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Ask Slashdot: What Could Go Wrong In Tech That Hasn't Already Gone Wrong?

Posted by BeauHD on from the look-into-the-crystal-ball dept.

dryriver writes: If you look at the last 15 years in tech, just about everything that could go wrong seemingly has gone wrong. Everything you buy and bring into your home tracks you in some way or the other. Some software can only be rented now -- no permanent licenses available to buy. PC games are tethered into cloud crap like Steam, Origin and UPlay. China is messing with unborn baby genes. Drones have managed to mess up entire airports. The Scandinavians have developed a serious hatred of cash money and are instead getting themselves chipped. CPUs have horrible security. Every day some huge customer database somewhere gets pwned by hackers. Cybercrime has gone through the roof. You cannot trust the BIOS on your PC anymore. Windows 10 just will not stop updating itself. And AI is soon going to kill us all, if a self-driving car by Uber doesn't do it first. So: What has -- so far -- not gone wrong in tech that still could go wrong, and perhaps in a surprising way?

6 of 367 comments (clear)

  1. Someone's tinfoil hathas come off again by stevez67 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Or they're off their medication again.

  2. Mass infrastructure jam by Tablizer · · Score: 4, Insightful

    If some bug or malware afflicted masses of planes, trains, and/or automobiles at the same time; it could clog up a large portion of the population's commute, commerce, and emergency handlers.

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    Table-ized A.I.
    1. Re:Mass infrastructure jam by lordlod · · Score: 4, Insightful

      "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."

      The ILOVEYOU virus included the authors handle, email address, and city as a comment at the top of the file because he was so used to doing that for school projects. It was intended to be an attack on a few friends. It went worldwide, shut down email for a day, damage estimates range from $5.5B to $8.7B USD.

      If there is a giant digital chaos switch, eventually somebody is just going to hit it by accident.

  3. Even more job losses by Powercntrl · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The airport drone scares are largely a ploy to get hobbyists out of the airspace which will be used for commercial delivery drones. Today will be the next generation's "good old days", when humans could still earn slave wages by delivering crap for Uber Eats and Amazon.

    Bonus round:
    I don't think the concept of purchasing movies is going to be around for too much longer, either. Hollywood has been pushing for a full-on subscription/pay-per-view business model ever since Circuit City's ill-fated Divx disc format.

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    DRM is like antifreeze, to the MPAA/RIAA it's sweet, to the consumers it's poison.
  4. RMS by somenickname · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The general gist of this is, "Dang. Stallman was right". I wonder how much more miserable technology would be making our lives without the precedent of things like the GPL. I applaud the man for having the foresight to see the dark days that were coming and trying to hold them back with something that benefits society.

  5. Mobile devices by TJHook3r · · Score: 3, Insightful

    High-powered and relatively cheap devices are in the pockets of most people - what they do with the sum of Human knowledge? Spend all day playing Candy Crush and sexting of course!