Technical Difficulty: Top 5 Tech Missteps

John Davidson

I love technology. From classic video games to modern video games, I have an interest in the entire range of technology we've developed. The march of progress is endlessly fascinating and you can easily kill an afternoon just reading various Wikipedia articles about technology while claiming to be doing "research" for work. And if that gets boring, you can just start editing Wikipedia articles to make yourself the inventor of the cotton gin. History is written by the victor, Eli Whitney, and you died in 1825 while I'm still very much alive. So I guess that makes me the winner (and also the inventor of the cotton gin, as far as the internet is concerned) by default.

New technology, however, isn't always a winner nor does it always stand the test of time. Let's take a look back at 5 technological misfires that crashed and burned like an Asian air liner.

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5. Vaccinations

Okay, so you're telling me I get to go to an office, wait there well past when my appointment was scheduled for, and then I get to go into a cold room and have someone jam a sharp needle into my arm to inject me with the remains of a dead virus? Sign me up! Oh, and it supposedly protects me from some illness that literally NO ONE I've known has ever had? Seriously, who's ever heard of rubella? No one. Name one person you know under the age of 30 that's had polio. Thought so. Yeah this sounds legit. Sign me up for two. Oh wait I have to take like a dozen of them?! And I start them as a baby? Screw that. Vaccinations have given us precisely ONE good thing in the decades they've existed: Dustin Hoffman in Rainman. He was great in that movie.

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4. The Internet

As a child of the 80's, I grew up smack in the middle of the internet boom time. The internet has helped grow the world community, aided in the sharing of information across countless peoples & places, and fostered a generation ready to embrace technology. So how does it make the list? Simply put, it's a rip-off. The pony express did everything the internet did a hundred years before the internet existed. It shared information, it delivered things and it provided easy access to the sort of depraved pornography we not only need but deserve as semi-tax-paying adults. And it did ALL of that with the added bonus of horses. Horses are awesome. They're big and fast, they eat oats and they star in children's cartoons obsessed over by disturbing adults. One named Butterscotch will even kick your loud-mouth uncle in the head after he drunkenly wanders behind her during your 9th birthday party, hospitalizing him for a month. Best party ever. Thanks, Butterscotch! So, pony express minus the horses? No thanks, internet. You can keep your horseless wasteland of endless, instant information and infinite possibilities for communication.

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3. Planes

Hey, look! The second mention of airplanes in this article. No surprise here because the Wright brothers really messed up this one. I'd love to be able to come up with some clever pun, possibly including their name, to encapsulate this failure, but such an extravagantly clever idea alludes me at the moment. Transcontinental trips would allow us to bask in the comfort of trains or in the only-slightly-urine-scented accommodations of buses. Crossing the ocean would be accomplished by relaxing, weeks-long boat journey. Or for classy gentleman, such as myself, by totally awesome zeppelin. That's not what makes the Wright brothers bad, though. Not by a long shot. Let's face it. Suffice to say, no Wright Brothers, no airplanes. No airplanes, no 9-11. Good job Orville & Wilbur. Stick to making popcorn and tending to your talking horse. Someone put these two dumb asses on the Do-Not-Fly list ASAP.

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2. The iPhone

Has any piece of technology so radically changed our social landscape for the worse? The iPhone started a revolution in phone technology, spurring on competitors like LG and Samsung to enter an arms race of smaller, faster, more powerful, even smaller, then bigger for some reason, then even bigger, smart phones. And what's the result? The social media generation. With the tweeting and the snap-chatting and the selfies and the Kardashians and the cats. Kill me now. Euthanasia. Is there an app for that?

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More John Davidson

1. Men's Nipples


God's mistake. Since this is a technology article, it's safe to say we can accept intelligent design as fact. Men's nipples though? Not intelligent design. Not intelligent at all. Way to drop the ball on this one, God. Small, silly-looking and totally useless, men's nipples serve only to provide wind resistance while running, robbing us of greater Olympic records, and to become irritated by constantly rubbing against low threadcount shirts (which should honestly be number 1b on this list). How the hell do you get it so right with women and then so utterly botch it with dudes? And the worst part? I have to go to department stores and see the arrogant looks on the faces of the smooth-chested male mannequins in their summer time beach-wear. Well guess what? All the smug superiority in the world won't give you genitals, you inanimate scumbag.

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