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48 10 Inventors Who Regret Their Creations
10 Inventors Who Came to
Regret Their Creations
by Kenny Hemphill
1. J. Robert Oppenheimer / Albert
Einstein — The Atomic Bomb
It's J. Robert Oppenheimer who, as director of
the Los Alamos Laboratory during World War II,
is credited with the creation of the atomic bomb.
But Albert Einstein's work made it possible.
Despite past associations with left wing
organizations, Oppenheimer welcomed the
opportunity to play a part in the war effort.
Later, however, he had mixed feelings about the
bomb. "I have no remorse about the making of
the bomb… As for how we used it, I understand
why it happened and appreciate with what
nobility those men with whom I'd worked made
their decision. But I do not have the feeling that
it was done right. The ultimatum to Japan [the
Potsdam Proclamation demanding Japan's
surrender] was full of pious platitudes. ...our 3. Tim Berners Lee — The Double Now head of the Center for Civic Media at the
government should have acted with more Slash Massachusetts Institute of Technology,
foresight and clarity in telling the world and Zuckerman wrote an essay for The Atlantic in
Japan what the bomb meant," he said. 2014 entitled "The Internet’s Original Sin," in
which he took full responsibility for the pesky
Einstein was less equivocal. Years later he blighters. Working as an employee of web host
regretted having signed a letter to President Tripod at the time, Zuckerman explained that the
Roosevelt urging him to support the research of company, which provided free web pages for
physicists into nuclear chain reactions and their consumers, had spent five years looking for a
use as a weapon, because he believed the way to generate revenue.
Germans were already working on it. "Had I
known that the Germans would not succeed in "At the end of the day, the business model that
producing an atomic bomb," he said, "I would got us funded was advertising. The model that
have never lifted a finger." got us acquired was analyzing users’ personal
homepages so we could better target ads to
2. Mikhail Kalashnikov — AK-47 Given what Sir Tim did for all of us when he them. Along the way, we ended up creating one
developed HTML and created the World Wide of the most hated tools in the advertiser’s
toolkit: the pop-up ad."
Web, he's got a fair amount of credit in the bank.
If he did have any major regrets about the web,
Explaining that the intention had been to allow
we wouldn't find it too difficult to forgive him,
adverts to appear when users visited a page
but his mea culpa relates to only two characters,
the '//' at the beginning of every web address. without necessarily associating the advert with
the content of the page, Zuckerman explained,
"Really, if you think about it, it doesn't need the
"We came up with it when a major car company
//. I could have designed it not to have the //," he
freaked out that they’d bought a banner ad on a
said, according to Business Insider.
page that celebrated anal sex. I wrote the code to
launch the window and run an ad in it. I’m sorry.
4. Ethan Zuckerman — The Pop-Up
Our intentions were good."
Advert
Kalashnikov designed the rifle that bore his 5. Dong Nguyen — Flappy Bird
name for the Russian army at the end of the
Second World War after witnessing terrible Flappy Bird was a sensation in 2014. What
casualties in battle and being injured himself. looked like a crude and simple game proved to
Designed to be a simple automatic rifle that be hugely addictive thanks to it hitting that
could be made cheaply using the mass sweetspot between infuriatingly difficulty and
production methods available at the time, being just playable enough to make you think
Kalashnikov, who died in 2014, lived long that next time you'll do better. Downloads
enough to see his creation be responsible for soared and controversy raged until, after 50
more deaths than any other assault rifle. million downloads and advertising revenue that
was hitting around $45,000 a day, Nguyen had
"I keep coming back to the same questions. If had enough and announced that he was going to
If you've ever found yourself yelling at your
my rifle claimed people’s lives, can it be that I… withdraw it from app stores."I cannot take this
computer screen in frustration as yet another
, an Orthodox believer, am to blame for their anymore," he tweeted.
pop-up ad leaps into view, obscuring the content
deaths, even if they are my enemies?" he wrote
behind it, Zuckerman is the person to blame.
in a letter to the head of the Russian Orthodox
church in 2010. (Continued on Page 49)
