did you know that i have another channel called explored that's xplrd and it's celebrating its
first birthday it's a cool little channel where we focus on profiling important issues or current
events with an emphasis on visual storytelling stuff like how did the u.s national security
administration steal secrets with the patriot act what would democracy in north korea look like
how might one smuggle cocaine using diplomatic bags and also is there millions of treasure buried
in rural virginia and of course we're asking questions about some of the most important
technologies of our time so don't miss out make sure you're subscribed there's a link in the
description below in the past few decades quite a few new technologies and products have transformed
our daily lives from smartphones gps navigation to all the innovation happening in kitchenware
many of these products were a result of years of research and hard work as though they also happen
to have come at just the right time the smartphone is one example it wouldn't have succeeded without
other innovations like the internet if you take a look at some of the biggest technological fails
of the past few decades though you'd find many products that weren't so lucky despite being
good ideas that ended up succeeding in other forms later from the playstation portable to
the microsoft xp tablet these technologies may sound groundbreaking for their time in hindsight
at the time they were released though all of them failed to make any real impact in the market
10. playstation portable commercially the playstation portable wasn't technically a
failure as it sold over 80 million units over its 10-year lifetime the guinness book of world
records even called it the most powerful handheld console ever made when it was released in 2004
which further added to the early hype around it however it wasn't the right time for a handheld
console that could run modern playstation grade games the battery life was a problem for one
as the console barely stayed on long enough to really call it portable moreover their handheld
market at the time was dominated by nintendo with their own proprietary ecosystem while
sony was still a minor player the psp while a commercial success in the beginning failed to
hold a significant chunk of the handheld market for long and was eventually discontinued in 2014.
9. gm ev1 while electric vehicles are all the rage now thanks to the impending threat of the climate
apocalypse they weren't back in the late 1990s that doesn't mean that no one knew that fossil
fuels were bad for the environment just that it wasn't the right time for electric vehicles
the technology was too expensive there was no large-scale infrastructure to support them and
most importantly consumers just didn't think it was a useful innovation general motors however
believed that if marketed well the idea had the potential to take off they came up with ev1
the first ever mass-produced electric car the car actually got great reviews in the initial
days of its release as it was surprisingly fast and efficient for an electric vehicle
however gm had already spent a lot of money on the ev-1 project and the sales never really
picked up either the program was discontinued in 2002 after years of running into losses which was
around six years before tesla released its first electric vehicle number eight uc-2000 the uc2000
was released by a japanese company called seiko in 1984 and could be best described as a digital
watch come wearable computer on first look it didn't even look futuristic at least for 1984
essentially a digital watch that could also be worn with a keyboard that turned it into a tiny
computer the idea may have even worked if it was anything like it was marketed as soon as they hit
the market everyone realized that the device wasn't anything like a computer at all though
all it could do was basic stuff like storing a few numbers seeing the time and calculator functions
you could connect it to a computer to use its more advanced functions but then you already
had the computer for that on top of that the uc 2000 was priced at 300 which was a lot of money
for a watch with an unnecessarily large keyboard it was soon discontinued though you can still
find a few pieces on second-hand shopping sites if you really want to try it out 7. power glove
the power glove released by nintendo in 1989 was if you couldn't guess a glove device with various
buttons it could be programmed to associate specific gestures with certain functions though
it didn't work for every game the power glove was only compatible with a few games released
by nintendo and none of them were very much fun to play the glove itself was weird and clunky to
use though that didn't dissuade nintendo from marketing it as the next big thing in gaming
while the power glove did gain some traction in its early days due to its unique concept
they didn't last very long the paraglar failed to make any significant mark on the gaming market as
nintendo massively miscalculated the size of the market for such a device in 1989. it was
a commercial failure and it was discontinued within the same year nintendo learned from the
whole thing however and came up with an improved version of the power glove in 2006 the wiimote
it was later bundled with the wii console which remains one of nintendo's best-selling products
ever 6. ibm 8516 the a516 was ibm's foray into the touch screen market only it was back in 1992.
back then the technology wasn't even close to as polished as it is today at best the monitor
worked for basic functions like ticketing as the touchscreen was only accurate for large movements
of the finger try to get too precise though and you might as well just use a keyboard back in
1992 when even monitors were in their early days the 8516 was a dream of the distant future when
screens could be operated by hands and fingers instead of clunky peripherals for that time though
it wasn't the best idea to mass produce and invest heavily into and the a516 was soon discontinued
due to a lack of sales 5. sony ibo the sony ibo debuted in 1999 for 2 500 in the united states
and 250 000 yen in japan the idea was to develop a fully functional robotic dog that could be trained
like a real dog without any of the mess it was also a lot sturdier and lived longer than a real
dog and you could still find videos of morning owners burying their eyeballs from 1999. apart
from its high cost the ibo wasn't able to do much and its movements were clunky as the field of
robotics was still in its nascent stages while it always enjoyed a loyal following among those that
did buy it the first ibo sold about 65 000 copies it was never a widespread commercial success sony
finally discontinued it in 2006 they've never really gave up on their dream of developing
a fully functional robotic dog after years of learning from the failure they finally released
a modern version of ibo in 2018. 4. e-cash e-cash was one of the earliest experiments in the field
of cryptographically secured digital money created by david charm and his company digicash in 1990
the project aimed to provide a fully secure and private system of payments to emerging digital
startups of the 1990s ecash used concept called blind signatures to keep transactions secure and
untraceable and even got a bit of traction from some startups and a few banks in its initial
days ultimately though the project proved to be a failure as there was no wider market for
different kinds of money at the time did you cash filed for bankruptcy in 1998 and e-cash ended up
being one of the many experiments with digital money in recent history while it was generally a
good idea it was not the right time for it as the project was also limited by the cryptography of
the time of course all those problems were later solved with bitcoin although that didn't happen
until 2009 at least a decade after digicash shut down number three listen up listen up came barely
four years before the first ipod was released in 2001 it would have probably succeeded too
if it were marketed and priced keeping the actual consumer market in mind moreover even in 1997 the
technology to mass-produce affordable mp3 players just didn't exist while we still don't know much
about the world's first mp3 player or that's at least how it was sold we know that it created
quite a bit of hype before its release that wouldn't matter however as one unit of listen
up was reportedly listed for 75 000 not too long ago now putting this retro device out of reach
for most people unsurprisingly the idea failed and we haven't heard much about audio highway or
listen up ever since while we don't know how many units they ended up selling they definitely sold
a few as you can still find them listed on ebay 2. virtual boy virtual reality may be popular
now but that wasn't the case back in the 1990s the technology had barely started developing and there
was no real demand for anything like it in the market it was so futuristic that no one really
knew they wanted it though that didn't discourage nintendo from giving it a try they released the
virtual boy in 1995 and it was a revolutionary idea it was perhaps the first device of its kind
offering us a glimpse into what the future of virtual reality might hold unfortunately the
device itself was mostly useless for one it wasn't virtual reality in any sense of the phrase all it
did was play the same thing as a television only a bit more 3d more importantly it required you to
sit next to the device to be able to use it making it inconvenient and clunky to use virtual boy was
discontinued after selling about 770 000 units making it nintendo's worst selling console ever
1. xp tablet the windows xp tablet was exactly what you're imagining and that may be why it
failed too microsoft released the tablet version of windows xp in the early 2000s along with quite
a few accompanying models that could run it many of them featured the earliest working forms of
touchscreen technology though it still had to be operated with a stylus it was a great idea
and if successful it had come at least six years before the launch of the first ipad there was one
problem though microsoft designed it as a computer on its own which didn't work as well as say the
ipad which complements a modern laptop without it being as heavy or power intensive the xp tablet
couldn't do most of the things computers could either such as email moreover almost all the xp
tablet devices were prone to overheating and heavy to carry around making laptops even at the time
a better option in every situation so i really hope you found that video interesting if you did
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