181–190 of 1001 posts
The converse is possibly even more interesting: what tech were you convinced would fail but took the world by storm?
Flying cars. I remember seeing prototypes in late 80s and early 90s, constantly showing up on Discovery Channel programs I watched as a kid like Beyond 2000 or Next Step. Over time it seemed increasingly far out, but, possible. Eventually I realized things like how catastrophic a break down or accident would be meant it will likely never happen. I and everyone else who thought flying cars were on the horizon were suc…
CRISPR. My naivete surrounded me. I didn't realize that even though there was a high output of genetic marker tests that very few if of them would result in viable CRISPR targets. There's 60K genetic marker tests on the market. 8 to 10 new ones come out each day. Humanity has little hope of figuring out the sort of "druggable targets." Genome Wide Association Studies aren't like websites or apps waiting to be optimiz…
This is a correct and useful analogy. Nonetheless, biologists are excited about CRISPR because, to continue your analogy, we were previously working with spears. And now we have bullets. Still don't know where to quite fire them yet. But it's a nontrivial advance.
3D printing. Turns out making little plastic shapes isn't all that useful. Seems obvious in hindsight.
but big metal industrial parts that were impossible to machine might be a thing? I confess no knowledge as to their real commercial success so far.
I'm not sure I expected it to take the world "by storm", but I expected more from Google Wave. It was a great concept, by a major company, but it was too slow on release and the rollout killed it. In retrospect, it probably wouldn't have lasted anyways. Google was in the process of minimizing their federated communication services by that point, and that was another major selling point of Google Wave's initial propos…
i mean... there was another product that Google rolled out that was on an invitation basis. Last I checked Gmail is doing pretty well... facetious comparison aside, i think the (Yegge)? rant about how Google does things applied here.
UDP for fast file transfer. Working in the television industry at the time and a few companies were making tools based on UDP, for sending large files across public networks. Smartjog, Aspera, Signiant. The companies are still around, but only operating in the B2B space as far as I know. I thought this technology was going to replace FTP. People wanting to punt bigger and bigger files around, they needed better tools…
RSS and Google Reader. What can I say, I was young and foolish.
RSS hasn't died, but it is definitely not growing, as those who prefer to use it are already using it.
Mobile/Micro payments. There is still no friction free solution, where I would be sure, my mother could use it.
This would be my #1, as it would have drastically changed (for better or worse) the internet. Although, it's a psycological problem instead of a technical one. You can put a PayPal button or Stripe popup on your page using technology today , which will usually take 10 seconds (given that the user is logged into those services, since we're assuming that this micro-payments practice is common), but it's a wild expectat…
So, the financial system is 'behind' the crapy payment scheme.
Something would have to come along to basically offer credit without all that.
I'm mostly surprised that Amazon and/or Wallmart have not simply done that.
I'll bet Bezos does some day: a low-interest rate 'Amazon Card' that other merchants can use, credit provided by Amazon (not banks), and it's 0% payment for other merchants.
I'm disappointed none of the various constructed "universal" languages (like Esperanto) ever took off. Having a single common language spoken by everyone would be enormously useful. As it is, the closest we have is English, but it's a natural language and therefore complicated and difficult to learn.
And yet easy enough for basically everyone in the world to learn. Just think, it could’ve been French. It was dominant for many many years. Russian was a huge candidate as well. Wanna learn that? I’m a native Slavic speaker and I wouldn’t wish a Slavic language on anyone who needs to become fluent enough to do business. Spanish was (is?) a big candidate too, that one is about as hard as English i guess. Portuguese? I…
Unfortunately there's a lot of resistance to accepting it as the official universal language, not in small part due to the anti-multeralist stance of the major anglo nations. One can only hope Brexit doesn't make German a virtual necessity to deal with the EU in the long term.