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Standardized connector for everything with backwards compatibility
Self driving cars. Ten years ago I said, "we'll have this worked out in 10 years". What a fool I was.
Recycling that actually works.
Maglev trains in the US
I thought that by now we would've commercialized at scale alternative battery technologies. We're still using lithium ion even for grid storage and EV's.
Also, I expected we would have put a man on the moon by now.
We wouldn’t need such a battery development if we had simply invested in a standardised electrified wiring network for the motor roads. we would have lighter cars that charge their ~100 km battery while driving on the motor road so they can easily reach their destination
Maybe give cars a second pair of axles, to keep them aligned with the overhead power on the highway and to reduce the tire wear. Maybe join them together too so each individual car doesn't have to worry about braking and the driver can basically just sleep.
This isn't me sarcastically reinventing trains. I see why people would rather spend their commute in a private car than in a public train carriage. These features just seem genuinely useful.
What I have sarcastically reinvented is basically just self-driving cars.
More of a pet peeve, but I thought IT would be way more stable by now. Everything has so many bugs and it's just accepted. I've grown pessimistic about new tech and I would prefer to wait a couple years before getting it. It's not novel if it's broken.
Side thought, I thought we would have hologram phone calls by now.
Brit on a train; A phone network that would offer a reasonable level of connectivity no matter where you are in the country.
Ours definitely took a few steps back early 2023.
Phones that can be opened up and have internals replaced, like desktop computers
So like the Fairphone?
That one is still exclusive to a few select countries and won't ship to mine :/
Oh no :(
Compassion, empathy, socialism.
Computer phones. As in I just connect to screen and keyboard, and phone is my main desktop.
Cheaper EVs.
Working lab fusion.
Like the Motorola Atrix
Too ahead of its time.
Android 16 brings that desktop functionality
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I was hoping that by now technology and education would have helped all the humans to realize how to take care of each other and work together for a better tomorrow.
Instead we got this fucking mess that's going on right now all around the world.
It's really that. All that technology and we still didn't solve the most primitive and basic problems in this world's community.
Guillotines and a lineup of billionaires in straight jackets
LED light bulbs were supposed to last a bajillion hours. When they came out around 2010-ish they were still expensive and I spent many hundreds of dollars replacing every single light bulb in my house, thinking I would basically never have to replace a light bulb again.
It's 2026 and I now replace the LED bulbs in my house almost as often as I replaced incandescent bulbs. Seriously? LEDs are solid-state technology. There are no moving parts, no gases, no hot filaments...
I understand that it's probably on purpose; if everyone replaced all the light bulbs in their house with LED bulbs that lasted basically forever then who would buy more light bulbs from light bulb manufacturers.
But it's still just dumb. Either LED technology is flawed, or our economic system that incentivizes a constant cycle of replacing bulbs is flawed. This should should not exist in 2026.
From my experience, what tends to get messed up is the internal wiring. The actual leds will continue working fine, but cheap/shitty wiring will make the lamp stop working
I've never had to replace my LED lights and I've had mine for a decade.
I miss incandescent bulbs and would install them if I had solar panels
Something is wrong with the ones you're buying, then.
Studies show that they do, on average, last dozens of times longer. Personally I replace them way less often than incandescent.
I suppose the earliest ones were worse and there are definitely garbage ones out there. And even good brands have a did here and there. And if you have poor/inconsistent power, or placing them in hot, enclosed fixtures, they don't perform as well as they could.
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no hot filaments...
There may not be filaments, but heat is still an issue for LEDs.
Some bulb manufacturers basically overdrive cheaper diodes to get extra brightness at the cost of generating extra heat. Some of those manufacturers compensate for the heat in some way, others don't even bother and produce bulbs with a service life of months instead of decades. Some of these are fly-by-night online sellers that won't exist anymore by the time their products start to fail. Others are established brands that people will blindly purchase based on a reputation that no longer matches reality. There are some reliable brands out there if you read up on it, but why the fuck should we have to research every little inane item in our life?
Aside from corporate greed, though, there are other reasons heat causes early LED bulb failure. Two common ones are incompatible devices on the same circuit (like light dimmers), and installing the bulb in an enclosure without adequate heat dissipation (like a ceiling 'boob' light).
I've been all LED for well over a decade, and have had a good experience so far. I personally tend to buy smart bulbs that can put out way more light than I need, and run them at 20-50% brightness most of the time. Feit Electric and Govee's basic smart bulbs have been pretty reliable for me, but I admit I'm a pretty small sample size. I know I'm paying a premium for that approach, but it's not unreasonable and I do prefer not having to worry about it.
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Realistically?
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Housing that doesn't cost a fortune
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Healthcare that doesn't bankrupt you
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Food that's both affordable and worth eating
None of it is futuristic. All of it feels further away than ever.
That's not tech, that's policy. Technologically there are no holdups to this, capitalism just needs it to not be so
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When I was a kid in the 80s I thought we'd absolutely have some kind of moon base by now. More space stuff in general. What is more "future" than space?
Green energy is maybe 10 years behind where younger me would have wished it to be, it feels we're close to some big breakthroughs. I'm still hopefully to see some game changing things in my lifetime.
I thought VR/AR would be farther along. There was a pitch 10 years ago that VR would be the “final platform” in that anything a phone, TV, tablet, or computer could do could be easily emulated in VR.
Unfortunately it’s still all walled gardens. Also nobody wants to wear that shit for more than an hour.
I feel dumb for buying the valve index.
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Fusion lol.
Better space tech or at least a moon base.
Modular body parts like in cyberpunk
Technically we have modular body parts. They are pretty damn good too. Just not good enough that people would replace them because they are vetter.
Hoverboards.
I think the self tightening shoes would have been doable. But we still didn't get those.
Nike actually did make those. they sell them.
Better general medical science. So much of what we use is very old tech. We still can't regrow cartligage. We still pin bones together with titanium screws. We still mostly use fiberglass casts (though better alternatives exist). We still catch the common cold.
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Genetic-level diagnoses and treatments.
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Inexpensive, rapid genome sequencing.
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Commonplace genetic counselling for more than just pregnancy.
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Laws in place to govern the collection, use, ownership, and patenting of human genes and genetic information.
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Cloned tissues (i.e. blood, skin), organs (i.e. heart, lungs, kidneys) for transplant or repair.
I graduated university the same year the Human Genome Project first published completion. Certainly, that project uncovered more questions than answers.
Also, we've done an absolutely garbage job of becoming appropriate stewards of this technology. Primarily, today, it would be used to identify, segregate, subjugate, and eventually kill a portion of the population.
Genetic counseling is common for rare cancers. It is used in some in some populations who are prone to generic diseases.
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I thought we'd have affordable 8TB SSD's.
I'll cut you a deal: I'll hold onto your data for you—including data you never even asked me to hold—and you only have to pay me for forever. Good?
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this post was submitted on 21 Mar 2026
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