Some of the "failures" were unfair IMO, like minitel and Block Buster: It's like saying using wind sails on ships was a failure because it was replaced by steam engines.
It always fails because, once the novelty of the effect wears off, people realize it's basically pointless. The extra information 3D brings is not worth the logistic cost. So they revert to regular 2D cinema, classic virtual worlds like MMORPGs etc. which are much more comfortable to experience and deliver the same basic product.
This round we got far enough that there are some industry use cases for AR, which shares 99% of its tech with VR. Maybe that will funnel enough money into development to break out of the hype cycle into something sustainable.
This could change if holographic digital screens become practical, allowing, for example, multiple people in a room to see a real 3D scene, each from a different angle without any head gear.
Gamers might be able to do it all day, and it will probably always have that market. But as a replacement for the flip-open or pull-out-of-your-pocket screen, never gonna happen. Sorry Zuck.
Couldn't you conceive of a future where the "logistic cost" drops so incredibly low, that the cost is less than the benefit of the extra information?
How cool would it be to have a chat with Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca, or to make a mad dive to save Mufasa at the last second and see how The Lion King would play out without his death as a motivating factor? If you could do all of that and more in a VR Cineplex it would probably be more entertaining than Disneyland and available at every Mall in America.
Honestly, that's probably a trillion+ dollar idea, but implementing it would need an insane amount of money, time, skill, processing, and resources plus dozens of large egotistical companies working together.
Of course, streaming was a whole different game. (As would be original content.) And it's not like Netflix is looking especially robust at the moment.
I bet it spent a while regretting not making that purchase, but then again, if they had Netflix may have become a passing fad and never branched out into the online streaming market.
https://www.inc.com/minda-zetlin/netflix-blockbuster-meeting...
Ah, an example of the Butterfly Effect: then we'd have a billion references to FAABG on the web instead of FAANG.
https://www.reuters.com/article/industry-blockbuster-dc/bloc...
The two variations that might go somewhere are kites to save maybe 10% of fuel [1], or some variation of rotor sails [2] on tankers or bulk carriers that have the unobstructed deck space.
1: https://future.hamburg/index.php/en/artikel/skysails-marine-...
But most of these are the expected and the analysis is shallow. Snark added is unnecessary.
Many are fad products or acknowledged R&D experiments that I wouldn’t necessarily call “failures.”
I expected more when having to give my email. A categorized page of bullets with Wikipedia links would be more useful. The details and references would be higher quality.
Cool idea, just needs more development and research to provide real value.
The hook is "failure is how you succeed" but they show dead end products with perfunctory blurbs and facile presentations.
I'd've expected these, yes, but also more substantive "failed 'til I didn't" exhibits such as representations of the hundred+ prototypes that James Dyson purported to have made before finally figuring out the bagless vacuum.
Or... photos of Abraham Lincoln and a long, long, long list of his failed attempts to progress before finding himself in the presidency.
He wasn't entirely a failure; he was a very successful railway lawyer. As for his loss to Douglass, that may well have been strategic - a design from the beginning to force Douglas to endorse state sovereignty (not slavery everywhere.) That would get Douglas the senate win, but it was also pretty clear in advance that could split his party, the Democrats, in two. It did. That may have been a bigger strategic victory for his party than him personally getting into the White House.
1. Positively Negative (PLOS One)
2. The Missing Pieces (PLOS One)
3. The All Results Journals
4. ACS Omega
5. F1000Research
6. PeerJ
7. Journal of Negative Results in Biomedicine
8. Journal of Negative Results in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
9. Journal of Articles in Support of the Null Hypothesis
10. Journal of Pharmaceutical Negative Results
https://www.enago.com/academy/top-10-journals-publish-negati...
It hosts a huge 70m warship that sank in 1628 on her maiden voyage 1.5 km into it. Highly recommended to visit.
After asking my parents it turns out we went there when I was 6.
Since the memory stuck with me for almost twenty-two years, I can highly recommend it!
It's full of tokens and mementos, both happy and sad, along with stories of relationships that have ended for a variety of different reasons.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_Trans-Antarctic_Exped...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutiny_on_the_Bounty#Bligh's...
I also had a number of the products I've worked on land in the Weird Stuff warehouse (and, oddly, another surplus hardware warehouse near Seattle).
Badge of honor :-)
https://sidetalking.com/page-1.html - In the red shirt with the game.com.
It was probably the best portable device I ever had.
Musicplayer, console, stereo phone!!!
So much ahead of it's time it even makes a modern "smart" phones look wrong.
You could change battery yourself without tools.
Real buttons! How many misclicks do we count per day, probably a couple of billion?
There are symbols next to each date, but I can't find their meanings anywhere on the website.
Then the site claims New Coke/Coke II came out in 1981. Umm, try 1985. Olestra? Nope, try again (I'll leave the lookup as an exercise). I know all of these things are wrong at a glance because...well, I'm old, and for example I know that New Coke didn't come out when I was in high school because I was married to my ex-wife at the time, and she hated it. And I saw Back to the Future at the cinema. I was there, man.
So I don't know what those dates are supposed to signify.
