Rewinding the clock of techology
Last week, I tweeted
I am looking for examples of technologies that were deployed in a widespread way and reversed, so that the earlier technology resumed its pre-eminence (or nearly). (Like what if we abandoned mobiles and went back to landline phones). Can we wind the clock back?
I was thinking of transport cases, which a number of commenters suggested, like streetcars (trams, LRT) which were once dominant in cities, and then faded in importance, and are seeing some resurgence, but nowhere near original levels. Concomitantly autos in central cities, after decades of growth, are now losing mode share. But these have not gone all the way back to the status quo ante-auto.
Perhaps there were other situations we could point to.
This was a surprisingly popular tweet (110 comments to date, well above average). I have not linked to the original poster, though you can track it down through replies to the Twitter link, but to be clear, these are not my ideas. Since Twitter is a mess, I have distilled and organized them below.
These do not constitute endorsement, more as prospective cases to evaluate, in some cases I have comments. This is more than enough cases for someone to write a dissertation on.
I am not clear how many of them hold to the original request of being fully reversed and the technology before the technology being restored. Also I would not say these reverted cases are necessarily failed technologies, in that they persisted in many cases for decades or centuries. And of course, technologies never really die, but they do fade away.
The ones I really like (in that I think they are really good fits to the question) are bolded.
Weaponry
Gunpowder in feudal Japan [link - Noel Perrin, Giving up the gun]
Chemical weapons
Anti-personnel land mines
Energy
Nuclear power [still a lot of it, and is replaced by renewables rather than fossil fuels]
Leaded gasoline
Food / Agriculture
Full fat products and real sugar vs low fat and sugar
Cholesterol
Butter vs. Margarine (But see link )
Slow Food movement
Organic Foods
Coke/New Coke
Ovens/microwaves/ovens [microwaves still seem really useful to me]
Baby formula
Frozen/Fresh juice,
Macro breweries
Driftnets
The return to Instant Coffee
High fructose corn syrup
Democracy
Paper Ballots/ Electronic voting / Paper Ballots
Voter suppression (though this is extremely cynical, many places are reinventing the tools of suppression)
Entertainment
Vinyl records
Pre-lit Christmas trees
3D Movies
Medicine
Lobotomies (not really widespread though)
Shock therapy (not really widespread though)
Withdrawn drugs (link)
Information and Communications Technologies
Writing/No Writing/Writing (e.g. Greeks)
Telegraph
MS Windows Vista vs. XP (etc.)
Laptops in the classroom
Ebooks vs. Physical books (link)
Browser plugins (Flash/no Flash / Web VR)
Over-the-air/Cable TV/Over-the-air (HDTV/Freeview)
Two-way radio (walkie-talkie) / Cell / Two-way radio (in select applications)
The rise of Emoticons/Emoji to replace words
Mainframe/Desktop/Cloud
Appliances and Household Goods
Electric Can-openers
Electric blankets
Dryers/Clothes lines
Wall-to-wall carpeting
Chamber pots / Roman plumbing /chamber pots again until 1800s
Paper bags/Plastic bags/Paper bags
Gas ovens (fire) / Electric ovens / Gas ovens
Analog watches/Digital watches/analog watches/smart watches
Construction
Copper/Aluminum/Copper for electrical wiring
Chemicals and Materials
DDT
CFCs (though replaced with different technology than went before)
Asbestos
Smoking (replaced by the technology of not smoking)
Lead paint
Economics
Coined money
Transport
The re-emergence of home deliveries, especially food.
The rise of EVs (but EVs were hardly a dominant technology c. 1900-1915) [link]
Trails / Roman road building / trails (until mid 1800s European roads were of lesser quality than those almost 2000 years previous)
No aqueducts/Aqueducts/No aqueducts/Aqueducts
Catamarans/Hyrdofoils/Hovercraft
Large ocean-going ships in China [Zheng He]
Double-hulled transoceanic vessels in Hawaii
Dirigibles
Single use rockets/Space shuttle/single use rockets
Concorde/SST/Tupolev Tu-144 (but SST was never really widespread, less than 1% of aviation market share)
Cycling is making a comeback, especially bikesharing (still really small market share in North America and Australia, but in China this seems a big deal)
Jitney/taxi
Trolleys/LRT is making a comeback (also small market share)
Time machines. They were everywhere for a few years until someone went back and killed the inventor. Now we have none.