What's the most disappointing technology of the 21st century so far?

[Shermann]

Some of these had roots in the 20th century but have still failed to grow to fruition. I listed the top ten and AI is good enough to stay off the list (barely).

82 votes, 8 passes | Time left: Unlimited
	3D Television: Neither you nor your friends have one. These still require special glasses for when you aren't just watching the news.
	5 (6%)
	Blockchain: Overhyped currency which consumes a ton of energy solving arbitrary puzzles which hasn't exactly translated to a free Libertarian utopia.
	22 (27%)
	Internet of Things: Do we really need to connect our toasters to the internet?
	10 (12%)
	Virtual Reality: This looks great on paper but mostly just gives you a headache.
	1 (1%)
	Augmented Reality: This is somehow an even crappier version of Virtual Reality.
	0 (0%)
	Autonomous Vehicles: Neither you nor your friends have ridden in one. As Pei Mei once said, "Is it your wish to die?"
	32 (39%)
	Batteries: These haven't kept up with our appetites for mobile devices and electric vehicles, despite what YouTube says. Also, they catch fire sometimes.
	8 (10%)
	Quantum Computing: It doesn't look like you can possibly read your mail or search for a recipe with one of these complicated gadgets. Crappiest computers ever?
	1 (1%)
	3D Printing: Star Trek fans waiting for their own personal replicators will need to wait a while longer.
	2 (2%)
	Hoverboards: No explanation necessary.
	1 (1%)
	8 DU members did not wish to select any of the options provided.
Show usernames Disclaimer: This is an Internet poll

[maveric]

1. Internet

It should had brought about a new Age of Enlightenment.

It didn’t.

[Shermann]

4. Back in the late 80's in an academic setting, it was all that.

The technology is great, bad actors just ruined it and made it the shitshow that it is today.

[electric_blue68]

18. There's plenty of good on the internet. Unfortunately, some bad as well. Most depends on How you Use it...

It can be educational, I've learned alot of different things: both totally new, and more information on subjects I already have I have interests in. Often way easier access wise than the library (which I still love, since I love books).
For instance, I learned a lot on how to crochet through drawings, photos, and videos.

It brings people together from many different US States, and people from other Countries through shared interests on Websites.
And like you see here at DU (and often other well used sites) we learn different things about where we live, what we do etc beyond the interests that brought us together.

It can be alot of fun learning new things, meeting new people. Also looking at things/sites that you find fun, or funny.

You can look up photographs on practicaly any place, or anything with almost the snap of a finger!

All this and more.

I say there's been, and is more good than bad in the almost 30 years I've been on line.

[Disaffected]

14. It was the same with television.

And the mass media is following right along.

[Zoomie1986]

30. Anybody who expected that was living in denial

They forgot the #1 rule: Garbage in, garbage out.

And we have a whole lot of garbage out there that idiots want to push.

[Kaleva]

34. I can't imagine being without DU

I love the internet. I don't know how I'd ever be able to prepare for the fast approaching cataclysmic climate change without it .

[Demobrat]

2. A word about driverless vehicles.

Where I live they are all over the place. At first my reaction was WTF. Now - I trust them more than human drivers.

The obey speed limits. They stop at stop signs, red lights, and for pedestrians. They follow all traffic laws and are totally predictable. Unlike humans.

I haven’t ridden in one yet, but that’s because my main forms of transportation are my feet and the bus. I’m sure I will soon. Beats listening to some Uber driver mansplaining that he is smarter than the app.

[Shermann]

7. A lot of this is perception

As you can see, it got a lot of votes. I think expectations were set too high with these considering the formidable technical barriers.

[eppur_se_muova]

3. AI. Accompanied by, and the possible benefits of overwhelmed by, Artificial Stupidity. nt

[Shermann]

5. The hype cycle is going to hit AI hard

That said, they have moved the needle in recent years. I've gotten hooked on Edge Copilot for noncritical research. It has even impressed me a few times, and I'm pretty jaded as you may have noticed.

[iemanja]

26. Artificial stupidity gets my vote

Good addition.

[bobalew]

27. Yes! This!

Artificial Idioticy. Instead of actually working, it got turned into yet another corporate Bonus funding exercise, by the management that AI could best replace.

[highplainsdem]

35. Generative AI, which is the most harmful tech in recent decades, with only a few areas where it's

actually helpful. Incredible waste of investment money. Damaging to the environment. Far and away the biggest theft of intellectual property ever. Seriously polluting our information ecosystem, and it might never be possible to remove the tsunami of AI slop, both text and images, from the internet. Teachers being pressured by admins to use it more and more, with the aim in many cases the replacement of teachers with AI, though the increase in cheating is more and more obvious; OpenAI's CEO merely suggested we change the definition of cheating so it won't include AI.

The error/hallucination problem is apparently unsolvable, so genAI can never be trusted to give a correct response (so you get fake quotes with fake citations, the wrong number of fingers on hands, scientific illustrations that are complete lunacy and would be hilarious if the AI-generated article they're in hadn't somehow been missed and published in a journal). But the AI companies are still determined to shove genAI into everything possible anyway.

Even though its main use is fraud, from students cheating to people using AI to pretend to have knowledge and abilities they don't have, whether with writing, coding, visual art or music. You can prompt an AI image generator to spit out images of something you'd never heard of when you have no idea what it might look like - say, you choose a few Latin scientific names from a long list - in an art style you never heard of before and have no knowledge of, and the AI will come up with something, even if you have no clue whether the image or the art style is correct. That doesn't make the AI user an artist or knowledgeable, any more than a student using ChatGPT to write an essay about a book the student hasn't read has somehow gained any knowledge. GenAI is the ultimate dumbing-down and de-skilling tech.

I saw one AI peddler on Twitter tell students in a recent post to simply cheat their way through school, and then genAI would be their "superpower" after they got the degree.

[eppur_se_muova]

49. I forgot about the energy demand/enviro cost. That for crypto too -- horror stories from neighbors of crypto farms.

They gobble so much power, and convert so much of it into heat, that the endless noise from the cooling fans is making people sick.

All the CTs about windmills causing problems that the RWNJs have promulgated are actually pretty horribly true about crypto farms -- and crypto has been busy funding the GOP (half of all corporate donations).



I was going to say "especially your first para", then read the second one, then the third one. Yeah, you've done a really comprehensive summary of everything generative AI should be indicted for -- much better than I ever could have. I just recognize another product the tech geeks created because they could, not because of any fundamental need, but hey, it's marketable, and that settles the issue.

[highplainsdem]

50. Thanks for the reply - and for the reminder of what an environmental nightmare crypto is as well.

It's all so infuriating.

I read a lot about AI on Twitter, and I'd say that the AI peddlers and users are in their own little alternate-reality bubble, but unfortunately it's leaking all kinds of harms all over the rest of society and the planet. If we survive, the genAI craze will probably be seen as one of the craziest eras ever, but genAI is making it less likely we will survive. It's just destroying our information ecosystem.

I just posted this about Microsoft's Copilot: https://www.democraticunderground.com/100219385471

[Shermann]

59. I actually use Copilot a lot these days.

For noncritical research, it can take garbage in and turn it into kind of useful information out. A lot of times a news story breaks, and does a fair job of answering questions A, B, and C. However, my question is D and it isn't covered. Then you have to sift through a dozen articles which have reposted the same answers to the same questions A, B, and C. D is out there, just hard to find. Copilot will find it (hopefully free of hallucinations) very quickly and post a citation of where it got it. Google can't seem to root these out as effectively. So, this use case really isn't generative, just a far more powerful way to search.

[brewens]

6. Even decades after the greatest invention of all-time it's a hard act to follow. The impact on humanity can't easily

be calculated. The automatic programmable coffee maker.

[Shermann]

10. I can't see setting up the coffee pot the night before when I can procrastinate and make it in the morning! nt

[Angleae]

51. But your new coffee maker will be connected to the internet where artificial stupidity will program it.

[GreenWave]

8. The Galaxy deflector ray.

Knock Andromeda off its collision course with the Milky Way.Do it while it is still "easy" to do.

[dutch777]

9. Humans? Getting dumber and less aware by the day

[bcool]

11. I beg to differ on 3D tvs...

I have one, and you only need to wear the glasses if you're watching a 3D movie.

The big problem is, there aren't many movies available in 3D - but for those that are, WOW!

[Shermann]

17. I'd say those are in the hype cycle Phase 3: Trough of Disillusionment

They are actually declining in popularity (and were never even that popular). We'll see how things look in Phase 4: Slope of Enlightenment. Everybody wants those to work (like Hoverboards).

[Tree Lady]

21. I have one also and love Avatar on it

problem is that is the only good real 3D movie I could find. The rest are nothing compared.

Do you know any other good ones?

[AllaN01Bear]

12. flying car that folds into a briefcase when you arrive at your destination. aka the jetsons.

[GoCubsGo]

36. No flying cars PERIOD!

Not even the non-collapsible kind. No jet packs, either. So many broken promises...

[AllaN01Bear]

37. indeed.

[Xavier Breath]

40. Well, they're hyping these so-called flying cars

that look just like large versions of the crappy drone your asshat B-I-L bought on e-bay and terrorized everyone with at the last family picnic. It's a fucking drone, not a car. A true flying car would land and then drive right down the street without massive blades capable of decapitating any nearby pedestrians.

The future sucks.

[robbob]

13. You forgot to include the Segway!

2001: top secret revolutionary device was revealed that was going to change the world! I had to looked up “balanced propelled device that replaces walking” because I couldn’t even remember what they are called! 😂

[Shermann]

15. Yeah, the Segway was disappointing

The technology was pretty good, they just couldn't get it cost-effective and safe enough to start redesigning cities around it.

[LeftInTX]

28. Standing is much, much harder on your joints than walking!

I've got a bad back and when I saw those things, it was total cringe! It might have a small niche, but for the most part, it would be about as fun as standing in formation!

[Celerity]

16. You should change it to crypto currency. Blockchain's used in many other applications that have nothing to do w/ crypto.

[Polybius]

19. I love autonomous vehicles

Full Self Driving is statistically safer at driving than humans are.

[NameAlreadyTaken]

20. Social media

[uncle ray]

22. the fucking algorithms.

[Trueblue1968]

23. AI ........ Artificial intelligence

[flamingdem]

24. I watched a Waymo parking

and I have to say it did a good job.

Would I get into one? NOPE!

[DFW]

25. A ship named after the father of a friend of ours

It was a new class of destroyer named after the father of one of our friends. He had been Secretary of the Navy under Nixon. He removed racial and gender barriers to becoming an officer, and Nixon hated him for it.

The ship cost something like $4 billion to build, and had more new hi-tech weapons and gadgets on it than a Star Wars battle cruiser. The trouble is that much of the hi-tech gadgets and weapons that were supposed to make this ship so formidable never worked. We were at the christening of the ship in Maine ten years ago. As far as I know, nowhere near all of the faulty systems have been fixed.

[haele]

39. The problem was the shipbuilders design

The shipyards were allowed to design their own proprietary overall network to integrate all the Navy systems as they were at the time, and took shortcuts using commercial products that were not to MilSpec and could not adapt to incorporate asymmetric system updates, as in updates to meet evolving threats and strategic changes.
Your friend's admiral's father would not have approved or accepted of the turnover of so much design work to commercial businesses without strictly following Navy Architectural requirements.

I feel your dismay. We're still working on fixing the shipyard's "design".

Haele

[DFW]

42. Trust the Bath Iron Works to cut corners like that.

For the record, our friend’s father WAS the admiral. Friends and family called “Bud.” Bill Clinton practically worshipped him, but he had passed about a year before our families has met.

[haele]

46. I met the Admiral of whom you speak.

He was the reason I was able to get a ship's billet as one of the first women at sea in 1979.
Good guy, dedicated not only to the future of the Navy, but in building the best sailors.
He would have hated what Poindexter, Rumsfeld and their fellow travellers did to the DoD.

Haele

[DFW]

48. That he would have.

Nixon ordered Jim Schlesinger to fire him right before he resigned, something that Schlesinger refused to do.

[Bucky]

29. it's really a late 20th C invention, but I think anonymous posting on the internet is a bad move

People making death threats and DOS attacks on the internet are not Publius.
I think every single post on the Web 2.0 internet should be traceable back to a human name and physical address.

Oh, wait, I forgot about countries where there's anti-authoritarian activists posting against their local dictators.
Shit, free speech is complicated... and that's an 18th century technology

[betsuni]

31. For the first time I have a fridge that makes ice cubes by itself.

I'm still so impressed by this miracle of technology that I can't consider the disappointing technological things.

[Straw Man]

32. I teach writing for a living.

AI is absolutely ruining that discipline. It's a cheaters' paradise. It will contribute immensely to what I call the "new illiteracy" -- the further dumbing down of the American public occasioned by our atrophying verbal skills. It's like going to the gym and having someone else lift the weights for you.

I'm semi-retired, and I teach completely online. I'm forced to spend a great deal of time and effort figuring out ways to deter cheaters. My colleagues who are still in the classroom have told me that they are reverting to real-time pen-and-paper assignments as the only viable strategy.

Artificial intelligence my ass ...

[highplainsdem]

38. Agree completely. See my reply 35. I read a lot of teachers' posts on Twitter, and the only ones

I've run across who are happy about generative AI are the ones who are temporarily profiting off urging people to use AI, usually in some sort of partnership with one or more AI companies.

Otherwise, teachers are doing their best to try to limit the damage done to education - especially by cheating but also by students feeling there isn't much point in mastering any skill if AI will just automate everything and there won't be any real chance at the careers they want.

But a lot of those teachers are feeling terribly stressed, even despairing.

GenAI has already taken a wrecking ball to education.

[JCMach1]

47. Semi-retired writing prof here too. AI is just another tool

...but at least it's a real tool you can teach people to use and not a sorority file of old essays. The other favorite thing where I spent most of my career was to use a hired ghost write/tutor to write your papers.

There are some very serious research AI's coming up that are amazing and time saving in the same way using a database was an upgrade from using say something like a published MLA index of recent literature.

Change is hard, but it's real and very much here.

[JanMichael]

33. Cures for things like ALS. So far disappointing.

[Renew Deal]

41. Has to be autonomous vehicles

It is the one most likely to change the way people live their lives. Blockchain is a behind the curtain technology that most people can't choose to use. If you meant cryptocurrency, there is a discussion to be had.

[Demsrule86]

43. I am not a doom and gloomer...it is still a pretty great world with much to see and do.

We have great candidates this year and will wipe out some GOP would-be dictators. We have concerts, movies, TV, radio, music, the theater, gyms, swimming pools, and football. We have access to thousands of free books (ebooks are great). My daughter married this year to a wonderful guy and I am a Grandma. Life is good...too good to catalog what you 'hate' or what is the 'worst'...a self-fulfilling prophecy of unhappiness awaits those who follow this path..so Happy Monday folks. It is a new week with many possibilities.

PS...I wanted to add Medicine and lifesaving treatments.

When I was 16, I wanted out of school badly and nurses' aid training was offered in the afternoon. I had no desire to be a nurse but hello...I got to leave school. So there I was in a time when nurses still wore caps and men shivered in terror when they saw a 16-year-old with a thermometer (All temperatures were taken rectally on my floor). On a Monday, I still remember the day clearly all these years later, I walked into a pediatric room. I had been 'borrowed' as they were short-handed in pediatrics. A seven-year-old boy sat up eating Cheerios- his favorite cereal. He had a sweet smile, dark hair, and dimples. He looked perfectly healthy but he wasn't; he had Leukemia...for weeks later he was dead. In those days nothing could be done. I still tear up when I think of him. Today in the 21st century, more than 95% of kids survive Leukemia. So I kind of think the 21st century is sort of a miracle.

[BannonsLiver]

44. That we're still using rockets to get into space and there are no hologram phones.

[orthoclad]

45. Cell phones

The snark, er, smart phone has become a blight.

[Angleae]

53. What? You don't like the 21st century version of the zombie apocalypse?

[orthoclad]

65. Shambling, shambling along

[Shermann]

58. Woohoo! I get to talk to the person I'd like to be with instead of the person I'm actually with at the moment! nt

[orthoclad]

66. While driving an SUV

[orthoclad]

67. Yeah, that distant voice is SO much more important

than the people you're sharing physical space with.

[Historic NY]

52. Self driving vehicles...

Why the buy one if you want a car....take the train its cheaper

[JackSabbath]

54. Streaming tv

I'm old enough to remember that the whole point of cable TV was that you paid to get the shows with no commercials. Then they put in commercials and charged you MORE for cable. Streaming TV was supposed to fix that. Nope. It was cool for two or three years and now you gotta upgrade to get no commercials. Also any programming that actually has any redeeming social value is priced as premium, or hidden entirely.

[CrispyQ]

55. Streaming. On demand TV & movies with the click of a button.

First of all, not EVERYTHING is available. There are a few titles I haven't found anywhere. Second of all, it's not like all the offerings are under one roof like Blockbuster. There are so many streaming services & sometimes you're in the middle of a series & the service you're watching through drops the show & another one picks it up. Sometimes it doesn't get picked up right away. You can at least cancel at anytime so you're never out more than a month's subscription if you keep a calendar & cancel in time.

My biggest gripe about streaming is the lack of standardization in how the user interacts with the app. Like how Ctrl +X equals Cut on PCs. Things like how you turn closed caption on & off, or how your favorites are stored. In some apps if you pause during a commercial, when you come back you have to start the commercials all over again. It's crazy inconsistency. Netflix has the best, IMO.

[Shermann]

57. Roku does a pretty good job of standardizing the controls across applications.

Samsung Tizan OS apps are a lot more inconsistent that way. But it works, and if you have a Samsung smart TV it may not seem worth it to add an external streaming device with mostly the same apps.

Streaming video through webpages instead of apps is even worse.

The fragmentation across all the different service providers means not only a mish mash of apps, but also accounts that you have to maintain and (usually) keep funded. Amazon has started to consolidate some of them, but it is still a hot mess.

[Ping Tung]

56. Clamshell packaging

It is however a great producer of profanity when trying to open it.

[Shermann]

64. Well at least you can recycle...err...never mind.

Plastic recycling technology should have made the top ten. It's the only one of these shitty technologies that have ads running touting how great it is. Greenwashing adds to the shittiness, it doesn't subtract (silly oil companies).

[Jk23]

60. I am loving my new self driving car.

Honesty adaptive cruise control and lane technology is a game changer.

[Shermann]

61. Those are really ADAS (advanced driver-assistance system) features and not autonomous driving features. nt

[Mosby]

62. EVs, Solar.

Nt

[Shermann]

63. Fusion energy (which I failed to list) is WAY more disappointing than solar! nt

[surrealAmerican]

68. "Internet of things" is just a way for marketers to ...

... monitor you. It helps them, and provides no real value to the consumer.

[Shermann]

69. I have an IoT pool pump

So, I can adjust the schedule from my phone. It's ok, but I'd be fine with a dedicated control panel. The app version is cheaper, so in fairness there is some value in that from the consumer perspective. But I don't think the concept can make a refrigerator more cost-effective, the opposite seems to be true.

[eppur_se_muova]

70. Vote supression.

Oh, wait, that's as old as democracy.

Still, worth making a point over it.