Top 10 tech we miss

[Aristotle]

This is a cool little article.

Top 10 tech we miss

The worst and most disgraceful one, imho:

1) Manned space exploration

It's been 33 years since humans have set foot on the moon or journeyed beyond the close orbit of the Earth. In other words, we've stopped exploring. Sure, robotic spaceships and Mars rovers are adding to our knowledge of the universe, but the last people to explore the final frontier are past retirement age--and so are the engineers who put them there. In other words, next time we go into space, we're going to have to retrain people from scratch. There may be no firsthand knowledge of what it's like to be in space or to build a space vehicle. This is progress?

One of the saddest:

2) Kozmo.com

At the height of the dot-com bubble, you could get a candy bar delivered to your door for the price of...a candy bar. Kozmo, an online store and delivery service, promised fast, friendly delivery of almost anything: a DVD rental, a bag of groceries, or just a single pack of gum. It was incredibly convenient and a heck of a bargain. It was also too good to be true. The cost of the small-time deliveries contributed to the demise of this great idea.

I look at #2 as an aggregate for all the awesome dot-com companies that died for one reason or another- many of them that deserved to live, but only died because they could not deliver the short term profits needed to stay alive. I think of places like garden.com, pets.com (not the current one that points to Petsmart), and others.

But this one makes me the angriest:

5) GM's EV1

Even today's superclean hybrid cars are still polluters--their electric batteries are recharged by small gas engines. But up until 2003, you could lease a true zero-emission electric car from General Motors: the EV1. It was a science-fiction car of the first order, and it looked it--all swoopy lines and space-egg aerodynamics. None were made available for sale. When the leases on the EV1s expired, GM recalled the cars, over the ardent objections of many of the lessees, who protested, begged, and lobbied GM to let them buy their vehicles. GM would not relent, and, citing concerns over liability and parts availability, even took to crushing some of these high-tech marvels to keep them off the road.

What explanation do they have for being so adamant about not letting people keep it? To me, this is a gross example of the oil and auto industries totally coddling each other.

There is absolutely no excuse for the lack of development of alternate fuel vehicles. Every time I think about this issue, it makes me furious.

[kiania]

Originally posted by Aristotle
What explanation do they have for being so adamant about not letting people keep it? To me, this is a gross example of the oil and auto industries totally coddling each other.

There is absolutely no excuse for the lack of development of alternate fuel vehicles. Every time I think about this issue, it makes me furious. [/B]

I second this very strongly. The fact that there has been development into cars that run on electricity (or one on seawater, well, saline sollution - I think that was on Top Gear, or could have been Tomorrow's World - Don't hold me to either) which does actually work. One of my friend's parents own a car that runs on electricity, or at least in part. It runs on electricity until the battery wears down, then starts using petrol. They charge it up in the garage, and its find for 30+miles (I forget the exact number). Even that is better than nothing, but it cost a small fortune to fit the car with the parts, it'd have been much easier to do it when the car was being made in the first place.

As for the real reason, unfortunately it is the oil/petrol barons who are able to put weight against those that make the cars, to stop them using the new technology in favour of just more petrol or disel cars.

Its sad and deeply depressing that these people either don't realise, or worse, don't even care what their products do to the environment. Yes, sure, get rich, but why would anyone want a lousy few hundred thousand dollars when they are destroying their air supply, food supply, water supply and in a broad sense, their home in order to do it. Its disgraceful.

[Sebboe]

if you liked kozmo or just like interesting stories.. rent E-dreams...

Its a documentary of the rise and fall of kozmo.com and the footage is from when things were really happening, not a look back.

there is another one like this but the name escapes me at the moment.

[Aristotle]

Every now and then it is nice to reflect on this.... Sad...