…via an MIT online journal, offers a list of “Ten Technologies That Deserve to Die.” I agree with almost everything on his list.

• Nuclear weapons; land mines: Only a GOP-machine politico could like those.
• Coal mines; internal combustion engines: Powerful and nostalgic, but wasteful as all heck and often fatal to their operators.
• Cosmetic implants: Usually dorky-looking.
• Lie detectors: Overrated and way fallible.
• Prisons (not really a “technology” but a social institution): A costly waste of human energy, particularly in the war-on-some-drugs US.
• Manned spaceflight: Now Sterling gets into potentially pissin’ offi some of his own sci-fi fandom. But is there really anything those dozen dead shuttle crewpeople did that a radio-controlled robotic space explorer can’t do?
• DVDs: The miracle movie medium doesn’t impress Sterling one whit. He hates their frailty and their copy-protection schemes. He seems to prefer unprotected digital downloads, but fails to answer how downloaders will conveniently store their acquired data. I happen to feel the discs are still way useful, if that dumb CSS and Macrovision can be gotten rid of.
• Incandescent light bulbs: As long as fluorescents are as irritating as they are, the warmth of the classic Edison bulb will, I say in opposition to Sterling, remain most welcome.