Ask HN: What technology would you like to rid the world of and why?

Cell phones. Reasons seem obvious and too numerous to mention but I miss dial tones and busy signals and trying to catch someone when they are at home and within hearing of their phone's ring; knowing that every call was a sort of invasion on their personal life and not to be taken lightly. Waiting out rainstorms in a phone booth with your girlfriend making prank phone calls and chatting with the operator. The time delay on long distance phone calls and crossed lines. Never knowing who was calling or who would answer the phone and their unique ways of answering the phone which was not a reaction to who they see on the caller ID but a familial trait learned and honed and immediately identifiable. Memorizing phone numbers and using the phone book. Browsing the phone book just to see what your city had to offer or browsing it in the hotel while on vacation to see what you might do. Judging and comparing cities by the size of their phone books. Sharing a phone and its place in the household. Getting prank calls instead of spam.

Caller ID. As implemented, it isn't fit for purpose. I'd want something real, enforced, regulated.

IMessage/whatsapp/telegram/signal/rcs should all be pure gui on XMPP and fully open protocol with trust anchor mutuality, so it's one namespace to talk to everyone.

Firmware/uCode.

Anything created by the entertainment industry in the name of DRM.

Trusted Computing Environment.

Dark patterns related to engagement.

Everything in the SEO practitioners toolkit.

Basically, want to unmake the last 20 years.

Internet.

Sometimes I wonder if internet causes more harm than good and whether it’s even worth it.

I think this is like asking which limb we should amputate to cure the patient of a virus. Either people will master technology or technology will master us. That is the simple, clear choice before us.

For me, I’d love to wake up tomorrow and never hear the term AI or LLM ever again.

I'm so sick of

- all the low quality crap on the internet

- people drinking the cool-aid

- people touting LLMs as AGI

- death of good content

- corner cutting

- conspiracies to replace workers