretty good shape. There are several roads in use today in California paved with concrete that are 100 years old and still in use.
Concrete is not ideal given the CO2 that is emitted during its production through the burning of natural gas but it's good enough.
It's really quite a simple choice: Life, Death, or Los Angeles.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by VLM on Friday November 06 2015, @12:30PM
Also with respect to not ideal, its an easy sell for the voters to give a billion dollar contract to a crony every 20 years for asphalt, but if they used concrete they'd only get a single $2B contract per century. So given an inherently crooked political system, its not going to work.
(Score: 2) by mendax on Friday November 06 2015, @08:24PM
Agreed, especially since an asphalt surface needs to be replaced more often than 20 years. The stretch of I-5 behind my house has been resurfaced twice in the ten years I've lived there.
It's really quite a simple choice: Life, Death, or Los Angeles.
(Score: 2) by Nuke on Friday November 06 2015, @01:35PM
Concrete roads are awful. The M5 motorway ring around London passes through Kent in the South East quadrant, where it has a concrete surface as a sop to the local cement industry. You grit your teeth over that section because of the noise and vibration, and the jolts at the joints.
My parent's residential street was also concrete - slabs about 25 m long. Tar adapts to subsidence but concrete doesn't : it just tilts and leaves steps between the adjacent slabs; and/or it cracks randomly with steps at the cracks.
It is ugly too, and the pale glare is hard on the eyes when driving.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Friday November 06 2015, @02:24PM
Properly built highways here in the US are all made with concrete. The concrete is more stable than asphalt, and can handle a much higher load, which is important for longevity when tractor-trailers are driving on them at high speeds. The concrete is rather thick though (well over a foot IIRC, maybe two), to prevent problems with subsidence you refer to. Then, to avoid the noise and glare problems you complain about, it's coated with a layer of asphalt on top. Later, for maintenance, it's easy to redo the thin asphalt coat while leaving the concrete base intact.
Concrete driveways aren't so great because 1) the concrete is always too thin, as you found, and 2) the quality of the concrete is likely crap.
Of course, the downside to the properly built highways above is that they're extremely expensive per-mile compared to just slapping some regular asphalt down.
(Score: 2) by tibman on Friday November 06 2015, @02:28PM
It looks like that road has been in use since the 60's-70's: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M5_motorway#History [wikipedia.org]
SN won't survive on lurkers alone. Write comments.
(Score: 2) by Nuke on Friday November 06 2015, @04:36PM
Sorry, slip of the pen, I meant the M25, not M5. Constructed mid 1980's.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Friday November 06 2015, @10:07PM
You're using a pen to type your comments?
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by Nuke on Friday November 06 2015, @11:40PM
Yes, I've un- invented the keyboard.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Friday November 06 2015, @04:17PM
All of that is due to improper dirt work. If a road way is meant to last, the dirt is dug away at least three feet deeper than the concrete will be poured. Roll it, till it, mix it with lime, roll it and till it agains and again, adding more and more lime. When the dirt has zero moisture, and it has been compacted to 100% density, then, and only then, does the contractor finally begin pouring the concrete on top of the compacted dirt.
The State of Texas knows concrete. They will force the contractor to work that dirt for months, until it's just perfect.
(Score: 2) by mendax on Friday November 06 2015, @08:22PM
I said with proper maintenance. The surface needs to be ground down to adjust for the shifting slabs, and cracked slabs need to be completely replaced.
The stretch of I-80 I was referring to was built right after the end of the war, in 1945, as part of the US 40 expressway between Vallejo and Sacramento. In the early 1960's it was widened with an additional outside lane, also concrete, and converted into a freeway through the construction of interchanges. By the time the state paved over the concrete two years ago the newer outside lanes were in awful condition thanks to the heavy trucks chewing up the pavement. But the original lanes were still in pretty good shape. So you see, old concrete can last for years.
Incidentally, there is another stretch of freeway nearby, most of which was built almost 40 years ago. The concrete was recently ground down and smoothed over even though it was in pretty good shape anyway. Now it's as smooth as a baby's butt.
It's really quite a simple choice: Life, Death, or Los Angeles.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Friday November 06 2015, @04:13PM
The Romans made much better concrete than we do. Some of their work has been exposed to and/or submerged in ocean water for two thousand years. And the Romans didn't use bulldozers, excavators, trucks, or any of the other crap our wimpy nation needs to make concrete.
https://newscenter.lbl.gov/2013/06/04/roman-concrete/ [lbl.gov]
Just one of many articles on Roman concrete.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 07 2015, @08:08PM
My guess -- the Romans used slaves. Is that better than "energy slaves" -- the crap you refer to?
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Sunday November 08 2015, @02:46AM
Better for the environment, yes. Better for the slave owners, maybe not. Better for the slaves, positively not.
What, you thought there was only one point of view?
(Score: 2) by RamiK on Friday November 06 2015, @10:59AM
like, poorly designed instruction sets, languages and operating systems can't just be removed since another poorly designed tech would be introduced in it's place instead of a good one. Since, the same people still want something broken to maintain as a living.
Same goes for tar: there are dozens of better alternatives but non of them can guarantee a yearly contract to someone friendly with city hall. So, even if you replace it, the alternative would likely be the next worse thing on the list.
compiling...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 06 2015, @12:01PM
I had a panic moment when I read the subject; you can prize the tape archives from my dead drives. That wasn't what you meant so carry on...
(Score: 5, Informative) by bzipitidoo on Friday November 06 2015, @02:38PM
While you're on the subject of urban living, how about drastically changing lawn care? How ever did we allow ourselves to be suckered into spending so much time and money on lawns? It's nuts. We have powered lawn mowers, riding lawn mowers, edgers, weed whackers, weed killers, leaf blowers, fertilizers, insecticides, and automatic sprinkler systems. Is your lawn Roundup Ready? All that crap could go. The lawn care industrial complex tries to smear most native plants as weeds, and a few dozen exotic, non-native, high maintenance plants as desirable.
We have crazily gone as far as enshrining lawn care in law. We have insane city ordinances about it that have even lead to people being jailed for not mowing their lawns enough.
And yes, our love affair with the car has gone too far. I'd like to see some of that highway money spent on pedestrians and cyclists.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 06 2015, @09:22PM
A great many cities also have restrictions on how high your "lawn" can be and strictly enforce that.
As such, you can't use that land to grow food.
I really hate waste and this stuff figures prominently on my list.
...and 1 lawnmower per household when 1 per neighborhood would last most of a lifetime is also poor use of resources.
One of my un-invent-it technologies is the leaf blower.
It doesn't actually clean anything (as was done with rakes and brooms in previous generations).
It just makes the mess someone else's problem.
-- gewg_
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 06 2015, @09:50PM
"One of my un-invent-it technologies is the leaf blower.
It doesn't actually clean anything (as was done with rakes and brooms in previous generations).
It just makes the mess someone else's problem."
Yes and yes....
Leaves in the drainage system just clog it up. When they get to the rivers it turns to tea. Then in the gulf, bays, oceans; it becomes an algae bloom. Kills all the good fish.
Down with leaf blowers. Make then vacuum and then process the leafs for something good.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Saturday November 07 2015, @03:16AM
In that case, someone should cut down all the trees along the riverbanks...
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by JeanCroix on Friday November 06 2015, @03:03PM
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Friday November 06 2015, @05:15PM
Tar is naturally occuring . . . perhaps not in the refined form that goes on the road, but still. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tar_pit [wikipedia.org]
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 06 2015, @08:06PM
Ahh the "I want acreage in the city center with peace and quiet in a walkable community with trendy restaurants and bars" syndrome.
Self sufficiency and urban are mutually exclusive. Always have been. Just look at the thousands of trucks needed per day per million residents to move food in cities and garbage out every day. The closest an urban environment could get to self-sufficiency is if every person had several acres of farmland each with additional land for equipment, maintenance, and the nastier parts of human existence like waste management. There is already a name for such a place: the country.