As a tech evangelist, future-watcher, early adopter, and certified nerd, my attic and basement are overflowing with technological marvels that never quite made it. Devices that promised to revolutionize our lives, gadgets that were simply ahead of their time—I’ve hoarded them all. Boxes full of old plastic, forgotten chargers and badly aging designs clutter my attic, and my basement. Some of them still power on. Others… well, they make excellent doorstops. Each one tells a story of spectacular innovation, greedy ambition, and, -most often-, spectacular failure.
This is a Danny tale of what could have been—a journey through the graveyard of lost futures, where flying cars, pocket supercomputers, and an endless suite of digital cameras all met their untimely ends due to bad luck, bad timing, or just plain bad business decisions. Pour yourself a drink. This one’s going to hurt. Or wait. Wait! Sometimes, as with fashion, it all turns all right… if you wait long enough. As I eye the plethora of technology that did not made it when I had it, it looks that most of it simply became en vogue later on. Sometimes, way ahead of time is too early.
Mobility Mishaps
Flying cars, you say? Aeromobil built one. It worked. It took off. It flies. It was damned beautiful. And yet, somehow, it doesn’t matter. At over a million dollars a pop and requiring a pilot’s license, it’s no more practical than owning a private jet (trust me, I know 😊). But the dream of flying cars is older than people think. In the 1920s, inventors were already trying to bolt wings onto cars, envisioning a future where traffic jams that still had to come, were a thing of the past. A century later, we’re still earthbound, stuck in the left lane behind someone going under the speed limit. Where are the Jetsons when you need them…
But the tides are shifting. Cities like Dubai are actively exploring flying robotaxis and autonomous copters, partnering with companies like Joby Aviation to launch air taxi services by 2026. China’s EHang has been testing passenger drones, and Volocopter has completed successful trial flights. The flying car dream isn’t dead—it’s just taking a different form. In the future, we won’t own flying cars; we’ll hail them like overpriced Ubers. Still, the James Bond in me wants one.
And then, there was the Segway. The future of personal transport, they said. It was going to change everything. It didn’t. Cities weren’t built for them. People felt ridiculous riding them. I buried two of them (damned batteries). They were very popular with overweight mall security and beach patrollers. I And the company’s CEO, in a twist of dramatic poetic irony, met his spectacular fate by accidentally driving one off a cliff.
Did you know that electric scooters were buzzing around cities over a hundred years ago? The Autoped, introduced in the early 1900s, was all the rage among the fashionable elite, postal workers, and even women’s rights activists. The sight of a well-dressed suffragette zooming past on an Autoped was as much a statement of independence as it was a sign of technological progress.
Fast forward to now, and cities like Austin, New York and Paris reintroduced electric scooters, envisioning a modern, efficient urban transport solution.
Instead, they got mind-boggling chaos. Scooters discarded haphazardly, reckless riding, tourists face-planting into fountains, and city officials scrambling to regulate the mess. It seems that while technology evolves, human behavior remains stubbornly consistent. We didn’t learn from the past. We just added GPS tracking and an app to the madness.
Imaging Failures
My fail collection wouldn’t be complete without some compassionate nods to the giants who fumbled their own innovations. Kodak developed the first digital camera but shelved it, fearing it would cannibalize their film business. They had the future in their hands, and they tossed it in the trash. By the time they embraced digital, it was game over. The company that once defined photography filed for bankruptcy in 2012. We should also list Polaroid, once synonymous with instant photography. They doubled down on film just as the world was going digital, convinced that people would never abandon physical prints. Spoiler: They did. Today, Polaroid is a nostalgic novelty, selling instant cameras to stoned hipsters who want to pretend it’s 1978 again. Instagram on paper, it’s a lost cause.
And there is Betamax. Technically superior to VHS, it lost the format war because the adult film industry chose VHS. Sometimes, it’s not about having the best technology; it’s about understanding the (adult) market. Sony refused to allow adult content on Betamax. JVC had no such scruples. VHS won. End of story. If you ever doubted that certain industries determine the fate of technology, here’s your proof.
Mobile Madness
The Nokia Communicator was essentially a tiny laptop in my pocket, complete with a full keyboard and internet access. It was decades ahead of its time. Apple was still in its nappies. And then? Nokia scoffed at the idea of touchscreens, doubled down on physical keyboards, and watched as Apple and Android ran away with the entire mobile market. Now? Nokia is a nostalgia brand, making durable throwback phones. But it could have been the smartphone empire. Somewhere, in an alternate timeline, the Nokia Communicator is still king, and Steve Jobs is just a guy selling overpriced turtlenecks.
Then there was Psion. If you’ve never heard of it, I don’t blame you. But in the ‘90s, Psion made some of the best pocket computers ever. Full keyboards, solid battery life, and software that felt like magic. And yet, somehow, they were crushed by the Palm Pilot and later, the smartphone boom. Smartphones where everything but Microsoft Phones. Microsoft had it all—Windows, Office, an app ecosystem waiting to explode. Yet, they managed to fumble their mobile division so badly that even BlackBerry lasted longer. Today, the phrase “Windows Phone” is uttered in hushed tones, a cautionary tale of corporate indecision and madness.
Wearable Woes
Thanks for making it this far. You earned the tale of my Google Glass. It was supposed to revolutionize how we interact with technology. Instead, it turned people into walking surveillance cameras. Nobody wanted to chat with someone who might be secretly recording them. Bars banned Glass users. Strangers got punched for wearing them. The term “Glasshole” was born. I enjoyed them (still do, when nobody is watching). Google pulled the plug.
But here’s the twist: While the public rejected smart glasses, the military loved them. The tech behind Google Glass was adapted into the Apache helicopter helmet, which lets pilots track and target enemies just by looking at them. So yeah, Google Glass died—unless you happen to be flying an attack chopper, or that you are in one of the many B2B learning environments where they still thrive.
I have wearables that made even less sense. The Burton/O’Neill smart ski jacket—because clearly, what every snowboarder needed was Bluetooth connectivity while tumbling down a mountain. And let’s not forget my Oakley’s MP3 sunglasses, because why wouldn’t you want your music wired into your face? Most of my friends did not get it. But now, full circle, I have Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses. They look stylish, don’t make me look like a cyborg, and don’t immediately trigger public outrage. Maybe this time, smart glasses will actually stick.
The future is a weird place. Sometimes, it arrives early, and people reject it. Sometimes, it arrives late, and nobody cares. And sometimes, it shows up exactly on time—but nobody knows what to do with it. The only thing that seems consistent is that we can’t tell.
One day, flying cars might actually work. Maybe we’ll all wear smart glasses again. Or maybe, in 20 years, we’ll look back at today’s AI-powered everything and laugh at how absurd it all was. Until then, I’ll be here, surrounded by my beloved failures, waiting for the next big thing to add to my collection.
