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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, Insightful) by khchung on Friday November 06 2015, @09:34AM
It is extreme hubris to think that once you un-invent something, no one else in the world could re-invent it, especially the "bad guys" which you don't want access to it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 06 2015, @09:40AM
Well, if you had a technology to actually un-invent something (which involves removing it both from all archives and from all memories), that technology would certainly be powerful enough to also prevent re-invention.
Of course if we had that un-invention technology, the first thing to un-invent would be that very technology.
(Score: 3, Funny) by TheSage on Friday November 06 2015, @10:14AM
But that is the point. I do want the bad guys (and only the bad guys) to have access to selfie sticks.
(Score: 2, Funny) by OwMyBrain on Friday November 06 2015, @03:04PM
If you outlaw selfie sticks, only outlaws will have selfie sticks.
(Score: 1) by kazzie on Friday November 06 2015, @06:44PM
Well that'll make it easier to identify and arrest them.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 07 2015, @10:59AM
the only thing that can stop a bad guy with a selfie stick... is a good guy with a selfie stick
you can pry my selfie stick from my cold dead hands... after i die using it
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 06 2015, @01:11PM
especially the "bad guys" which you don't want access to it.
The ones who invented the technology and used it are the bad guys. If the good guys had invented the technology and used it for good, we wouldn't want to un-invent that technology.
Who are the "bad guys" anyway?
(Score: 2) by Nuke on Friday November 06 2015, @01:24PM
The Japanese un-invented the wheel around 1500 AD.
Japanese pictures showing wheeled vehicles have been dated to before that time, but later pictures showed men carrying even heavy stuff by hand. The Japanese deliberately kept themselves technically backward until the latter part of the 19th century when they suddenly changed policy and caught up with a vengence - such that in the war of 1904 they took on Russia, a Great Power, and beat them.
The way things are going with the rise of the green movement, quite a few things are likely to be "uninvented" in the near future - nuclear power and pesticides are early casualties, to be followed I expect by cars, aircraft, paint, and maybe even electricity. I am talking about the West here of course - the rest of the World will look in amusement on our "example" and self-flagellation (as the Greenies see it and want it) and carry on their own way.
(Score: 2) by jmorris on Friday November 06 2015, @06:31PM
Nah. Long before we uninvent everything we will simply be replaced by more sane peoples. And since for Europe the replacement will be Islam they will wipe all memory that Christendom ever existed there, with the one good benefit that the suicidal memes that destroyed Western Civilization should get purged along with all it's achievements. By which time their different but equally toxic social problems will probably end them as well. Because they can't maintain technology and their ideology/religion and there won't be a West to provide those things to them anymore. Then China or India get a go at it?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 06 2015, @09:25PM
kept themselves technically backward until the latter part of the 19th century
The date portion is accurate.
You failed to mention, however, how in 1853 USAian Commodore Perry sailed a fleet with 61 cannons into Tokyo Bay and told the Japanese in no uncertain terms that they would open themselves to trade.
-- gewg_
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Friday November 06 2015, @02:32PM
Incorrect. The problem with a lot of shitty technologies is that they're used because of non-technical reasons, usually inertia. If everyone got rid of them tomorrow and switched to something else, they wouldn't want to go back.
For example, suppose we somehow finally got rid of fax machines everywhere, perhaps simply by banning them and having stormtroopers raid every medical clinic and law office and real estate office and seize the damn things, and destroy them all. All these places would suddenly be forced to move to better methods of transmitting documents, like, oh, scanners and PDFs and email like the rest of us have been using for over a decade?? Once they got those processes in place (and the laws were forcibly changed to allow this, since faxed signatures are legally binding for some dumb reason), no one would want to go back to needing a landline and transmitting pages with horrible resolution and graphical artifacts, leading to completely illegible pages.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 06 2015, @08:09PM
Use your soft skills. The question is really asking what technology would you rather not have exist? It is not a practical question but one of insightfulness and personal taste.