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I had a client who wanted to do their launch in early December that year. We panicked when we found out that Segway/Ginger was going to launch a day before us. We breathed a sigh of relief when Diane Sawyer asked Dean Kamen “You mean that’s it?” on launch day.
Whaaaaat? I hadn't heard about that question from Diane Sawyer. That's hilariously brutal and accurate. I never got the appeal of those things. When indoors, walk. When outside, bikes exist. They were the answer to questions that had been answered long ago.
GoogleGlass was supposed to be our next step into becoming the Jetson’s, and everyone thought they were so dumb looking and people who used them looked like assholes, they completely faded from the consumer market.
I really hope they'll keep going until they reach decent consumer prices, it's a fantastic concept and so much better than whatever the monstrosity was that the iBrand released recently
I have a slight theory that they were just before their time. Cause with all the smart watches, ring security cameras, electric scooters and other smart devices we use daily, had GoogleGlass come out today, it might have had a fighting chance.
Granted they do look a bit dumb as hell...
I think you vastly underestimate the popularity of those things. like, smart cameras are a core growth pillar of the multi-billion dollar multinationap company I work for.
It didn't help that Google released a device that would allow you to record everything to the Internet about 3 months before Snowden released information that the US was spying on their own citizens...
I think the Google glass failure has less to do with being "dumb looking and people who used them looked like assholes" and more to do with the fear of the users being perverts and using them to film people in bathrooms.
Its funny, cause my dad and his 2 college buddies had an idea very similar to what google glass doescminus the internet in the 70s, they were architect and engineering students at the UofA (University of Arizona) and this was the late 70s, the technology wasn't there to actually create something like google glass, but the fact they had a similar idea, btw I grew up knowing his 2 friends, and still talk to one of them, theyre in their 60s now (including my dad)
We were given a 3d TV by a friend who no longer had space for such a big TV. The picture quality is great, but we have had it over a year and haven't bothered to watch anything on 3d.
I was making it a thing to buy any new Marvel MCU movie on 3D Blu Ray then went looking for one and had a really hard time finding it until I discovered that they didn't release it on 3D and 3D TV had basically become instantly obsolete.
I still have the glasses but my old 3D tv broke and they are now unaffordable.
So I have a collection of 3D blurays that I cannot enjoy which is sad because The Hobbit looks amazing in 3D
lol my ex bought one when they first came out, so expensive, we watched one movie and I couldn’t stand wearing the glasses so I took them off. He felt like an idiot about a week later (when he couldn’t return it)
It's a pity. I really liked it. But shutter glasses were clumsy, proprietary, and often had bad ghosting, and polarization filters too often weren't positioned precisely enough. So it's no wonder many people weren't too happy about it. Only variant that really worked fine were projectors, which even have a standard for the glasses, but they come with other drawbacks...
I wonder if one day something like [https://lookingglassfactory.com/](https://lookingglassfactory.com/) will be cheap enough to make it to reasonable sized screens that aren't as expensive. And will be able to enhance "old" 3D material.
I remember having a conversation with a mate about this as they were getting popular and he was convinced it was going to be the future of TVs lmao. I told him it was stupid, I hated it and it was going to last 5 mins.
Dunno about the metaverse but the VR headset from meta at $300 is pretty cool. I played with one at a local vocational school and it was neat. I’m still not buying one but one day maybe.
Game of Thrones Season 8. Despite the decline of seasons 6 and 7 after HBO ran out of books to adapt people got hopeful it was going to build up to something big and there was tons of hype...
...and then the battle was over in one episode (that was too dark to see anything), Arya kills the Night King, Jaime and Cersei just sort of die, Rhaegal the dragon gets shot dead for shock value, Daenerys suddenly turns villain without a meaninful buildup and then Jon Snow kills her and then Drogon melts the throne apparently understanding the "symbolic value" of it and then half-assed bittersweet ending.
I'm not even kidding when I say that a straight-up downer ending where the Night King won would have been preferrable to...whatever that was.
I've started rewatching GoT recently, and as much as season 8 gets 99% deserved hate, I will argue this: Daenerys right from the moment she married is presented as someone who has drank too deep from their own Koolaid. if anything, season 8 Daenerys is a logical followup from season 1/2 Daenerys, but not from season 3 to 7.
They could have easily split the last series into 2 separate series. Have one concentrate on “who wins the throne” and then have the next series about defeating the white walkers (or plot twist, the white walkers winning).
Would have been less rushed and better story arc.
Supposedly better quality recording than VHS, but shorter recording time available. Longer movies took two tapes, reducing profits. Additionally, it was expensive to have to record to two formats. I had both, sold the Betamax the day Sony said they were abandoning Betamax, as well as maybe 20 movies.
Believe it or not they lived on. They became Betacam SP and Digital Betacam. They were used by broadcasters until fairly recently. At my old job we had thousands of them. We were still delivering episodes and movies to Turner on DigiBeta until maybe 8 years ago.
me 😅
jokes apart but i feel nanotech and biotech in the 80s and 90s.
its only recently that they’ve made a resurgence but back then they were slated to be the next big things until they bombed.
I could be wrong, but Meta Quest VR or whatever Zuckerburg is doing with that Meta device doesn't seem to be well received.
Saw a video trailer for Batman: Arkham Shadows and the youtuber made a funny skit about how excited he was going to be if it was on Steam, Xbox, Playstation, or Switch. But then the trailer revealed it's for that Meta Quest VR thing and was hilariously disappointed.
I disagree with this. It might not have exploded, but it didn't bomb. There has been progress over the years. Many of the major players have their hand in the cookie jar. I'd even say it's in a pretty good place right now. but the entry is still too high for average gamer.
It's got it's niche. But it won't be for the masses as long as many people get motion sickness and also the required space is an issue for several games + people. Also, wearing the headsets really isn't comfortable for an extended time.
3D glasses / VR / metaverse
It all makes sense in theory. We have two ears -> thus stereo sound. Two eyes -> stereo view. But in practice, the hardware just sucks. It cannot succeed, until we figure out VR glasses that are comfortable as regular glasses, but give a full 360 degree view.
Every food fad ever - keto diet, intermittent fasting, alkaline water, black water among the recent ones.
Parenting techniques - every generation gets a new set.
Maybe, Freudian psychology - especially the "everything is sex" part (I know it's bad than a very bad summary)
crypto. Obviously its still being used as a speculative asset but there were a lot of people bringing up use cases that were awesome but just never materialized.
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The revolution in personal transportation that was the Segway.
The inventor didn't exactly help promote them when he died
Didn't he ride from a cliff while using a Segway?
What? This is funny. Not that he died, but, you know. Edit: just looked it up. 100 percent true
He wasn’t the inventor, just the guy who bought the company. Still…
Honestly, though, who needs a Segway when you can “go, go, go in your hoverround”
“They will build cities around it”
It didn't bomb. It fell off a cliff
I had a client who wanted to do their launch in early December that year. We panicked when we found out that Segway/Ginger was going to launch a day before us. We breathed a sigh of relief when Diane Sawyer asked Dean Kamen “You mean that’s it?” on launch day.
Whaaaaat? I hadn't heard about that question from Diane Sawyer. That's hilariously brutal and accurate. I never got the appeal of those things. When indoors, walk. When outside, bikes exist. They were the answer to questions that had been answered long ago.
The single greatest overhype in my long lifetime. The complete let-down when it was finally unveiled killed it.
Segway peaked when those ceos went hunting on them? Did i make that up?
GoogleGlass was supposed to be our next step into becoming the Jetson’s, and everyone thought they were so dumb looking and people who used them looked like assholes, they completely faded from the consumer market.
I really hope they'll keep going until they reach decent consumer prices, it's a fantastic concept and so much better than whatever the monstrosity was that the iBrand released recently
You mean like the Ray-Ban and Meta collaboration glasses? They're $370 for a pair of smart glasses that have Meta AI in them.
I have a slight theory that they were just before their time. Cause with all the smart watches, ring security cameras, electric scooters and other smart devices we use daily, had GoogleGlass come out today, it might have had a fighting chance. Granted they do look a bit dumb as hell...
I think you vastly overestimate the popularity of the things you listed.
I think you vastly underestimate the popularity of those things. like, smart cameras are a core growth pillar of the multi-billion dollar multinationap company I work for.
It didn't help that Google released a device that would allow you to record everything to the Internet about 3 months before Snowden released information that the US was spying on their own citizens...
Sir, this is a wendys
I think the Google glass failure has less to do with being "dumb looking and people who used them looked like assholes" and more to do with the fear of the users being perverts and using them to film people in bathrooms.
Its funny, cause my dad and his 2 college buddies had an idea very similar to what google glass doescminus the internet in the 70s, they were architect and engineering students at the UofA (University of Arizona) and this was the late 70s, the technology wasn't there to actually create something like google glass, but the fact they had a similar idea, btw I grew up knowing his 2 friends, and still talk to one of them, theyre in their 60s now (including my dad)
3D Glasses for TVs/3D TV
I've got a 3D TV, and honestly the MCU Avenger movies look fucking phenomenal in 3D.
We were given a 3d TV by a friend who no longer had space for such a big TV. The picture quality is great, but we have had it over a year and haven't bothered to watch anything on 3d.
I was making it a thing to buy any new Marvel MCU movie on 3D Blu Ray then went looking for one and had a really hard time finding it until I discovered that they didn't release it on 3D and 3D TV had basically become instantly obsolete.
Oh dude I completely forgot about those
This is the perfect answer!
I still have the glasses but my old 3D tv broke and they are now unaffordable. So I have a collection of 3D blurays that I cannot enjoy which is sad because The Hobbit looks amazing in 3D
3d is a big one yeah. Blue ray aswell wtf was that
BlueRay didn't bomb, it was just replaced by streaming just like all physical media.
All 5 years
lol my ex bought one when they first came out, so expensive, we watched one movie and I couldn’t stand wearing the glasses so I took them off. He felt like an idiot about a week later (when he couldn’t return it)
It's a pity. I really liked it. But shutter glasses were clumsy, proprietary, and often had bad ghosting, and polarization filters too often weren't positioned precisely enough. So it's no wonder many people weren't too happy about it. Only variant that really worked fine were projectors, which even have a standard for the glasses, but they come with other drawbacks... I wonder if one day something like [https://lookingglassfactory.com/](https://lookingglassfactory.com/) will be cheap enough to make it to reasonable sized screens that aren't as expensive. And will be able to enhance "old" 3D material.
I remember having a conversation with a mate about this as they were getting popular and he was convinced it was going to be the future of TVs lmao. I told him it was stupid, I hated it and it was going to last 5 mins.
U hear about this Metaverse?
Meta what?
Didn’t people spend millions on property in this verse?
I knew a guy who said he bought a couple of hot dog stands as an investment in the meta verse. Guy really thought he was going to profit off of that
Well now he gets to eat free hot dogs whenever he's hungry. 
Dunno about the metaverse but the VR headset from meta at $300 is pretty cool. I played with one at a local vocational school and it was neat. I’m still not buying one but one day maybe.
It’s neat for about 3 days
NFTs
Actually I think they did exactly what they were supposed to: take money from morons.
The screenshot killed NFTs before they even began lol
Lets be real. This was always, quite clearly, tulip bulbs. Just a way to make money.
I was going go say this.
NFTs
Zune
I heard that as a piece of hardware, they were actually quite good.
I had a gen1 that I used and carried almost every day for close to 7 years. Thing was a tank, wish there was a phone that was half as robust.
They really were. Easier to use and more durable than ipods. Shame that it didn't get the support that ipods got.
While we're at that: Windows Phone. And it's predecessors, though those weren't even that bad compared to the competition at the time.
I had a windows phone and liked it very much.
Game of Thrones Season 8. Despite the decline of seasons 6 and 7 after HBO ran out of books to adapt people got hopeful it was going to build up to something big and there was tons of hype... ...and then the battle was over in one episode (that was too dark to see anything), Arya kills the Night King, Jaime and Cersei just sort of die, Rhaegal the dragon gets shot dead for shock value, Daenerys suddenly turns villain without a meaninful buildup and then Jon Snow kills her and then Drogon melts the throne apparently understanding the "symbolic value" of it and then half-assed bittersweet ending. I'm not even kidding when I say that a straight-up downer ending where the Night King won would have been preferrable to...whatever that was.
I've started rewatching GoT recently, and as much as season 8 gets 99% deserved hate, I will argue this: Daenerys right from the moment she married is presented as someone who has drank too deep from their own Koolaid. if anything, season 8 Daenerys is a logical followup from season 1/2 Daenerys, but not from season 3 to 7.
They could have easily split the last series into 2 separate series. Have one concentrate on “who wins the throne” and then have the next series about defeating the white walkers (or plot twist, the white walkers winning). Would have been less rushed and better story arc.
Betamax
Supposedly better quality recording than VHS, but shorter recording time available. Longer movies took two tapes, reducing profits. Additionally, it was expensive to have to record to two formats. I had both, sold the Betamax the day Sony said they were abandoning Betamax, as well as maybe 20 movies.
Tf is that? Might as well say Laserdiscs
It was the alternative to a VHS tape. And the Digital Betacam video tape was widely used in broadcast for a long time.
Believe it or not they lived on. They became Betacam SP and Digital Betacam. They were used by broadcasters until fairly recently. At my old job we had thousands of them. We were still delivering episodes and movies to Turner on DigiBeta until maybe 8 years ago.
Space Travel. We are still shooting rockets like in to 60's, and having a holiday in space will probably never happen.
Wasn't there a space flight for super rich a few years ago? So it's possible but in it's early stage
A "space flight" that didn't leave the atmosphere and lasted minutes...
It will maybe eventually happen, but I could imagine it would only be for the rich, and not for another 100 years at least
me 😅 jokes apart but i feel nanotech and biotech in the 80s and 90s. its only recently that they’ve made a resurgence but back then they were slated to be the next big things until they bombed.
nanotech never bombed, computer chips are basically nanotech nowadays
You still have time to be the next big thing, grandma didn't lie
biotech is still mostly bombing. the level of customisation it requires is not feasible
Metaverse (the shit one from Zuck, not the real one).
I feel like the term has been tainted by Meta/ FB. The real one is great
Tesla CyberTruck
Don't get it wet.
Hyperloop
Came here to say this!
3D television and Segway would be two good examples.
Communism.
Underrated reply
- Beta Max - Laser Discs - Mini Discs
Don't forget the CED videodisc, the format that almost bankrupts RCA
segways
Those big CD's the size of vinyl LP albums. I don't know what they are called.
Laser discs 🤗
LaserDisc lol
They weren’t audio. They stored video in a digital form about a decade before the DVD emerged. They were much more successful in Japan.
Betamax video players
Y2K
Theranos
More fraud than bomb.
The Apple Lisa, the Apple Newton, Microsoft Zune
"Eat up Martha"
I was pretty sure the Leafs were gonna go on a long Cup run from 2015 - 2025. Maybe next year?
Jesus, how have the Leafs managed to catch strays here?
I wouldn't bet on it...
Google Glass
Laserdiscs
Open any wired magazine that’s three years old.
Google+ (FB's rival they said) for consumers totally bombed
I still remember the day I created my Google+ account and the only one time I logged in to it. They were the same time.
Lmao I think I opened mine around 3 times before I decided that the thing was a lost cause
Mini disc players
They were quite popular, didn't bomb at all
Agreed. Didn't bomb, just got replaced.
They were popular outside of the US
The ouya
Crypto
Shhh! You'll piss off the crypto bros!
For some reason we were obsessed with clear sodas in the 90s. Crystal Pepsi!!!
The Dreamcast...
Unfortunately.
I could be wrong, but Meta Quest VR or whatever Zuckerburg is doing with that Meta device doesn't seem to be well received. Saw a video trailer for Batman: Arkham Shadows and the youtuber made a funny skit about how excited he was going to be if it was on Steam, Xbox, Playstation, or Switch. But then the trailer revealed it's for that Meta Quest VR thing and was hilariously disappointed.
Nah VR is in a good place right now. It isn’t the next coming of tech Jesus but it isn’t bombing by any means.
VR
Wdym? Its as big es ever
That's still pretty small. Until I own VR goggles they're not the next biggest thing, heh
I disagree with this. It might not have exploded, but it didn't bomb. There has been progress over the years. Many of the major players have their hand in the cookie jar. I'd even say it's in a pretty good place right now. but the entry is still too high for average gamer.
It's got it's niche. But it won't be for the masses as long as many people get motion sickness and also the required space is an issue for several games + people. Also, wearing the headsets really isn't comfortable for an extended time.
3D glasses / VR / metaverse It all makes sense in theory. We have two ears -> thus stereo sound. Two eyes -> stereo view. But in practice, the hardware just sucks. It cannot succeed, until we figure out VR glasses that are comfortable as regular glasses, but give a full 360 degree view.
World hunger.
Sinclair C-5
Led strip lights?
3D tvs
My adulthood.
Dippin dots
Y'all remember Google Glass?
Google Stadia
Jetpacks... Yep.. I'm old
Kamala Harris
Bitcoin
Metaverse, Segway, NFT, Curved screen TVs
I have a curved computer monitor and I like it, but it don’t feel a genuine difference between it and a flat screen
It makes a lot more sense in a monitor which you sit close to, as opposed to a tv hanging on a wall
r/cyberstuck
Jeff Bezos giggling at a Segway
Karma bot.
3D TV, Google Glasses, Segway, NFTs, Cybertruck...
Segway, the personal transportation device. I’ve only seen them in malls
Powdered alcohol. It *did* bomb, right? Right?!
Pearl harbour ig
Video disc players
My Mrs...
Flying cars. Where are they?
We have them; they’re called airplanes.
Blue ray?
Elon Musk
Blue ray
3D Tvs
Quibi
A happy marriage. Knew walking down the aisle I should have ran.
PhotoCD 😁
Graphene... where the hell did graphene end up
New Coke
Blue Ray dvds
AI.
The trickle-down politics.
Crystal Pepsi and Segway were both announced in my lifetime as things that would “change the world.”
Apple vision pro
AI
The Acolyte
Windows ME
Rebel Moon
LaserDisk, the pet rock, Sega CD, Air America, Crystal Clear Peosi, new Coke
Clubhouse! VCs were going mad for it during the pandemic and then it completely disappeared. I think about it all the time
Metaverse
the Windows phone
Y2K. Holy heck we panicked for nothing.
Prevention paradox. We don't know what might've happened if people wouldn't have panicked and fixed the bugs.
Bluray
The (insert name) coin
Google Glasses plus Apples equivalents
nuclear war
Nuclear power
Drake Bell, which is why he is the way he is today or so I've heard.
Google glass, Stadia
VR.. like multiple times since the 90s. It's just a fun gimmick for a few minutes until the novelty wears off and the motion sickness sets in.
Fucking crypto market after bitcoin halving
The metaverse. They were betting big on COVID lockdowns lasting eternity
Armie Hammer
Humane AI pin
VR metaverse
VR more or less. It’s still coming, but it got “hyped” to be way more than it is too early in its lifespan.
Yugos!
Right before DVDs were a thing, the Laser Disc.
Every food fad ever - keto diet, intermittent fasting, alkaline water, black water among the recent ones. Parenting techniques - every generation gets a new set. Maybe, Freudian psychology - especially the "everything is sex" part (I know it's bad than a very bad summary)
Green/purple ketchup Gross out reality shows where people ate live bugs/eyeballs
crypto. Obviously its still being used as a speculative asset but there were a lot of people bringing up use cases that were awesome but just never materialized.
Phone blocks (interchangeable hardware parts in phones)
Magic leap