3 Dumb Everyday Things Big Tech Accidentally Reinvented

Ahh, Silicon Valley – the global capital famed for its unparalleled innovation, impressive tech prowess, and scenic landscape, including mountains upon mountains of co…ding. Yeah, coding.

Yet amid the revolutionary originality of products like the iPod, 3D printers, and several social media platforms largely owned by a man who loves to use his bottle of Sweet Baby Ray’s barbeque sauce as a bookend, like any normal human man is prone to do, not all ideas are winners (looking at you, Theranos), or even somewhat original. Throughout the past several years, Silicon Valley moguls have found themselves quite literally reinventing the wheel, pitching bold concepts touted to revolutionize society, only to realize they already exist. 

From Lyft reinventing the bus to someone accidentally pitching a public park, here are three times big tech accidentally reinvented everyday things. 

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3Uber Reinvents The Bus

    

The year was 2017. Having a set of AirPods was still considered a flex. The world had yet to meet the real star of Rick and Morty (and the favorite joke of every 20-something dude with a superiority complex) Pickle Rick. If you had uttered the word “Covid-19” to a random passerby, they would have probably assumed your time-traveling ass was discussing the word on everybody’s lips – “Covfefe.”

It may have not been the best of times or the worst of times (2020 would later take that honor) but it was probably the weirdest of times, at least in the world of rideshare apps. In June 2017, Lyft, in all of its self-described “woke” (read: not Uber) glory, introduced the world to Shuttles. An extension of the Lyft Line service, which like the now temporarily-defunct Uber Pool, is just a really, overpriced version of carpooling, Lyft Shuttles would send their fleet of vehicles to drop off and pick up passengers at several pre-determined stops along a pre-determined route for a pre-determined price. Now, if the idea of “walk to stop. Hop in. Hop out. Walk to destination,” as Lyft described the program, sounds eerily familiar, it’s because its new fleet of Shuttles are basically just the f–king bus – but like, with several extra steps. 

3 Dumb Everyday Things Big Tech Accidentally Reinvented
Source: Pinoy Daily News