Mr. Coursey laments that although Technology History is full of landmark events, such as the advent of personal computing, creation of the mouse, graphical user interfaces, TCP/IP, and Ethernet, their advent is accompanied by many ill-conceived events that offer little or even detract from the field of technology. The following is his short list of nominees for the Worst Moments in Tech History.
 

1. The breakup of AT&T: 
   We traded the world's best telecommunications system for one that is second class. We have replaced standards with needless competition that doesn't benefit customers…Travel to Europe or Asia and see how advanced their wireless products are compared with ours.
2. AT&T selling UNIX to Novell: 
   This may be more a symbolic defeat than an actual one, since it really doesn't matter who owns the core UNIX code anymore (bonus question: After SCO, who has it now?). But the success of Linux only points out the opportunity Novell (and AT&T) missed.
3. Apple's decision not to compete:
   Rather than take Windows head-on, perhaps striking preemptively ahead of the 3.0 release, Apple decided to maintain its proprietary (and expensive) Mac hardware platform. If Apple had chosen to play hardball, sacrificing margin for market share by allowing other companies to license its hardware designs and operating system, Mac OS might have become the dominant desktop operating system.
4. Creation of the Microsoft Office bundle:
   This was the moment when Microsoft's desktop competitors lost the battle. It took a while to play out, but once Microsoft bundled its desktop applications into a single package (as I remember, none of them were market leaders at the time) the fate of competitors Lotus, WordPerfect, and Borland was effectively sealed. The bundling was a good thing for consumers — and still is — though the inclusion of the then-truly-third-rate PowerPoint (for free) stopped the presentation graphics business almost before it got started. The overall effect of bundling was to devastate the competition. This is when Microsoft should have been broken up.
5. Netscape's IPO:
   Someday we will admit — we're still in denial right now — that the dot-com boom did little more than fleece investors and make venture capitalists and their cronies very rich. The phenomenal success of Netscape's IPO was the single most important event in setting off the chain of events that followed. So maybe venture capital isn't such a great way to build an industry after all?
6. Any day at Xerox PARC during the 1960s and '70s:
   Many things that today are considered standard elements of personal computing, like mice, graphical user interfaces, desktop publishing, and maybe even the "modern" personal computer itself, owe their creation to a group of geniuses at Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center. But while they owe their creation to Xerox, the company was unable to popularize any of these incredible inventions and ranks as the greatest failure — at least in terms of making use of its inventions — in the history of technology and business.
7. Mr. Coursey suggests some other events that may qualify such as the battle between Java and Microsoft, AOL’s acquisition of Netscape, and Borland's purchase of dBase. The last item is a little esoteric, but the money and energy Borland wasted to keep Microsoft from buying dBase sent the company into a tailspin. Borland would have, it turned out, been better off if Microsoft had wasted its time trying to make dBase competitive instead of building SQL Server and Access.

1. Release of dBaseIV by Ashton-Tate
   My take on dBase is a little different from Mr. Coursey’s. Perhaps it is the old code-hound in me, but I felt that dBase was just about the best database program ever written — until dBase IV, that is. IV was rushed to market with a few bugs — nothing compared with what Microsoft sends us now, but back then, we were used to software that did what it was supposed to do. Some of the dBase IV bugs meant disaster for users. One bug was attached to the GUI menu item for the “Pack” command. The Pack procedure was designed to delete all database records that you had previously marked for deletion. A safety mechanism first issued a warning message asking if you were sure you knew what you were doing (necessary for us clumsy folks who frequently click the wrong menu item.) If you told it to go ahead, it did nothing. But if realized your error and clicked “no, don’t delete,” dBase deleted your the records. I was one of those business people who found this out the hard way.
2. Release of WordPerfect 6.0
   WordPerfect was far superior to Word. However, with 6.0 you had a great program with lots of powerful features and very few consumers who had machines that could run it. It was a disk hog and a CPU hog in the days when the 386 was king.
3. Birth of the Online Help System
   The Online Help System was and still is an excellent idea. The problem lies with what usually goes into an Online Help System: nothing worthwhile. Whereas manuals used to explain how to use the program or what a field or menu item was asking for, the online help system gave us something like this: “Property Name: Name of the Property. Enter the name of the Property.” Duh! Might be nice if this “help” system told me something I didn’t already know. What are they referring to when they say “Property”? A piece of real estate? A characteristic of a file or some other item? How much space do I have to enter this “Property Name,” four characters? eight? fifty two? How does the name I enter affect other fields on the screen or in the database? It’s very unlikely you’ll find those answers in an online help system.
4. Proliferation of the Graphic User Interface
   I’m not saying that I want to go back to code. But GUIs, especially those associated with graphics and Web page development tools have become mazes whose menus and overblown toolbar sets have no logical organization and whose icons and menu item names are incomprehensible.
5. Release of Dreamweaver, Front Page and other programs of their ilk
   allowing any idiot to put out a Website loaded with a lot resource-hogging razzle dazzle and very little meaningful content. A recent column by Ann Grimes in Wall Street Journal supports this opinion:

“Jakob Neilsen, a Web designer and usability expert … says companies need to realize that Web sites are often the main way the outside world views their operation. "There is just not enough straightforward language on Web sites," Mr. Neilsen says. Many sites, he says, are designed to showcase fancy Web tricks in an attempt to convey a high-tech image. But too often, they are useless to all but the most sophisticated users.”

6. Invention of “Internet High Jacking”
   I was glad to hear that San Antonio’s own Body Solutions has filed a multi-million dollar suit against some search engines for high-jacking its potential customers. It seems when you do a search on BodySolutions, the search engine may take you to the Website of a competitor, or it may display advertising from several competitors. Before I heard about this, I had had some similar bad experiences (when searching for other information) with dictionary.com and google.com and was as confused as I was annoyed. High jacking defeats the original purpose of the Internet: to freely share information and make it easier to find information about whatever topic you have in mind. Instead, I get to see whatever the advertisers want me to see. If this keeps up, no one will use the Internet but these self-serving advertisers themselves.
7. The real Y2K problem
   The real problem was not tiny pieces of code with dates in them. The real problem was that the constant speculation about Y2K doomsday made corporate purchasing departments jittery. Sales of big-ticket software and hardware began to circle the drain in the last half of 1999. The economy is still reeling.

Do you have a favorite Worst Moment in Tech History nominee? Send me your list, and I’ll  compile the responses for a future column.