Planet Money

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We almost had a smartphone in the 90s. Why did it fail?

Explore episode Jun 26, 2026

Humans have something called additive bias. This is a cognitive bias that's probably a result of the fact that for most of human history, the main problem was having too little, not too much. And so it's likely that we are not well equipped to even understand when to intuitively say, like, 'Oh, this is — this is too much,' and to cut back.

David Epstein

We almost had a smartphone in the 90s. …

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