It always feels like some form of VR tech comes out with some sort of fanfare and with a promise it will take over the world, but it never does.
Encryption with safe, unexploitable backdoors.
“unexploitable backdoor” is a contradiction.
The big one would be viable nuclear fusion, we’ve been trying to figure it out and spending money on it for like 80 years now.
That being said, there’s actually a lot of verified progress on it lately by reputable organizations and international teams.
It’s only 30 years away!
Just like it was 30 years ago.
Ah, the so called Fusion Constant.
In its defence, that assumed it was properly funded. Its actual funding was very limited.
I believe most of the critical problems have been solved. The only major one left is keeping the reactor walls stable. They have a tendency to transmute, which causes multiple problems.
I’m going to get downvoted for this
Open source has its place, but the FOSS community needs to wake up to the fact that documentation, UX, ergonomics, and (especially) accessibility aren’t just nice-to-haves. Every year has been “The Year of the Linux Desktop™” but it never takes off, and it never will until more people who aren’t developers get involved.
If you make that argument about the state of software in general, I’d agree to an extent in the sense that it should be more prioritized. But I don’t see how that applies to open source in particular?
In those aspects proprietary software is just as bad, if not even worse. The difference is simply that the default choice of software for most tasks is a proprietary software. They can have a shit ton of unusable and confusing mess, even intentional dark patterns, but users will adapt.
There’s a reason why Apple is the poster child for accessibility. They control the entire stack from hardware to OS, and have an ocean of money to devote to what is effectively a tiny marginalized portion of their user base.
Open source is the exact opposite. Any given open source project (especially any given Linux distro) is standing atop a precarious mound of other open source projects that the distro maintainers themselves have no control over. So when accessibility breaks, the maintainers say “It’s not us, it’s GNOME”. Then GNOME says “It’s not us, it’s Wayland”, and so on.
Imagine I handed you a laptop without a working screen, then when you complain you can’t use it, I said “It’s not my problem” or “We’ll get to it eventually” or “I wouldn’t know how to help you” That’s desktop Linux when you’re blind.
Apologies if this comes across as a rant. I’m just bitter about the fact there’s all this free, privacy-respecting software out there that’s out of my reach, and I’m stuck selling my soul to Microsoft and Apple.
Printer drivers.
Apparently sending data serially at glacial speeds is impossible.
Probably not top ten of mind, but Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) has been trotted out by the fossil fuel industry for a generation as a panacea for carbon emissions, in order to prevent any real legislation limiting the combustion of hydrocarbons.
Doesn’t sound like it failed at its purpose in that case
Printers.
Twitter/X. It is not a free speech platform. Give it up and move on to something else. Stop supporting these billionaires and stop giving them your time.
Social media as a whole, honestly. Way back in 2014 I read an article about the “social media cycle” (not their words IIRC). Basically, a new platform gets popular with teens and college-age kids, then their parents join, then the kids have to move to something else because they don’t want to be on the same platform as their parents. I could be misremembering. It was a comparison between Facebook and Snapchat.
Anyway, the Fediverse helps, but since fedi platforms are largely clones of their normie counterparts (Lemmy/PieFed = reddit, Mastodon = Twitter, PeerTube = YouTube) they inherit many of the same problems. I know I bring this up a lot, but on these platforms, content is the focus, but on traditional forums, people are the focus.
AI
AI, Mass Surveillance and privatization of services people need to live and National security technology
Cinema movies in 3D with the stupid glasses.
I’ll go against the grain and say literally all of it. Every piece of technology that exists is a compromise between what the designer wants to do and the constraints of what is practical or possible to actually pull off. Therefore, all technology “fails” on at least some metric the designer would like it to achieve. Technology is all about improvement and working with imperfection. If we don’t keep trying to make things better, then innovation stops. With your example of VR, I’d say that after having seen multiple versions of VR in my lifetime, the one that we have now is way more successful and impactful, especially in commercial uses rather than consumer products. Engineers can now tour facilities before they are built with VR headsets to see design flaws that they might not have seen just with a traditional model review, for example. Furthermore, what we have now is just an iteration on what we had before. It doesn’t happen in a vacuum, people take what came before, look at what worked and what didn’t, and what could be fixed with other technologies that have developed in the meantime. That’s the iteration process.
Iteration isn’t a claim that the predecessor was a failure though, you iterate on the successes of the prior generation. It used to be that technology advanced so rapidly that the cutting edge became obsolete in a matter of a few years, but for that time it was a success.
I think there’s also an assumption of design philosophy here. One designer might put many generalized requirements into their design, then you get Google glasses, AI, NFTs and so on. This means everything is a failure because it couldn’t achieve the requirements. Others may pick a small set of very specific requirements, then you get the iPhone or a Toyota hilux. These are massive successes because they had cohesion in the idea and planned as to about compromise.
Since at least 1970, every decade there seems to be a, “The VR take over is here!” fad and it falls flat every time.
Those VR rollercoaster shuttle rides in malls during the 1980s and early 1990s, thinking that is the future, oh boy, we were all so silly.
The flying car, AI, cold fusion, anti-aging.
The flying car,
Those are called helicopters. They’re literally just cars but every advantage and every downside is amplified.
They’re amazing for taking a small number of people somewhere, at massive cost to the surroundings. They’re noisy, take up a lot of space, require lots of specialized Infrastructure just for them and they are incredibly dangerous to their surroundings.
cold fusion
That’s not a technology, it’s a scam. Regular fusion is absolutely real, it’s just super complicated and hugely underfunded.
No, a helicopter is a flying vehicle that can’t drive on city streets. A flying car is a street legal vehicle that can take off and land like a plane. https://youtu.be/a2tDOYkFCYo for an idea of what I’m talking about.
Doesn’t matter if cold fusion is a scam or not. People keep trying to make it work which fits OP’s question.
Nobody but quacks is trying to make cold fusion work. Are you confusing it with “regular” nuclear fusion?
Whatever.
Flying cars.
The hype around biotech. It has been around for 40 years, and the next big thing is just around the corner, but progress is always much slower than all predictions. Nuclear fusion will be available in ten years time; I’ve heard that in 1970, 1980, 1990 etc etc. Conquering the solar system, the universe - perhaps in 1000 years?
