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Ask HN: What tech were you convinced would take the world by storm but didn't?

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Re: Ask HN: What tech were you convinced would take the world by storm but didn't?

#161

Post by sigi45 »

indubitable wrote: post #58

I thought this was going to be 'The VR Thread.' I still don't entirely understand why virtual reality didn't really catch on. I think there were some very poor business decisions by Facebook which were treating it as a success before it had even launched -- trying to ring-fence a platform, both hardware and software, whose early demographic is going to be entirely high information users seems a very questionable deci…

I still think it will take of. The question is how.

There is a very cool company who is doing VR in real world. Like if you touch the 3d wall, there is a plywood wall there.

Or training on machines, driving school, some games, 3d modelling, 3D Kitchen, 3D House Building, Journeys.

Re: Ask HN: What tech were you convinced would take the world by storm but didn't?

#162

Post by HumanDrivenDev »

johan_larson wrote: post #148

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.

One thing I like about Interligua is that... I can read it with just a bit of difficulty, despite not having learned it. I'm a native english speaker with high school french. I imagine native speakers of romance languages could read it fluently. That's a huge percentage of the worlds population right there.

It seems like a much better idea than esperanto.

Re: Ask HN: What tech were you convinced would take the world by storm but didn't?

#163

Post by theshrike79 »

vortico wrote: post #141
grumblestumble wrote: post #108

E-Ink. It is the "correct" choice for display technology, and with enough research money put into it, it could replace these abominable light-emitting displays. But what we already have is "good enough", despite all of the hidden costs, and so we're stuck with it.

I'm out of date. Does E-ink still have ~500ms latency of refreshing the screen? If so, that's the #1 reason I believed it wouldn't be successful when I used them 6 years ago.

But they're still amazing for status displays, e-readers and stuff that don't need low latencies.

What's keeping them from being more popular is the price, anything over a 1" e-ink display costs a literal arm and a leg.

Re: Ask HN: What tech were you convinced would take the world by storm but didn't?

#165

Post by aidos »

swyx wrote: post #151
Jtsummers wrote: post #17

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.

It's pretty hard to socialise on a network where you're the only one there....

Re: Ask HN: What tech were you convinced would take the world by storm but didn't?

#166

Post by swyx »

johan_larson wrote: post #148

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.

even within English we have a ton of local and regional variances in everything from accent to connotation to words to the point that some variants aren't even intelligible. Check out the Ocracoke Brogue: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=csfyrRqc5TU and that's right in the heart of North America!

i'm no linguist but my familiarity with german/chinese and a smattering of other languages has led me to conclude that humans have an inbuilt tendency to just mess things up just because. If there's a grammar rule that can be broken or inverted, some language out there will do it. the tower of babel is encoded in our DNA. The Diryabal language even has a gender for vegetables and fruits. (http://www.superlinguo.com/post/5746695497/lady-nouns-and-ve... and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyirbal_language)

Re: Ask HN: What tech were you convinced would take the world by storm but didn't?

#167

Post by swyx »

Animats wrote: post #92

Virtual worlds. The "metaverse" of Snow Crash. "Snow Crash", the TV series, has been green-lighted by Amazon. That may drum up more interest. Second Life comes close. They've had a working system for over a decade and have with adequate solutions to most of the problems. But it's hard to use, and not that many people are interested.

i think it will come. ironically its a hardware problem rather than a software problem

Re: Ask HN: What tech were you convinced would take the world by storm but didn't?

#168

Post by Swizec »

johan_larson wrote: post #148

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 can’t tell how hard it is, but it sounds more difficult to me than Spanish.

Arabic was a strong contender once upon a time as well. That to me seems very difficult to learn.

Of course we could go for Chinese. I hear that’s easy to learn conceptually, but hard to learn how to speak properly.

Ultimately we landed on English in part because of the cultural and historical dominance, and in part because it’s just easy enough for anyone to become fluent enough. The nice thing about it is that it steals language constructs and words so liberally from other languages that anyone can find something familiar to grab onto.

Re: Ask HN: What tech were you convinced would take the world by storm but didn't?

#170

Post by swyx »

pimmen wrote: post #103
kobeya wrote: post #39

The general-purpose computer. It's a dinosaur on the verge of extinction at the hands of walled-garden app stores on phones and tablets. I never, ever expected that to happen.

This really destroyed my day. I really have a big problem staying positive for at least a day now that you've eloquently expressed what I've had a creeping feeling of but just quite couldn't word in any discussion. As computers become "locked app collections" they become appliances, appliances business and government institutions can control and regulate. "Can you make the iPad just not do that thing?"

ok honestly i dont understand this fear. isn't the open web the antithesis of the locked appstore?
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