‘Hit’ or ‘Flop’ seem to be the words reserved for the film fraternity but hello…. it applies to the tech fraternity too. Last year was indeed a year of innovations but not to forget, not every innovations hits the bull’s eye! So instead of singing praises for those who succeeded, let’s talk about those who failed.
Designer human embryos
In the month of April last year, the world was taken aback when a team of Chinese scientists published a report that they had changed the DNA of human embryos using the gene-editing method CRISPR. Though the embryos never made a public appearance, they did stir quite a storm about the ethical issues related to manufacturing designer humans. The idea of babies with made-to-order genes may excite some but all in all, the idea is despised by people because the very idea is against the laws of nature. The problem is, experiments like these have already been conducted using animals hence using human embryos was completely unnecessary as it didn’t give any new insights into the matter. Let nature decide and take its course. We are no God for God’s sake!
Yahoo
Yahoo? But why Yahoo? Because it is stagnating. The company that pioneered the idea of an ‘Internet Portal’(not to forget it still operates the third most visited property on the web after Google and Facebook) has ceased to grow and move ahead. It has entered a standstill. The situation is so bleak that investors are now shouting to dethrone CEO Marissa Mayer. You know what the biggest problem of Yahoo is? It is not changing with the times. The whole world is buzzing with a deluge of smartphones but the company is still a desktop company. So while Facebook earns 74 percent of its advertising revenue from mobile devices, Yahoo earns just 20 percent. Time to change and say Yahoo!
Hoverboards
The entire last year was abuzz with the talk about hoverboards (positive or negative). Hoverboards are basically like Segways – two-wheeled, self balancing scooters without the handle packed with a circuit board and two AC motors inside the wheels. The rider balances on the hoverboard because of a phenomena called ‘inverted pendulum’. Everything was good and exciting about the hoverbaord except its lithium-ion batteries which caught fire in some hoverboards. Due to this, popular hoverboards were pulled by Amazon and banned by airlines as a threat. The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission said in December that it is “actively investigating hoverboard-related fires across the country,” as well as dozens of reports from ERs of “concussions, fractures, contusions/abrasions, and internal organ injuries.”
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