Sometimes you can invent a product that makes the world manifestly worse.
I’m not talking about Thomas Midgley, Junior, a chemist who managed to hit a twofer by not only inventing the idea of putting lead into petrol, but then in his next job went on to invest chlorofluorocarbons – but instead the sort of inadvertent inventions that makes it easier for people to hassle, con, and steal.
All weekend, I’ve been having calls from the same loosely grouped numbers, and they’re all people phoning and trying to rip me off.
And 10 years ago, the sorts of systems they use were expensive to do. It was hard to build a system that would allow people in a foreign country to terminate basically thousands of free telephone calls in the UK. Nowadays, with broadband everywhere and a stolen credit card on a Twilio account, you can build that in an afternoon and start grifting the next day.
But, alas, this is how it is. When you’re out there building whatever next big thing you’re building, some people will use it to take the piss.