The most disappointing tech innovations of the decade: from face computers to space tourism
- New technology has changed how we communicate, date, work, get around and pass time
- But for every hit, there have been high-profile disappointments – remember Google Buzz, anyone?
The past decade in technology started out relatively innocently before growing moody, dark and disillusioned.
In 2010, we were excited about new iPhones and finding old friends on Facebook, not fretting about our digital privacy or social media’s threat to democracy. Now we are wondering how to rein in the largest companies in the world and reckoning with wanting innovation to be both fast and responsible.
Over the past 10 years, new technology has changed how we communicate, date, work, get around and pass time. But for every hit, there have been high-profile disappointments and delays. That includes overpriced gadgets for making juice, face computers, promises of taking a holiday in space and companies claiming to be saving the world.
The failures served a purpose, acting as reality checks for the technology industry and the people who fund, regulate or consume its products. Tech companies spent the past decade first trying to grasp, then distance themselves from, their impact on society. Facebook’s famously decommissioned “move fast and break things” motto sounded plucky in 2010 and laughably misguided in 2019, when the company had, in fact, broken things.
It was a decade when billions of dollars were thrown at tech companies, and yet many of the promises those companies made never materialised, blew up in our faces or were indefinitely delayed. And while tech failures are nothing new, taken together they brought the innovation industrial complex closer to Earth and made us all a bit more realistic – if less fun.
Like proper adults.
