Mon 24 Dec 2007
There are plenty of lists of mankind’s best ideas: discovering fire, the wheel, the lever, calculus, etc. But what are the most successful BAD ideas?
Posted by BitterOldPunk14 answers so far!
Okay, let's hear it.
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Asbestos, fluorocarbon gases in aerosol, DDT… Hitler.
…or do you mean ideas that were bad that worked out well?
It seems like the secret is to take something with short-term sparkle and no real shelf life — something that should die out inside of a few years on lack of merit — and then find a way to embed it in the substrate of life such that it doesn’t get a chance to die off after all.
How about Fax machines? Why on earth would you see anyone still using fax machines these days? It’s a terrible, ugly transport mechanism which may not have been specifically bad when it really crept into the market of affordability (in, what, the late 70s, early 80s?) but which is absolutely rotten now.
My vote would be vote advanced military technology. It’s reduced the ‘horrors of war’ with high altitude bombing, long-range guided missiles, etc. such that war is now relatively clean. Veterans of WWI and WWII (and Korea, Vietnam, for that matter) understood afterwards how horrible war is whereas the overall impression I’ve gained from the wars in the middle east is that while the danger is there for a good many, low body counts and distancing from direct warfare for most participants has meant that we are going to have the next generation insulated from the horribleness of warfare and therefore much more willing to enter into circumstances where it is the result.
I think. I haven’t completely made my mind up about this topic.
Opposable thumbs, agriculture, plastics, television.
Soft drinks. Pornography. Alcohol. Drugs. McDonalds.
OK, I’m going to arbitrarily define “bad” here as “probably not helpful in the long run for the species or planet”:
agriculture and selective breeding, romantic love, medical science, maybe electricity, motor vehicles (especially fucking snowmobiles), explosives, elastic
Disco music and all the crap that was related to its popularity.
Credit cards, genetically modified crops, 80’s fashion.
The secularization of Christmas.
The secularization of Christmas.
Hey! You mean the Jesusifying of the Yuletide?
I never really understood how a lot of online companies became profitable – I guess I could put that up to “advertising” in general.
Fast food. Mass produced stuff in general, but especially food…
anti-bacterial soap. We’re breeding a race of superbugs.
Electric scooters (louder than motorcycles and not as fast)
President Bush and the Bush family political legacy (idiotic idea and way too successful in terms of years in office)
High Fructose Corn Syrup (sweetener of the devil)
This whole thread reminds me of Marshall Brain’s Sad Tech.