What was supposed to be "The Next Big Thing!" but flopped?

As a car enthusiast, I can think of a good one, the Ford Nucleon.

During the 1950s and 1960s, there was considerable interest in nuclear power and its potential applications. This led to the idea of using nuclear energy to propel cars. The concept behind a nuclear car was to utilize a small nuclear reactor to generate steam, which would then power the vehicle's engine.

Of course back in those days, this was extremely futurustic and some at the time thought this would be a game changer, but ultimately, the safety aspect was one of the biggest reasons why this idea was dropped, and I probably don't have to explain why it may not have considered to be safe, I mean, it was using nuclear power, so even if the engineers tried to make it as safe as possible, IF something went wrong, it would have been catastrophic.

Ever since then, the interests in the automotive sector has shifted to Electric and Hydrogen.

Still, a very intriguing concept car and idea.

Outside cars, you have blimps, and I personally believe if we tried to make something like a hindenburg today with existing technology, we might have been a lot more successful than back then (as it goes way back to 1930s), there are still some blimps used occasionally, I also don't believe those use hydrogen(?), but they are not the "game changer in air travel" it was once seen as, although we can't rule out a comeback.

What about you guys?

sin_free_for_00_days,

Nuclear for sure. Reading old science fiction from the '50s is pretty eye opening on what promise it appeared to hold.

In my lifetime, the Genome project. I’m sure a lot of good has come of it, and will continue to do so, but when they first decided to try to decode the human genome, the promise in the air was eradication of so many diseases, increased health and longevity to humanity, etc.

The Internet for sure. It went from something that would allow the entire world to access knowledge, be better informed, make the future a real meritocracy. Instead, we ended up with magats, vaccine-effectiveness deniers, and aggressive stupidity.

spittingimage,
@spittingimage@lemmy.world avatar

Nuclear for sure. Reading old science fiction from the '50s is pretty eye opening on what promise it appeared to hold.

I remember reading a story in which a housewife casually scattered radioactive salts around her vegetable garden to kill slugs. And that became a story about the dangers of manufacturing radioactive salts, not using them.

Drusas,

The human genome project has been very successful at progressing genetic medicine.

superkret, (edited )

The Genome Project is the reason we can now develop vaccines for new COVID variants within weeks.

TheArstaInventor,
TheArstaInventor avatar

The Genome project is very interesting for sure, and wow, I am learning a lot of knowledge from others here on this thread because there are some stuff that I had no idea existed before.

runner_g,

Fun fact, we are currently on the 38th major revision of the Human Genome (Google GRCh38). In the 20+ years since we completed the project, we’ve been able to design 100s of thousands of kits for genetic testing of human genetic diseases, anything from inherited diseases like Huntington’s to developed diseases, eg, cancer. Within the world of biotech, it’s one of the greatest achievements of all time.

digitalgadget,

I am willing to accept the absolute worst of humanity on the internet, because we can also have so many amazing things that weren't previously possible.

Accessibility of information to the masses is incredibly important. Isolated populations can learn about the bigger world, get help, and share their experiences. Friends and families can stay connected. People can work together from anywhere, and create value as a team in ways that weren't previously possible. When I was a kid it was just a dream, and now we are living it.

TheArstaInventor,
TheArstaInventor avatar

This is true, a lot of people, especially some people from older generations like to talk shit about the internet and modern age (not just social media), and it's effects on us which can be bad but that also depends on the person, with good moderation, internet really is a dream come true isn't it? And we are living it.

Something we shouldn't take for granted for sure in a way.

rekliner,

I imagine the background noise of the Internet as the baser impulses competing for attention in a single brain… With the frontal lobe as the moderator. We’re seeing the emergent properties of all those impulses, which do need to be expressed, acknowledged, and dismissed in a healthy person rather than repressed. Unfortunately moderation takes too much effort to work like a frontal lobe. Hate amplifies and echo chambers break out into mainstream view. There’s no easy solution.

Still, I agree it’s with it for all the amazing advances being connected has allowed us as a species, and it does feel like a form of evolution.

yukichigai,
yukichigai avatar

Touchscreen interfaces on work/desktop computers. Twice even! Once in the 90s when touchscreen hardware became cheaper to make, then again around 2010 with Windows 8 and Steve Sinofsky pushing the "everything has a touchscreen interface" approach that bombed horribly.

Klear,

Funnily enough, I’ve recently been looking for the touchscreen interface in Windows 10 (probably the first human to do so) because I realised it would make it easier to interact with the desktop in VR. But turns out it’s not there. Either it was just W8 thing (which I skipped) or it was removed.

alekwithak,

From a quick Google search

  1. Right click on the Start menu. 2. Select Control Panel.
  2. Tap Pen and Input Devices in the Control Panel.
  3. Tap the Touch tab.
  4. Select Use your finger as an input device to enable the touch screen. Clear the box to disable the touch screen.

I have multiple touch screen windows 10/11 devices that work natively. Biggest issue if any is the keyboard.

Klear,

I did google some directions on how to enable it, but they weren’t present in my version on W10. Not sure if this is one of them or something else, so I’ll give it a shot when I get home.

rekliner,

Yeah, you don’t need to enable it. If it detects a touch device it listens to it automatically. Drivers are standardized too so you shouldn’t need to update or install anything. IMO touchscreen features in W10 and W11 are one of it’s best qualities… Apple/iOS really shot itself in the foot by doubling down on touchscreens being for ipads & phones only.

Klear,

Oh wait, I get it now. I explained myself poorly. I don’t want to use a touchscreen device. I was after the ridiculously ugly tile view which could replace normal desktop on Windows 8. Kinda like Steam has that big picture mode that’s optimised for navigating with a controller, I wanted to have and easy way to switch all of windows into something like that, since double-clicking kinda sucks with the touch controllers.

It was designed for touchscreen (and abandoned because nobody gives a shit), but it would have also be convenient for VR touch controllers.

AdmiralShat,

If fucking windows actually worked half ass with a touch screen, then this would have worked, but windows 8 felt horrible to use and windows in general was just frustrating to use on a touch screen for years after 8’s release.

HidingCat,

Windows 8's UI actually worked really well on a touchscreen, see 10's nerfed version of how it's backwards in many ways.

Thing is, the programs for Windows generally didn't make the switch, and why'd they? The market was still in mouse-cursor mode, and having a UI for touchscreens would probably have even more users up in revolt. So it ended as this jarring mess that MS couldn't really resolve.

AdmiralShat,

The revision of 8, 8.1 or whatever it was, fixed things.

Launch 8 was only okay when inside the stupid boxy menus. Trying to do anything that wasn’t using the start menu was horrible.

JakenVeina,

3D TV.

Drusas,

Let's be real: most of us knew it was a shitty gimmick.

palordrolap,

Both times.

Wisely,

This was my favorite tech of all time. I don’t think most people ever got to try it where it worked without glasses.

Isthisreddit,

I loved 3D movies and still do. Ultimately people don’t like wearing shit on their face or having to hold their heads in a certain position (inb4 the one eyed people and the people who get nauseous chime in), but oh well - I’m glad I was able to really enjoy the experience when it was at its peak

Wisely,

I really enjoyed it on the New 3DS. It didn’t use glasses and being handheld you were always positioned perfectly. Given it has been another decade and higher resolution that tech would be amazing in a smartphone.

FrankTheHealer,

Fun fact, I’m blind on one eye and so 3D TV never worked for me. The whole thing of seeing stuff coming out of the screen requires two eyes lol

rekliner,

To be fair, that applies to real life also. The sense of depth from a single eye comes from your brain interpreting cues like shadows. I wonder if that makes you more attuned to regular flatscreen 3d so it’s more immersive to you than the average bear. You were definitely not their target market!

TheArstaInventor,
TheArstaInventor avatar

Damn bro haha

FarraigePlaisteach,
FarraigePlaisteach avatar
  • Google Wave

  • The Commodore Amiga was superior to Mac and PC when it came out but unfortunately for the engineers, the business was run by cretins

  • Dvorak keyboard layout, maybe

ripcord,
ripcord avatar

I wouldn't call the Amiga a flop, it just didn't survive. It was reasonably successful for a while.

SuddenlyBlowGreen,

Yeah, it just wasn’t as successful as the C64, but it was successful.

ripcord,
ripcord avatar

Also I wouldn't blame it just on the business side.

Unfortunately the market interest in different platforms shrunk dramatically and almost everyone lost. Only two platforms really survived and Macs almost didn't (ironically saved by Microsoft, trying to offload some of the massive pressure they were getting as a "monopoly").

But basically the market changed. Partly because as software got more complex, and clear market leaders emerged, software authors stopped being willing to port things to a bunch of potentially very very different OSes and platforms. But a bunch of reasons.

YuzuDrink,

I miss Google Wave. It was my preferred way to collaborate with friends for a long time.

Ganondorf,
Ganondorf avatar

Wave was simply ahead of its time and made by the wrong company. Google never supports anything it creates long enough for it to establish a path forward. Now, people don't support Google products much because they know Google will cancel it within 3 years.

fubo,

I liked Wave too. The core technology of Wave ended up being added to Docs, which is when it became possible to have more than two or three people actively editing a document at the same time without it getting incredibly slow or glitchy.

osarusan,
osarusan avatar

Google Wave was amazing! My friends and I had so much fun with it, and then it just got abandoned.

FoundTheVegan,
FoundTheVegan avatar

I can simotanously acknowledge and accept two things when it comes to Dvorak.

  1. It is objectively a better layout.
  2. I'm not relearning to type. Especially when the rest of the worlds keyboards will be qwerty.

I'll learn Dvorak when everyone else does. Same with Esperanto.

FarraigePlaisteach,
FarraigePlaisteach avatar

The rest of the works keyboards are QWERTY by default. Dvorak is everywhere too though. Just a few clicks in Linux, macOS or Windows and you’re set up.

That said, I learned it because I had RSI at the time. 20 minutes a day for about three weeks (when I was young and my mind was absorbent) and I was almost at my original typing speed.

MrJameGumb,
@MrJameGumb@lemmy.world avatar

MiniDisc. When the format was first released in the 90s people claimed it was going to replace CDs, but then hardly anyone bought them and they pretty much disappeared after a few years

TheArstaInventor,
TheArstaInventor avatar

Wow that is interesting. If I am understanding this right, was minidisc called that way because it was smaller than a traditional CD? Or what is just a different format? What really was it's benefits back then over conventional CDs?

givesomefucks,

It was a small cd, but encased like a floppy.

I think 1.5 of them was the same as an iPod of the time, because it stored the songs as data not audio on the disk.

So if you never changed the disc, it was 75% the storage of an iPod. And I want to say a 3-5 pack was only $20.

They just never took off, but they were awesome back in the day.

TheArstaInventor,
TheArstaInventor avatar

If possible, can you guys or anyone with a good image of it, even better if it's beside a CD, share the link through Imgur or something? I can't really find a good image on Google, I am super intrigued by this, never heard of it actually.

TheArstaInventor,
TheArstaInventor avatar

Based on Google Images, it looks a lot like a more compact modified version of the CD.

givesomefucks,

duckduckgo.com/?q=mini+disc&t=samsung&iax…

Edit:

Here’s a review

howtogeek.com/…/remember-minidisc-heres-how-you-c…

The first player there’s a picture of is the one I had, I can’t explain how crazy the little remote with a display was for headphones. It was mind-blowing 20 years ago.

TheArstaInventor,
TheArstaInventor avatar

That looks really cool.

FarraigePlaisteach,
FarraigePlaisteach avatar

Imagine you can make cuts anywhere in your CD tracks and move the segments around. You can also name each segment so they don’t just have to be 00-99+.

I had a great time recording radio shows, cutting out the DJ and entering all the song titles. The LCD display would show the song / artist title while playing which was big back then :)

MrJameGumb,
@MrJameGumb@lemmy.world avatar

It was more like a floppy disc from a computer. It was a small writable disc inside a cartridge housing. It sounded just as good if not better than a CD with the added bonus that it couldn’t get scratched up, and wouldn’t skip like a CD if the player moved around.

nicktron,
nicktron avatar

And it was much much smaller than a CD. The player was akin to a smaller version of a Walkman.

yukichigai,
yukichigai avatar

It didn't help that the hardware cost a small fortune and there weren't many albums released in the format. In terms of tech it's fantastic, but that doesn't matter when few people can afford it and there's not much to use it with even if they can.

Drusas,

They did well in Japan.

Wisely,

I bought one and used it like an mp3 player. They immediately stopped selling more disks so I just kept reusing the one I had. Still have it and it works to this day. Not much point in using it though when you can just stream from your phone.

MrJameGumb,
@MrJameGumb@lemmy.world avatar

It was definitely the precursor to an MP3 player! I used to like making mixtapes, and you could do that with CDs too if you had a CD burner (I didn’t have a PC that could burn CDs until I was in college) but it was time consuming and they skipped all the time if you wanted to listen to it while you were out walking around.

TropicalDingdong,

MiniDisc. When the format was first released in the 90s people claimed it was going to replace CDs, but then hardly anyone bought them and they pretty much disappeared after a few years

MD players were never hugely popular, but I used the crap out of mine. When I was a in the Navy I had a MD player and it could hold something like, 100 ish songs per MD? It was clutch for going underway. This was like a revolutionary amount of size for its compactness, but more importantly, the durability of the disks. No worries about scratching, you could just throw them in with the rest of your crap. I used mine endlessly and it was also a cool color scheme (like white with orange accents. sony I think).

MrJameGumb,
@MrJameGumb@lemmy.world avatar

I remember seeing them for sale at Best Buy when I was in highschool and my friends and I all wanted to try it out, but no one could afford the player, and no one’s parents would buy it for them since we all already had CD players and a bunch of CDs lol

TropicalDingdong,

Yeah it was a splurge buy for me since I had very little space and needed to pack as much content/ media as I could into as small a space as possible.

crypticthree,

They were pretty popular in Japan

TheArstaInventor, (edited )
TheArstaInventor avatar

Interesting, oh well, sony made them didn't they, I am guessing it was certainly more popular there because of that?

TheArstaInventor,
TheArstaInventor avatar

Wow that sounds really good, sad how even CDs no longer enjoy the popularity they once had, everything has become more digital and for physical stuff you have USBs now.

Laptops, cars, and etc have also slowly stopped allowing CD inputs. They don't even have that option any more these days.

Although, there is one area where CDs are used a lot till date, consoles, Xbox and PlayStation especially, I am surprised even the new generations have that.

TropicalDingdong,

I think this: www.minidisc.org/part_Sony_MZ-S1.html is the one I had?

I had it for ages. Literally a tank and it was like 20 bucks for minidisks so you could stack them up with Mp3’s.

It had a very pleasurable thunk when you loaded a disk iirc.

Somewhereunknown7351,
Somewhereunknown7351 avatar

Minecraft earth kinda got ruined by covid

Minecraft legends development is ending

Minecraft story is unavailable to get (without pirating it)

Hytale might be the only game that will take longer to release then gta6

rekliner,

You might enjoy the 1971 novella “A Meeting with Medusa” by Arthur C Clarke. It follows the captain of the last nuclear blimp as they become irrelevant, then later when his specialized skills are needed again. Giant blimps are used to explore Venus and the gas giants since they can’t be landed on and lag time makes remote piloting impossible.

This is interesting since blimps over Venus was recently in the news again for better or worse and is a relevant proposition. We will certainly have blimps over Venus someday (though probably not manned). The gas giants put out too much radiation and autonomous flight is too well developed for the Jupiter story to hold water now though.

Zadkine,

DCC, Digital Compact Cassette. It was introduced by Phillips in 1992 and was supposed to be the successor to the old music cassette. It was digital, with sound quality comparable to a CD, but the players were also compatible with the old cassettes. In theory this was a great idea but it never went anywhere, and the format was discontinued on 1996. I think Techmoan has a video on it.

PP_BOY_, (edited )
@PP_BOY_@lemmy.world avatar

Reminds me a lot of Laserdiscs, which were digital (kinda, the media was digital but stored and read manually, making it technically analog) media discs, basically like a 12" vinyl, made to replace VHS tapes. Their only relevance in the past two decades has been a single episode of Regular Show

Zadkine,

IIRC Laserdisc actually was the best quality home video format for a while, and it had a nice content library. Wasn’t it quite popular in Japan? DCC never went much anywhere. Its main competitor, MiniDisc, had some niche appeal for portable players, but once mp3 players took off it too was finished.

LoamImprovement,

I mean, depending on your definition of ‘supposed to be,’ one could argue that the Juicero was, amidst a sea of devices and peripherals obsessed with getting a piece of the action on the Internet of Things, poised to revolutionize the way the home consumer juiced their fruit and veg. It’s not even all that difficult to imagine the pitch those responsible might have led with: “No more squeezing, no more cleanup, just fresh-pressed juice delivered to you weekly at the push of a button.”

For those readers who don’t recall the Juicero, here’s what was wrong with it:

  • For starters, it was way too expensive. If I told you all this thing did was take a bag of fruit chunks and squeeze it out of a spigot, how much would you think such a device would set you back. $40? $60? $100? Try $699. They did later lower the price… To $399.
  • But surely this marvel of engineering would justify the ludicrous price tag, I hear some of you say. Yes, this wondrous device was capable of a great many things, including… Pressing two plates slowly together to crush chunks of fruit and squeeze them out of a bag. And… Well, that’s really the whole deal. But certainly not, say, something you could easily do by hand, and save yourself half a grand.
  • Actually, I lied about the above part - it was capable of a few other neat things, when connected to the Internet. Well, it required an internet connection to work, so, hope you have that in your kitchen! But it offered so much more than squeezing juice bags slightly better than human hands. It could tell you if the juice bag was expired! Or there was a safety recall! Or a non-juicero brand! And refuse to squeeze the bag in any of those cases.

Obviously, the thing flopped, hard, in one of those rare cases where consumers by and large realized “Hey, this thing is really fucking dumb!” But it called out to a much larger issue, where Silicon Valley entrepreneurs were fetishizing the possibility of the Internet of Things, with similarly ridiculous products shoehorned with ‘smart’ capabilities. Smart shoes, smart salt shakers, smart umbrellas, the whole fucking nine. Everyone obsessed with collecting data and offering minimal benefit to users in exchange. And the worst part of is, they didn’t really make money on the Juicero itself, so over-engineered it was. The long term goal was to charge for subscriptions of overpriced juice bags, at $5 a glass. It was a preview of things to come, I suppose.

orcawolfe,

I remember they tried to use the environmental angle for marketing. They claimed that they were making use of discarded fruit pulp that would have gone to waste.

But of course it was actually an efficiency nightmare. They shipped the pulp to their factory, then shipped the weight of the pulp plus juice to the customer, who would then throw out half the weight of each package.

It would have been way more efficient for them to just buy the pulp, squeeze it in industrial quantities and sell bags of juice like some trendy health thing. But of course then they would have been a juice company instead of a tech company, and juice companies don't get as much venture capital.

FoundTheVegan,
FoundTheVegan avatar

Google+

Was supposed to kill Facebook, lol. Now it's just one more on the long list of ideas Google entirely gave up on.

CADmonkey,

The one flop that sticks in my mind the most was “IT”. “IT” was going to revolutionize the world, nothing would be different, it would make each person richer than Bill Gates, and so on.

“IT” was the Segway. It was a two-wheeled vehicle that could go a max speed of 12 MPH/19 KPH for a distance of 25 miles/40 km and it cost Twelve Thousand Dollars. Know what else balances on two wheels and goes 12mph? A bicycle. And I can pick that up for a few hundred bucks depending on what I want. At the time, you could buy a very nice motorcycle for $12,000 and it would go much farther than 25 miles and considerably faster than 12 mph.

PP_BOY_,
@PP_BOY_@lemmy.world avatar

As someone who was born after the whole Segway fiasco but has heard about its apparent crazy marketing, is there a QRD on what exactly made it so unwlderwelming? Or some kind of video that made the Segway’s release as infamous as it is? I’ve seen this answer a lot in these kinds of threads

CADmonkey,

In the early 2000’s there was So. Much. Hype. This guy was making a huge deal out of this device but wouldn’t say what it was, and he got a bunch of his useless billionaire friends to promote it too. When the big reveal finally came, it was just… a scooter? Who cares? An E-bike was already a thing that existed and you could pick one up for $400. You could buy an actual car for $12k. In the early 2000’s there were several cars that could be bought new for the price of a Segway.

It was like someone hyped up their new life-changing invention for years, and it turned out to be a suitcase with fancy wheels on it, and it cost as much as a new Honda Civic.

rekliner,

The segway itself could’ve lived up to the hype… If it were as affordable as a vespa! it could have taken over that non-highway travel niche but it cost 10 times as much and had less range. The hype was tone deaf to the average person’s disposable income. You can’t revolutionize the world if only independently wealthy people can afford your toy. I’m sure that wealthy tech bro ceo was very out of touch with working Americans wages. Later he died by driving off a cliff on a segway.

You see them and their successors now in crowded pedestrian spaces (often for security guards) and it’s arguably less intrusive than a skater but with long distance potential. That said I think the monowheel electric skateboards are the best thing for that now and not nearly as expensive.

FrankTheHealer,

Google Plus

dewritochan,

Intel Itanium was going to take us into 64 bit computing, starting at the high end and working its way down to home pc’s.

and then AMD walked in with x86_64 like “what up i got a fat cock and it’s backward compatible with all your old code” just 2 years later.

Isthisreddit,

Let’s also not forget to mention there were no good compilers for titanium - along with no x86 support - they hoped the big money vendors that had the big iron Unix market would port their 64bit apps to itanium, but every vendor said nope

small44,

Meta’s metaverse

alekwithak,

Only in Zucks head.

small44,

Many people I know thought it would too

MeccAnon,
MeccAnon avatar

Not considering vaporware or failed products (e.g. Eolo car):

  • The Esperanto language. (Yes, I'm old)

  • NFTs.

  • Blockchain. Yes, it has its use, but it's not the pervasive, all-use game changer it was claimed to be.

  • Sony Betamax. Pity because it was better than VHS.

  • New Coke. Nuff said.

echodot,

People like to claim that blockchain will sold world hunger but really it’s just a database system so unless your problem is database related blockchain isn’t going to fix it.

The problem they tried to use blockchain to fix was I don’t like the government controlling what I do with the money and knowing I commit crimes. Which isn’t really a database issue it’s a getting caught issue. If you don’t get caught you don’t need to use bitcoin and you don’t need to use blockchain.

FoundTheVegan,
FoundTheVegan avatar

Blockchain is a massive innovation for certain industries. Tragically at this point when I read it, I default assume it's a buzzword techno babble selling point for a system that absolutely doesn't need it.

FrankTheHealer,

Esperanto is over 100 years old, when was it poised to be the next big thing?

alekwithak,

70s and 80s.

ChicoSuave,

What did Beta do better than VHS? It’s a load of hype from Sony that Beta was better - magnetic tape was magnetic tape and compare the picture side by side (which most homes couldn’t because beta machines cost 2x as much as VHS). There is no difference except buyer’s denial they paid more for the less runtime (Beta has an hour long format while VHS was 2 hours).

CADmonkey,

I knew what video that was going to be before I even clicked it. Technology Connections is awesome.

rekliner,

Yeah but sony made VHS also… It was their Alpha release. They intended to wait a bit and release beta, which has already been developed shortly after vhs hit stores. What they didn’t expect was to be copied by a competitor before that happened, effectively making VHS a standard. As you say, magnetic tape is magnetic tape and they thought their first attempt would quietly fade into history when they put out version 2. Instead it was a desperate marketing war for relevance.

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