Probably general levels of higher vertebrate meat consumption (from whatever source) in many places, falling into the trap(*) of basing most meals around it.
(*) Strong preference for unspoiled meat is understandable, it was a great news for many millennia of our evolution. Great news also because of being not the most straightforward food to get, not a case of meatwall in the supermarket.
What things are we eating and drinking that, 100 years from now, our descendants will wonder how we didn't all just keel over dead?
Beyond obvious things like tobacco, when I lived in NYC I was always struck by the rich inhabitants coming out of the Whole Foods with their organic produce and stepping into the exhaust fumes of a million cars and buses. Yeah, it'll be the Apples that kill you...
Think drugs, and I don't mean pot or coke. I am sure that people of the future will have as big an appetite for them as we do, and will easily understand their appeal. If there ever was a product that sold itself... its not clear to me why drug dealers got the name "pushers", when most of the "pushing" that they typically have to do is of the "dude, don't call me at 3 am", or "How about you pay up front?" variety.
I am thinking, antibiotic overuse, psychiatric medicines. Putting developing kids on amphetamin
Possibly HFCS everything; definitely most alternative medicine and new-age treatments; zealousness for unrealistic technologies; excessive fear about anything scientific.
On the back of the tube it was stated that, ‘radioactive radiation increases the defenses of teeth and gums... cells are loaded with new life energy, the destroying effect of bacteria is hindered... it gently polishes the dental enamel and turns it white and shiny.'
Hah! Good point. However, the marketing just says "the destroying effect of bacteria is hindered" instead of "destroys bacteria", so they even got that at best only partly right.
Most of them were but some of them but a couple were legitimately useful.
Paints that glow in the dark without external power are useful. Indeed I belive radioactive paints are still used today though they use tritium rather than radium. The shoe fitting flouroscope also did what it said on the tin though how useful that was is debatable.
'Radium - Life-Giving Element...deals DEATH in Hands of Quacks'
The whole magazine is worth a look, incidentally. The next item ('Flying Tanks - War's Deadliest Weapon'), nicely illustrated by a formation of biplane-tanks flying into battle, might qualify as 'dead' techno
I suspect that it depends on whether they are looking at the historical record left by the optimists or the pessimists...
The humor in a lot of the old quack remedies and dangerous radiation stuff and so forth is not so much in that it is badly wrong, though that is a necessary condition; but in the fact that it is so earnestly, stridently, boundlessly optimistic about how wonderful it is, while simultaneously being dangerously wrong.
As best I can tell, that sort of hucksterific techno-utopianism is no
Actually i'd say the "shoe fitting flouroscope" fits into a slightly different category from those you described."tools deemed too dangerous to use" the role itself isn't gone, we still need to fit shoes but we went back to doing it the old fassioned way. It was determined that the benifits of being able to see inside the shoes did not outweigh the dangers of using x-rays.
For that matter, so far as I know people are not building new steam locomotives either. That doesn't mean that rail museums aren't refurbishing and using them. I'm sure that steam engines are being produced that *could* be adapted to pull loads over rails, but they wouldn't have the performance and form factor to make that practical.
People are building new steam locomotives [wikipedia.org]... sometimes (I think it might be a bit more common with narrow gauge ones, especially of mountain varieties)
They are not used only by museums, too. It's not too hard to find a completely regular, daily service - as is the case near my place [thewolszty...rience.org] (seriously, absolutely normal scheduled passenger service, with one end on one of the biggest rail terminals in my country; I sometimes use their route)
Both these technologies (shoe fluoroscopes and steam locomotives) are good choices for extinction because they aren't things you would either build or use casually
Afaict radioactive glow in the dark paints are still used in some products though these days they use tritium rather than radium (tritium is much safer than radium for a couple of reasons, firstly it's not a toxic heavy metal, secondly it decays in a single step to a safe decay product producing a relatively weak beta particle which is enough to power the phosphor but not strong enough to be a singificant danger).
"Just think of a computer as hardware you can program."
-- Nigel de la Tierre
Radioactive tools (Score:5, Interesting)
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What things are we eating and drinking that, 100 years from now, our descendants will wonder how we didn't all just keel over dead?
beef
Maybe any factory-produced animal meat. Probably won't be able to afford it. Might eventually give it up out of disgust.
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(*) Strong preference for unspoiled meat is understandable, it was a great news for many millennia of our evolution. Great news also because of being not the most straightforward food to get, not a case of meatwall in the supermarket.
Re:Radioactive tools (Score:4, Insightful)
What things are we eating and drinking that, 100 years from now, our descendants will wonder how we didn't all just keel over dead?
Beyond obvious things like tobacco, when I lived in NYC I was always struck by the rich inhabitants coming out of the Whole Foods with their organic produce and stepping into the exhaust fumes of a million cars and buses. Yeah, it'll be the Apples that kill you...
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Think drugs, and I don't mean pot or coke. I am sure that people of the future will have as big an appetite for them as we do, and will easily understand their appeal. If there ever was a product that sold itself... its not clear to me why drug dealers got the name "pushers", when most of the "pushing" that they typically have to do is of the "dude, don't call me at 3 am", or "How about you pay up front?" variety.
I am thinking, antibiotic overuse, psychiatric medicines. Putting developing kids on amphetamin
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On the back of the tube it was stated that, ‘radioactive radiation increases the defenses of teeth and gums... cells are loaded with new life energy, the destroying effect of bacteria is hindered... it gently polishes the dental enamel and turns it white and shiny.'
This is why I hate the marketing department.
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However you have to admit that it probably killed a few bacteria. :-)
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Wouldn't we class these "tools" as "snake-oil" or psuedo-science by today's standards? Can we really say were tools at all?
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The shoe fitting fluoroscope was certainly a useful tool.
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Most of them were but some of them but a couple were legitimately useful.
Paints that glow in the dark without external power are useful. Indeed I belive radioactive paints are still used today though they use tritium rather than radium.
The shoe fitting flouroscope also did what it said on the tin though how useful that was is debatable.
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'Wouldn't we class these "tools" as "snake-oil" or psuedo-science by today's standards?'
They were snake oil even by the standards of the time. From 'Popular Science' magazine in 1932:
http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=SSgDAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA9 [google.co.uk]
'Radium - Life-Giving Element...deals DEATH in Hands of Quacks'
The whole magazine is worth a look, incidentally. The next item ('Flying Tanks - War's Deadliest Weapon'), nicely illustrated by a formation of biplane-tanks flying into battle, might qualify as 'dead' techno
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Makes you wonder what people'll laugh about in 100 years time when they look back at the products we use and take for granted everyday now.
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The humor in a lot of the old quack remedies and dangerous radiation stuff and so forth is not so much in that it is badly wrong, though that is a necessary condition; but in the fact that it is so earnestly, stridently, boundlessly optimistic about how wonderful it is, while simultaneously being dangerously wrong.
As best I can tell, that sort of hucksterific techno-utopianism is no
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I dunno. It depends on your criteria for "still actually used". It seems to me that obsolete tools are obsoleted in different ways:
(1) The tool has been superseded by refined versions of itself. (Metal ax replaces stone ax)
(2) The tool has been superseded in its primary economic role by different tools. (Guns and bullets replace bows and arrows)
(3) The role itself has become obsolete. (Shoe fitting fluoroscopes).
The shoe fitting fluoroscope may be the closest thing there is to an extinct tool, because you w
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Actually i'd say the "shoe fitting flouroscope" fits into a slightly different category from those you described."tools deemed too dangerous to use" the role itself isn't gone, we still need to fit shoes but we went back to doing it the old fassioned way. It was determined that the benifits of being able to see inside the shoes did not outweigh the dangers of using x-rays.
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we still need to fit shoes but we went back to doing it the old fassioned way.
Your way is so five minutes ago [vision-systems.com].
Re:Radioactive tools IN YOUR PANTS (Score:2)
Yes, it's still around, or its conceptual descendant. Now at an airport near you looking for scrotal contraband.
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For that matter, so far as I know people are not building new steam locomotives either. That doesn't mean that rail museums aren't refurbishing and using them. I'm sure that steam engines are being produced that *could* be adapted to pull loads over rails, but they wouldn't have the performance and form factor to make that practical.
People are building new steam locomotives [wikipedia.org] ... sometimes (I think it might be a bit more common with narrow gauge ones, especially of mountain varieties)
They are not used only by museums, too. It's not too hard to find a completely regular, daily service - as is the case near my place [thewolszty...rience.org] (seriously, absolutely normal scheduled passenger service, with one end on one of the biggest rail terminals in my country; I sometimes use their route)
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Both these technologies (shoe fluoroscopes and steam locomotives) are good choices for extinction because they aren't things you would either build or use casually
Steam Locomotives [skyscrapercity.com]
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Afaict radioactive glow in the dark paints are still used in some products though these days they use tritium rather than radium (tritium is much safer than radium for a couple of reasons, firstly it's not a toxic heavy metal, secondly it decays in a single step to a safe decay product producing a relatively weak beta particle which is enough to power the phosphor but not strong enough to be a singificant danger).