Ethan Zuckerman vs. the pop-up ad
“I wrote the code to launch the window and run an ad in it. I’m sorry. Our intentions were good,” he wrote in an essay about the relationship between advertising and the internet. “I have come to believe that advertising is the original sin of the web. The fallen state of our internet is a direct, if unintentional, consequence of choosing advertising as the default model to support online content and services.”
Wally Conron vs. Labradoodles
When Conron first invented the breed, “ nobody wanted Labrador crosses,” he told the Associated Press. However, when he invented the fun name as a “gimmick”, everyone wanted one and he regrets it. “I’ve done a lot of damage. I’ve created a lot of problems,” he said after he stopped breeding the dog.
Victor Gruen vs. the shopping mall
Gruen hated seeing his invention devolve. When the first mall opened in 1956, it was meant to mimic the car-free, walkable plazas of his native Austria. By 1978, he deemed what his creation had become “bastard developments” turned grotesque by “the ugliness and discomfort of the land-wasting seas of parking.”
Robert Propst vs. cubicles
The invention of the cubicle was meant to give office workers privacy, as well as provide a vertical space for shelves and trinkets and enough room for a standing or sitting desk. Propst was appalled by how CEOs used his invention as a way to save space and money at the expense of the worker instead of providing more space for them. He called the mass introduction of them to the workplace a “monolithic insanity.”
Anna Jarvis vs. Mother’s Day
Anna Jarvis was appalled by the commercialization of Mother’s Day, the day she’d created after the death of her mother in 1905. She wrote of “charlatans, bandits, pirates, racketeers, kidnappers and termites that would undermine with their greed one of the finest, noblest and truest movements and celebrations. Jarvis then copyrighted Mother’s Day in order to sue anyone who used it without her permission and to stop markets from making money off it.
Scott E. Falman vs. emoticons
Falman originally meant for the smiley face, :-) , to say “I’m joking,” but it’s become so much more than that. “Sometimes I feel like Dr. Frankenstein. My creature started as benign but it’s gone places I don’t approve of,” he told The Wall Street Journal.
Vincent Connare vs. Comic Sans
It’s the font everyone loves to hate – including its own inventor. Connare told The Wall Street Journal “If you love it, you don’t know much about typography; if you hate it, you really don’t know much about typography, either, and you should get another hobby.” However, Connare also “sympathizes with the worldwide movement to ban it.”
Philo Farnsworth vs. TV
When he was just 14, Farnsworth invented some of the tech that would make TV possible. Years later, on an episode of I’ve Got a Secret, he said he’d invented a “most painful” machine. He had believed TV was rotting everyone’s brains until watching the moon landing on TV changed his mind. “This has made it all worthwhile,” he told his wife while they watched together.
Bill Burr vs. strong passwords
No, not that Bill Burr. This Bill Burr is the reason we have to include 12 characters, 1 symbol, 1 number, 1 emoji, 1 hieroglyph, 1 kissy face, 1 high five, and 1 threat in our passwords in order for them to be “strong enough”. “It frustrates everybody, me included,” he said of the password demands.
Dong Nguyen vs. Flappy Bird
When the app was released in 2013 it was never expected to amass over 50 million downloads, but by 2014 it had done just that. Nguyen was so overwhelmed by this that he tweeted “I cannot take this anymore.” and that was the end of that.
John Sylvain vs. K-cups
“I feel bad sometimes that I ever did it,” Sylvain said of his creation from the ’90s. He never saw coming just how much waste the original pods would create.
John Larson vs. the lie detector
At this point, everyone knows polygraphs can be incredibly inaccurate. Larson himself said it was “a Frankenstein’s monster, which I have spent over 40 years in combatting.”
Kamran Loghman vs. pepper spray
Loghman helped turn pepper spray into a weapons-grade material after working with the FBI in the 80s. However,
after police sprayed college students who were described as “docile protesters” in 2011, Loghman said, “I have never seen such an inappropriate and improper use of chemical agents.”
Tom Karen vs. The Raleigh Chopper
Karen isn’t a huge fan of one of the best-selling items in the 70s. After the bike had been discontinued, he told The Telegraph “The Chopper wasn’t a very good bike. It was terribly heavy so you wouldn’t want to ride it very far.”
Sir Tim Berners Lee vs. //
The inventor of HTML told Business Insider “Really, if you think about it, it doesn’t need the //. I could have designed it not to have the //.”
Robert Watson-Watt vs. radar
After Watt was caught on a radar speeding camera, he said “My God, if I’d known what they were going to do with it, I’d have never invented it!”
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al gore, is that you?
I'll never understand anyone that doesn't use get fresh whole roasted beans then grind them just before you espress hot water through them ... anything else is not coffee.
I'll never understand the coffee addiction