Tech that did not make it
Obituaries for technology that did not make it.
Every entry is a structured death certificate: born, died, cause, survivors. Each obituary is paired with a forward-looking prediction in Future Tech. Both sets are kept honest with a last-verified date on every entry.
Featured obituary
The most-recommended starting point. Read this one first; the rest follow from it.
All obituaries
45 of 45 matching the current filters.
Category
Status
1961 — Dying
DyingThe Password
I built a CIAM platform that handled 200 million password resets a year. Even from inside the industry, I missed how fast passkeys would flip the model.
Cause: Apple, Google, and Microsoft simultaneously defaulted to passkeys
authentication · Peak 2010 · Final breath 2030
2011 — Dying
DyingSMS-Based MFA
The most cited example of cybersecurity inertia. NIST deprecated SMS MFA in 2017. It took SIM-swap attacks on Coinbase and Twitter founders to force action.
Cause: SIM-swap attacks on high-profile accounts forced regulatory action
authentication · Peak 2018 · Final breath 2027
1998 — Dying
DyingStatic API Keys
When one company runs 10,000 ephemeral AI agents, static API keys stop being a security gap and start being a security crisis.
Cause: AI agent proliferation made unscoped long-lived secrets impossible to govern
infrastructure · Peak 2018 · Final breath 2028
2000 — Dying
DyingThe CAPTCHA
GPT-4 solves reCAPTCHA v2 with 99.8% accuracy. The CAPTCHA only blocks humans now.
Cause: AI vision models solve CAPTCHAs faster than humans at $0.001 per solve
security · Peak 2014 · Final breath 2027
1999 — Dying
ZombieOn-Prem Active Directory
Active Directory is the most successful piece of enterprise software that nobody chooses anymore. It runs 90% of Fortune 500 backends and 0% of new deployments.
Cause: Remote work and SaaS adoption made the on-prem domain controller indefensible
infrastructure · Peak 2015 · Final breath 2032
1997 — 2026
DyingTraditional SEO
I built GrackerAI because traditional SEO stopped predicting traffic. AI answer engines cite. They do not rank. The whole optimization model needs to change.
Cause: AI answer engines cite sources instead of ranking them. The optimization model broke.
workflow · Peak 2018 · Final breath 2028
1987 — 2024
DyingSignature-Based Antivirus
Signature-based antivirus was obsolete by 2015. Marketing budgets kept it alive another decade. EDR and XDR finished the job in 2024.
Cause: Polymorphic and AI-generated malware made signature matching mathematically impossible
security · Peak 2005 · Final breath 2027
1996 — Dying
DyingThe Corporate VPN
The VPN was the moat around the castle. Then everyone left the castle. Zero Trust networks do not have moats.
Cause: Remote work plus SaaS adoption made the perimeter model indefensible
infrastructure · Peak 2020 · Final breath 2028
1994 — 2025
DyingThird-Party Cookies
Lou Montulli invented the cookie at Netscape in 1994 to keep shopping carts working. He did not intend to power a $400 billion ad surveillance industry.
Cause: Safari ITP (2017), Firefox ETP (2019), Chrome compliance (2024), regulatory pressure
consumer · Peak 2015 · Final breath 2026
1998 — Dying
DyingManual SOC Tier-1 Triage
A senior CISO told me her Tier-1 team shrank 80% in 18 months. AI handles alert triage at one-hundredth the cost of a human analyst.
Cause: Generative AI made alert triage cheaper, faster, and more accurate than humans at scale
workflow · Peak 2020 · Final breath 2028
1989 — 2020
DeadStandalone GPS Devices
Garmin survived by pivoting to wearables. TomTom survived by becoming a map data supplier. The standalone GPS unit on your dashboard did not.
Cause: Smartphones with free turn-by-turn navigation plus crowd-sourced live traffic data
consumer · Peak 2007 · Final breath 2025
2001 — 2022
DeadThe iPod and the Era of Owning Files
The iPod's quiet death in 2022 marked something bigger. The era of owning the files on your device ended. Subscriptions and auth tokens took over.
Cause: Streaming services replaced file ownership with subscription auth tokens
consumer · Peak 2008 · Final breath 2022
2003 — 2025
DeadSkype
When Skype launched in 2003, peer-to-peer was the future of consumer internet. By the time it died in 2025, every consumer app routed through centralized clouds.
Cause: Microsoft consolidated to Teams; consumer messaging fragmented to WhatsApp, FaceTime, Zoom
consumer · Peak 2013 · Final breath 2025
1995 — 2022
DeadInternet Explorer
IE was the browser that defined the internet for half a generation. It died as the browser-as-OS model died. ActiveX, COM, and the whole intranet stack went with it.
Cause: Chromium-based browsers and the death of plugin-based web extensibility
infrastructure · Peak 2003 · Final breath 2022
1949 — Dying
DyingThe Physical Car Key
Your phone is your car key. Your watch is your car key. Eventually nothing is your car key because you do not own a car. The whole model is changing.
Cause: Phone-based digital car keys plus the emerging robotaxi model
consumer · Peak 2010 · Final breath 2032
1990 — Dying
DyingStandalone Digital Cameras
I have not owned a standalone camera since 2014. Neither has almost anyone else. The phone won by being a better camera, not just a more convenient one.
Cause: Computational photography on smartphones plus cloud sync infrastructure at exabyte scale
consumer · Peak 2010 · Final breath 2030
1964 — Dying
DyingThe 3.5mm Headphone Jack
The 3.5mm jack survived 50+ years on phones, then disappeared in eight. The replacement is not just wireless. It is a tiny computer with firmware and identity.
Cause: Apple removed it in 2016. The industry followed within four years. AirPods made wireless the default.
consumer · Peak 2010 · Final breath 2028
1964 — Dying
ZombieThe Fax Machine
The fax machine should have died in 2005. It is 2026 and US healthcare still sends 75% of medical records by fax. Compliance ate the upgrade.
Cause: Slow and ongoing; email and secure document portals replacing fax in regulated industries
workflow · Peak 1995 · Final breath 2030
1985 — 2014
DeadThe DVD Rental Store
Blockbuster had 9,094 stores in 2004. Zero by 2014. The most dramatic retail collapse of the internet era was about backend infrastructure, not consumer preference.
Cause: Streaming infrastructure (CDNs, encoding pipelines, content licensing)
consumer · Peak 2004 · Final breath 2014
1958 — Dying
DyingPaper Boarding Passes
I have not held a printed boarding pass in three years. Most travelers under 40 have not either. The paper boarding pass is following the paper ticket into history.
Cause: Mobile wallet boarding passes plus TSA PreCheck digital ID plus biometric boarding
consumer · Peak 2005 · Final breath 2030
1999 — 2017
DeadWindows Phone and BlackBerry
BlackBerry invented mobile enterprise. Windows Phone had unlimited capital. Neither survived. The mobile OS market consolidated to two players in under a decade.
Cause: iOS and Android app ecosystem network effects
consumer · Peak 2010 · Final breath 2017
1996 — 2020
DeadAdobe Flash
Flash powered most of the early interactive internet. By 2020 it was a security disaster the industry could no longer tolerate. The plugin model died with it.
Cause: Steve Jobs's 2010 Thoughts on Flash, HTML5 video, and accumulated security vulnerabilities
infrastructure · Peak 2008 · Final breath 2020
1999 — 2013
DyingGoogle Reader and RSS
RSS gave readers control of the feed. Google Reader killed alternatives, then Google killed Google Reader. The whole category lost. AI agents may quietly bring it back.
Cause: Google Reader shutdown destroyed the category's center of gravity; social feeds replaced reader-controlled distribution
workflow · Peak 2010 · Final breath 2013
1949 — Dying
DyingThe Pager
Consumer pagers died with the cellphone. Medical pagers survived because hospitals genuinely need them. The 2024 supply-chain attack showed exactly how that creates risk.
Cause: Cellphones replaced consumer pagers; medical and emergency pagers survive due to RF coverage and battery life
consumer · Peak 1995 · Final breath 2030
1876 — Dying
DyingThe Landline Phone
73% of US households are wireless-only. The PSTN that powered phones for 148 years is in active retirement. E911 had to be reinvented from scratch for the post-landline era.
Cause: Mobile phones replaced consumer landlines; VoIP and SIP replaced business landlines
consumer · Peak 2000 · Final breath 2030
1949 — 2010
DeadAnswering Machines
Physical answering machines died first. Then voicemail moved to the cloud. Now voicemail itself is dying because nobody listens to it. AI may take the call next.
Cause: Telco-hosted voicemail replaced hardware; SMS and async messaging replaced voicemail itself
consumer · Peak 1990 · Final breath 2015
1992 — 2010
DeadPalm Pilots and PDAs
Palm Pilot, Newton, BlackBerry, Pocket PC. The PDA category had an 18-year run. Smartphones absorbed it completely. The vision survived. The category did not.
Cause: Smartphones absorbed the PDA category by adding voice and an app store
consumer · Peak 2000 · Final breath 2010
1972 — Dying
DyingCable TV Set-Top Boxes
US cable TV subscribers fell from 100M+ in 2013 to under 50M in 2024. The cable set-top box is dying with the cable industry that made it ubiquitous.
Cause: Streaming services delivered via apps on smart TVs and dedicated streaming devices
consumer · Peak 2005 · Final breath 2030
1971 — 2015
DeadFloppy Disks and CDs
Floppy, Zip, CD-R, DVD-R, USB drive. The portable physical storage category had a 40-year run. Cloud sync ended it in under a decade.
Cause: Cloud sync (Dropbox, iCloud, Google Drive) made physical portability irrelevant for most consumer use
infrastructure · Peak 1998 · Final breath 2020
1890 — Dying
DyingCoin-Operated Machines
I have not used a coin to pay for anything in years. Neither have most people in cashless economies. The 134-year-old coin-operated machine category is in active decline.
Cause: Tap-to-pay (Apple Pay, Google Pay, contactless cards) replaced coin-based payment infrastructure
consumer · Peak 1985 · Final breath 2030
-3000 — Dying
DyingThe Sense of Direction
I can route a billion users through an auth flow but I cannot tell you which way is north without my phone. We did not lose a tool. We lost a part of our brains, and almost nobody noticed it going.
Cause: Free, real-time, crowd-sourced turn-by-turn routing always on in every pocket.
consumer · Peak 1995 · Final breath 2032
-2000 — Dying
DyingThe Private Diary
I spent years building systems that decide who gets to read what. The diary was the original access-control problem, and it had the simplest answer ever shipped: nobody. Then we gave it an audience and a payout.
Cause: Zero-cost publishing plus an audience and a payout. Once the private record could be posted for free and monetized, the incentive to keep it private collapsed.
consumer · Peak 1990 · Final breath 2030
1876 — Dying
DyingThe Unannounced Phone Call
I built a CIAM platform that scaled to over a billion users, and even our support team stopped cold-calling customers years ago. The unannounced ring lost the etiquette war, and almost nobody noticed the funeral.
Cause: Asynchronous text gave people control over their own attention, and synchronous calling lost the etiquette war
interface · Peak 1995 · Final breath 2030
-10000 — Dying
DyingIdle Time
I built a CIAM platform that handled login traffic at every idle second of the day. The peak hours were the gaps: the line, the elevator, the wait. We learned to monetize every one of them.
Cause: Variable-reward feed design plus a device that never leaves your hand
interface · Peak 2007 · Final breath 2028
-3000 — Dying
DyingThe Home-Cooked Default
For most of human history, dinner started with one question: what is in the fridge? I watched an app replace it with a better question for the app's bottom line: what can arrive in 30 minutes? Cooking stopped being a skill everyone had and became a hobby some people choose.
Cause: A delivery app made restaurant food the path of least resistance and quietly detached the meal from the kitchen that used to produce it.
consumer · Peak 1985 · Final breath 2032
-650 — Dying
DyingCash and the Physical Wallet
I have spent my career building systems that put a name on every action. Cash was the one transaction that resisted me. It is dying now, and what dies with it is the right to buy something nobody records.
Cause: Tap-to-pay removed the last friction advantage cash had. Once paying with a card or phone was faster than counting bills, anonymity was not enough to keep cash alive.
infrastructure · Peak 1990 · Final breath 2035
1839 — Dying
DyingThe Photo as Proof
I built auth systems that decide whether a credential is real a billion times a day. Photographs used to do that work for free, no system required. That era ended quietly, and almost nobody changed how they look at an image.
Cause: Generative models that produce photoreal images of anything, indistinguishable from a capture, at zero marginal cost.
security · Peak 2005 · Final breath 2028
1900 — Dying
DyingThe Single-Purpose Device
I built a CIAM platform that scaled to over a billion users, and I still cannot find a flashlight in my house because it lives inside a rectangle I unlock with my face. We did not gain a dozen tools. We built one device that, if lost or locked, takes everything with it.
Cause: A general-purpose pocket computer made dedicated hardware redundant by absorbing a dozen product categories into apps.
interface · Peak 2000 · Final breath 2035
1960 — Dying
DyingStranger Danger
We taught a whole generation one rule: do not talk to strangers. Then we got in their cars, slept in their homes, and matched with them at 11pm. I spent years building the trust rails that made the rule obsolete, and I am still not sure we made the right trade.
Cause: Rating systems and platform intermediation made stranger trust scalable, so the instinct to avoid strangers stopped paying off.
security · Peak 1990 · Final breath 2030
1950 — Dying
DyingAppointment Television
I grew up when a whole country watched the same thing on the same night, then argued about it at school the next morning. On-demand gave us infinite choice and quietly ended the one thing we all had in common.
Cause: On-demand removed the schedule that synchronized a culture. Once any show could be watched at any time, no time was the time, and the shared moment had nowhere left to happen.
consumer · Peak 1998 · Final breath 2028
1975 — Dying
DyingOwning Software
I shipped software in boxes and on CDs, where a license was a thing you owned forever. Now we rent access by the month, and the moment you stop paying, the tool you built your work around stops working. We traded possession for a login.
Cause: Recurring subscription revenue beat one-time sales so decisively that vendors had no reason to ever sell you a thing you could keep.
workflow · Peak 2000 · Final breath 2027
1977 — Dying
DyingThe Home Film Library
I built shelves for films I owned. Then I bought a streaming library and learned the buy button was a lease. The home film collection is dying because access pays better than ownership.
Cause: Licensing economics made the rented catalog more profitable than the sold copy. A film you bought once pays the studio once; a film you stream pays on a renewable schedule the studio controls.
consumer · Peak 2006 · Final breath 2026
-1000 — Dying
DyingThe Wet-Ink Signature
I spent a career building consent into software, and the whole time the legal system ran on a squiggle a child could forge. The wet-ink signature was security theater that lasted three millennia. It is finally dying.
Cause: Remote work and digital contracts made physical ink impractical, and e-signature was both faster and more verifiable. Cryptographic signing then made the handwritten mark legally and technically redundant.
authentication · Peak 1990 · Final breath 2030
1650 — Dying
DyingThe Paper Business Card
I have collected thousands of business cards in my career, and every one of them made a claim I could not check. Anyone could print any title. The card was a 300-year-old trust gap we all agreed to live with.
Cause: A static card could not link, update, or verify itself, and the professional network moved online where every claim could be checked.
workflow · Peak 2000 · Final breath 2030
-4000 — Dying
DyingThe Physical House Key
I spent years building access control for software, and the oldest access token in my house was a notched piece of brass that could not tell me who walked in. The metal house key is dying, and presence is replacing it.
Cause: Digital access added auditability, remote control, and revocation that a notched piece of metal never had. Once a credential could log who entered and be killed remotely, the spare under the mat stopped making sense.
security · Peak 1990 · Final breath 2035
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Every obituary here has a paired prediction over there: what dies, and what wins next.