From: "10 technologies that deserve to die" By Bruce Sterling Technology Review
10.21.2003A science fiction writer's irreverent take. [More than irreverent, he seems to be misinformed on occasion. I do not necessarily agree or disagree with any of the rest of his article. Sadly, he doesn't seem to be aware that incandescents have already been replaced in most commercial situations. With fluo lights, of course.]
- INCANDESCENT LIGHT BULBS
IN REALITY, these sad devices are "heat bulbs." Supposedly a lighting technology, they produce nine times more raw heat than they do illumination. The light they do give, admittedly, is still prettier than the eerie glow of compact fluorescents and light- emitting diodes. But it's still a far cry from the glories of natural daylight.
Plus there's the cost of light bulbs, their fragility, the replacement overhead, the vast waste of energy, glass, and tungsten, the goofy hassle of running air conditioners to do battle with the blazing heat of all these round little glass stoves...let's face it, these gizmos deserve to vanish.
They will be replaced by a superior technology, something cheap, cool, and precisely engineered, that emits visible wavelengths genuinely suited to a consumer's human eyeball. Our descendants will stare at those vacuum-shrouded wires as if they were whale-oil lanterns.