Nuclear for sure. Reading old science fiction from the '50s is pretty eye opening on what promise it appeared to hold.
In my lifetime, the Genome project. I’m sure a lot of good has come of it, and will continue to do so, but when they first decided to try to decode the human genome, the promise in the air was eradication of so many diseases, increased health and longevity to humanity, etc.
The Internet for sure. It went from something that would allow the entire world to access knowledge, be better informed, make the future a real meritocracy. Instead, we ended up with magats, vaccine-effectiveness deniers, and aggressive stupidity.
Any citizen of the social internet knows the feeling: that irritable contentiousness, that desire to get into it that seems almost impossible to resist, even though you know you’ve already squandered too many hours and too much emotional energy on pointless internet disputes. If you use Twitter, you may have noticed that at...
Powerful people imprisoned by the cluelessness of their own isolation, locked up with their own motivated reasoning: "It's impossible to get a CEO to understand something when his quarterly earnings call depends on him not understanding it."...
What was supposed to be "The Next Big Thing!" but flopped? (kbin.social)
As a car enthusiast, I can think of a good one, the Ford Nucleon....
YouTube under no obligation to host anti-vaccine advocate’s videos, court says (arstechnica.com)
YouTube had the discretion to take down content that harmed users, judge said.
How to Short-Circuit the Outrage Machine (slate.com)
Any citizen of the social internet knows the feeling: that irritable contentiousness, that desire to get into it that seems almost impossible to resist, even though you know you’ve already squandered too many hours and too much emotional energy on pointless internet disputes. If you use Twitter, you may have noticed that at...
Forcing your computer to rat you out - Cory Doctorow - Pluralistic (pluralistic.net)
Powerful people imprisoned by the cluelessness of their own isolation, locked up with their own motivated reasoning: "It's impossible to get a CEO to understand something when his quarterly earnings call depends on him not understanding it."...