Wasn’t there a hubbub about the Segway?

Nuclear for sure. Reading old science fiction from the '50s is pretty eye opening on what promise it appeared to hold.

In my lifetime, the Genome project. I'm sure a lot of good has come of it, and will continue to do so, but when they first decided to try to decode the human genome, the promise in the air was eradication of so many diseases, increased health and longevity to humanity, etc.

The Internet for sure. It went from something that would allow the entire world to access knowledge, be better informed, make the future a real meritocracy. Instead, we ended up with magats, vaccine-effectiveness deniers, and aggressive stupidity.

The Metaverse, I guess? It's funny how living in a virtual world has been this hyped-up concept for decades and it finally comes out and it's just kind of...lame for lack of a better word. Maybe it's too early to tell, but it feels like the Web 3.0 Metaverse push hasn't lived up to the hype.

Aside from that, I'd say the Xbox Kinect. Maybe it's just me, but I remember that when the Kinect came out there was a lot of hype about how it was going to revolutionize how people played games. But I don't think we ever really got a Kinect game that lived up to that hype. To be fair, I remember a lot of articles of people doing interesting things with Kinect it's just that none of them really had anything to do with gaming.

Back in the Windows 8 days, Microsoft tried to push Universal Windows Platform (UWP), a new application format that could run on any devices running Windows 8: desktops, laptops, smartphones, tablets and even Xbox without any modification while being much more secure by default.

It failed for a multitude of reasons:

• It was a big break from the previous application model. You had to rewrite everything.
• To improve security, it enforced many limitation that legacy apps did not have.
• While it was the only way to create and distribute apps for Windows Phone and Windows RT (a Windows 8 variant for low-powered laptops) their low market share did not incentivize developers to migrate to or create UWP apps.
• It was strongly tied to the divisive Metro UI of Windows 8. People already hated interacting with this part of Windows 8, they had no desire to install apps that would force them into this UI.

UWP still lives on in Windows 10 and 11 as well as in Xbox One and Series: many system apps are now UWPs, as well as all Xbox games and apps, some cross-devices games from Microsoft Studios and some apps in the Windows Store.

• Google Wave

• The Commodore Amiga was superior to Mac and PC when it came out but unfortunately for the engineers, the business was run by cretins

• Dvorak keyboard layout, maybe

3D TV.

Touchscreen interfaces on work/desktop computers. Twice even! Once in the 90s when touchscreen hardware became cheaper to make, then again around 2010 with Windows 8 and Steve Sinofsky pushing the "everything has a touchscreen interface" approach that bombed horribly.

In the 1990s VR was right around the corner, but we didn't have processors, network, it displays we needed to make it happen. Thirty years on, we have the hardware we need, but it remains a niche/enthusiast technology. Motion sickness remains an issue.

Maybe that'll change with Apple's foray into AR.

Not considering vaporware or failed products (e.g. Eolo car):

• The Esperanto language. (Yes, I'm old)

• NFTs.

• Blockchain. Yes, it has its use, but it's not the pervasive, all-use game changer it was claimed to be.

• Sony Betamax. Pity because it was better than VHS.

• New Coke. Nuff said.

The fediverse is working on it. Shame, really. Wonder if Reddit's going to do any more stupid shit soon.

I know the metaverse has been commented, and this overlaps, but I'd say VR as a gaming format. I remember all this hype in the 90s - Virtual Boy for example. Now we basically have the tech - like say playstation VR - but it's still really such a niche thing without mainstream traction.

And since i'm in that zone - wearable AR devices like Google Glass, snapchat spectacles, apple vision. I like the idea of having access to a giant screen in a small space but I'm not gonna wear it to my niece's birthday.

Personally, I don’t think the Nucleon meets the criteria for being a “flop”. It was just a concept. They didn’t even build a full-size prototype, never mind a production model. By my own definition, the car can’t really be called a flop because there weren’t ever any attempts to sell it.

Cars I do consider flops were the Pontiac Aztec, and if we want to stick to Ford, there’s always the infamous Edsel.

The Nucleon was definitely an oddity, though, and it’s an interesting piece of automotive history. Thanks!

Tulips.

Beanie babies for your retirement.

Intel Itanium was going to take us into 64 bit computing, starting at the high end and working its way down to home pc's.

and then AMD walked in with x86_64 like "what up i got a fat cock and it's backward compatible with all your old code" just 2 years later.

Crypto.

I mean, depending on your definition of 'supposed to be,' one could argue that the Juicero was, amidst a sea of devices and peripherals obsessed with getting a piece of the action on the Internet of Things, poised to revolutionize the way the home consumer juiced their fruit and veg. It's not even all that difficult to imagine the pitch those responsible might have led with: "No more squeezing, no more cleanup, just fresh-pressed juice delivered to you weekly at the push of a button."

For those readers who don't recall the Juicero, here's what was wrong with it:

• For starters, it was way too expensive. If I told you all this thing did was take a bag of fruit chunks and squeeze it out of a spigot, how much would you think such a device would set you back. $40? $60? $100? Try $699. They did later lower the price... To $399.

• But surely this marvel of engineering would justify the ludicrous price tag, I hear some of you say. Yes, this wondrous device was capable of a great many things, including... Pressing two plates slowly together to crush chunks of fruit and squeeze them out of a bag. And... Well, that's really the whole deal. But certainly not, say, something you could easily do by hand, and save yourself half a grand.

• Actually, I lied about the above part - it was capable of a few other neat things, when connected to the Internet. Well, it required an internet connection to work, so, hope you have that in your kitchen! But it offered so much more than squeezing juice bags slightly better than human hands. It could tell you if the juice bag was expired! Or there was a safety recall! Or a non-juicero brand! And refuse to squeeze the bag in any of those cases.

Obviously, the thing flopped, hard, in one of those rare cases where consumers by and large realized "Hey, this thing is really fucking dumb!" But it called out to a much larger issue, where Silicon Valley entrepreneurs were fetishizing the possibility of the Internet of Things, with similarly ridiculous products shoehorned with 'smart' capabilities. Smart shoes, smart salt shakers, smart umbrellas, the whole fucking nine. Everyone obsessed with collecting data and offering minimal benefit to users in exchange. And the worst part of is, they didn't really make money on the Juicero itself, so over-engineered it was. The long term goal was to charge for subscriptions of overpriced juice bags, at $5 a glass. It was a preview of things to come, I suppose.