Joshua Gans saw something unusual on the footpath recently – a Segway Personal Transporter, like these I saw on my “bike the Bay Area” exercise in San Francisco last year:
Joshua wonders why the Segway hasn’t become more popular since its release in 2002. Personally, I take one look at that photo and wonder why anybody thought there was going to be a broad market for them. They’re too fast and heavy to share the footpath, they’re slower and no more convenient than a bicycle, they require the user to stand (and are thus no good as a scooter replacement for the elderly) and they cost nearly $5,000 in the USA. Not to mention, of course, the extreme dork factor involved in being seen on one. But inventor Dean Kamen was able to convince a bunch of presumably not-stupid people to invest 100 million US dollars in developing the thing, back in the late 1990s, and get an enormous amount of pre-release hype about his gadget.
While it’s perhaps one of the more spectacular examples of a badly misguided invention, it’s hardly the only one. Another infamous example amongst the “Slashdot crowd” of the late 1990s was the CueCat – a cheap barcode scanner, which you were supposed to use to scan special barcodes in print media ads and packaging, to avoid having to type in web addresses. Needless to say, the CueCat was also a commercial failure.
But there must be others, and I’m curious (call it research for a more serious upcoming LP post/article). What are some of the stupidest “inventions” – that is, new products, or new features in products – that the LP readership has seen? I’m particularly interested in ones from major manufacturers with large R&D budgets behind them, not ones sold by advertorial on morning television. They don’t necessarily have to be consumer gadgets either.
And furthermore, the phonetic appropriation for brand-name purposes of the perfectly good Italian homophone segue has resulted in a rash of good-faith misspellings of the latter. Pffft.
I dunno – default credit swaps?
Well, here’s Sony’s latest stupid piece of shit (Courtesy of the Onion) http://www.theonion.com/content/video/sony_releases_new_stupid_piece_of
The Sinclair C4, possibly even more nerdy than the Segway. I think it was around 1984 when Clive Sinclair attempted to sell that.
Oooh, I got one!
Tandoori Chicken Pizza: last seen in the late 1990s in some Sydney “gourmet” pizza kitchen.
In its defence, the CueCat found a second life as a popular toy amongst the hardhack crowd. The Segway was and is too expensive for that sort of thing.
They’re just waiting for the right user base, Robert. (Mind you, the fate of Pharaoh’s chariots springs to my mind).
The Joint Strike Fighter? Segways are the Twitter of the transport world.
All, at your leisure, kindly look up “segway crash” on YouTube.
I actually saw one of these on the Main Yarra path in Melbourne (cycle commuting highway) a couple of weeks ago at 8am in the morning. Business suited guy, talking on a mobile phone while moving (of course).
Not altogether surprising Mercurius when it looks as though your centre of gravity on these things is approximately where your feet are. They certainly ‘get along’ don’t they? Twits.
If you build it they will come. In public. In cavalcades.
standby mode
One of my personal favourites, the RCA SelectaVision system.
Killed the company stone dead allowing the Japanese to take over consumer electronics.
Of course, as mentioned above, it’s Sony doing stupid, company killing things now.
Although, on a more bicycle oriented note, the motor car ranks as the stupidest invention, or at least the clueless mouth breathers who drive them while knob twiddling and somehow “didn’t see” other road users they just missed. Getting hit by a Segway is a non-event in comparison.
The miltech field undoubtedly offers more dumb inventions than every other sort of technology put together. Here’s a goodie.
Let’s say you’re a German soldier on the Eastern front in 1943. Those uncivilised Russians haven’t had the decency to surrender yet.
Sometimes you think there are some enemy round the corner of a building, but if you put your head round to see, you’ll get it shot off. What amazing invention can German technological genius provide to solve your problem?
Answer.
As the IWM notes, with admirable restraint, “The curved barrel device has proved something of a technological dead-end.”
Excuse me, I think we have a winner: those fecking fridges with teh internet on them. Brought to you by White Elephant.
The two stroke motors in a bike wheel. They encourage unthinking people to stink up bike paths and ride motorbikes on the footpath. That makes them worse than the stupid IC powered skateboards and scooters that while theoretically worse are very rarely actually taken out in public so have less effect.
An internet-connected computer that serves you cold beer. What’s not to like?
To my mind it’s still the TV remote control. So you’ve invented something that encourages people to become couch potatoes (Did this term even exist before television?), starting us (well, those in the minority world) on the path to obesity and general ill-health. Wait a second, all that getting up and changing channels is giving us aerobic exercise – we need to stop that. Hence the remote. As a bonus it has encouraged the ever maddening sport of channel surfing, where you can drive your attention span and concentration levels into the ground.
But wait, there’s more. If it’s good for a TV, we must need one for every electronic device, so that we have a cairn of them on our coffee-table (my personal fave, the remote for a thermostat-controlled Rinnai gas heater, which allows you to move the thermostat up, or you guessed it, down).
We then get to invent the ‘universal remote’ so we can spend our time trying to compress all the functions of our many devices onto a single piece of ugly plastic, just so we can lose it down the side of the couch, the same as all the others.
Enough ranting.
The Mitsubishi 380. Luckily now we have an ex-school teacher and factional hack handing out the money ($6 billion and counting), the Australian auto industry won’t be churning out any more white elephants.
Yaz: in a word, do like remotes?
Sliced bread.
How great it is that the non-crust part of the bread goes stale faster, being exposed to air? So the manufacturers have to package the bread, and pump it with extra preservatives. Just for all of us who’ve never learnt to use a knife.
Previous comment stuck in spammator, but how about these:
Blue Tac
Those powered scooters that sound like 3 million mosquitoes swarming down your street
Paper clips
‘Shoes’ with 5 inch spikes on the soles that are supposed to areate the soil as you walk
The Liberal Party
Diswashers
Microwave ovens
Help! I can’t turn a TV or a DVD on without a remote. And I wonder why I used to be a technophobe. (I still don’t know how to get captions on my TV.)
I have a friend to whom I was once explaining the joys of teh Internet. With which he was purposefully unacquainted. To which he replied “Proust thought the telephone was a very pointless invention.
Mobile fucking phones!
Oh, and that e-book that Amazon has just re-launched.
Segways – but they’re so flexible in what you can use them for
Mercurius @ 5 – you can still get Tandoori Chicken Pizzas in Canberra
Second e-books as a useless invention. Undoubtedly invented by some-one utterly unfamiliar with the joys of being a bilbliophile.
I have a CueCat – it’s great for cataloguing my vast and threatening collection of books on LibraryThing. And unlike a Segway, it’s cheap and reliable.
There’s nothing wrong with the idea of a cheap barcode scanner, like the CueCat. But the business model was rubbish.
Oh god Robert – do you want my list in order of importance or alphabetically?
Oxygen Free Cables/HiFi Cables. The next sales droid that tries to tell this physicist/engineer about “directional” cables is going to get their own bullsh$t delivered by truck onto their doorstep (DSE and a whole host of hifi stores).
1) Digital Rights Management. Sheer bloody idiocy forced on people by others who think a 19th century business model will work in the 21st.
2) What moz said above. The next idiot with a two-stroke pushie who tries to force me off the bike track is going to get a nice new track pump “added” as a permanent fixture to their anatomy.
3) Laboratory Instrumentation that has a “GO” button somewhere on the cover (any manufacturer). Leads to all kinds of idiocy on the part of people who should know better, and management thinks it means they can get rid of applications people.
4) Vista. Thanks Bill, our company wanted to spend millions rewriting all our software (including Pharma-grade platforms) for you to make money off.
5) Waterproof headlamps that aren’t. Yes I can see by the light of the glowworms but would also like to be able to see the bloody great rock sticking down from the roof of the canyon. Ouch.
6) Cars that beep at you for every bloody reason under the sun. Yes, I know the lights are on, yes I know it’s been 1 microsecond since I waited to put on my seatbelt (thanks Mitsubishi).
7) Overheating modem/routers. If it needs a heatsink then build one in (Belkin).
I think that’s comprehensive enough
I won’t get specific about certain other companies ’cause I’d be out of a job!
The Onion captures the impact of the Segway nicely.
Can I nominate “High Def” TVs? They make these enormous panels with gazillions of pixels and then the TV channels deliver bitrate starved compression artifact riddled broadcasts. Yuck.
I disagree about the electronic book being useless.
As I said at Tigtog’s place, I can definitely see an application for e-readers like the Kindle for things like technical manuals, handbooks, textbooks, and any kind of reference text that has to be updated frequently. They’d be perfect for the kind of application that used to be served by microfilm and microfiche: indexes, lists, parts diagrams, and so on.
Motor mechanics, for instance, might be bibliophiles off-shift, but they’d certainly appreciate workshop manuals published and updated electronically.
Paul @ 27 – I’ve had an ebook for about a year now and love it – I already own many paper based books but physical space becomes a problem after collecting too many. No more paying for shipping books half way across the world now either, just download the books I want.
The ebook is great when travelling as I don’t have to fill half of my suitcase with books. The visual quality of digital ink is very good. When I first got it I kept wanting to physically turn the page as it really feels like you’re reading off paper.
I wouldn’t recommend it for reference books yet though – the refresh rate of the screen is too slow.
Yaz, I bought a battery-powerd flourescent lamp for camping which has a remote!!1!11!!! I was stoked.
Liam and Chris – do they have an A3 version? That would be an engineers lifesaver (rather than squinting at a 12″ version of the same!)
The Segway attracted investors because of its control and balance system. I guess that most of them never dreamed that system would only ever be applied to something so incredibly useless.
Fair enough. But I still love the smell, feel and look of real books (as well as what’s inside ‘em.
steveh – I haven’t seen an A3 version. I’d love to be able to have a large display of digital ink and then have the newspaper and magazines delivered digitally. No need to kill all those trees anymore.
I think fitted sheets are the worst invention ever, but I caused an uproar the last time I expressed my wrath for those elasticised abominations…who knew that people could have fallen so in love with such a folly that they would actually try to defend the idea that those things could really be folded in such a way that it does not come tumbling out of the cupboard every time you open it. I tried to convince one person to video the folding process and upload to YouTube, but they declined, so I’m still convinced it can’t be done.
Microsoft Bob
The virtual boy, NGage and any number of other failed games devices.
Still, the task is difficult because the really stupid ones dissapear, since there aren’t enough really stupid people. Perhaps it should be refined to stupid flops. Things developed expensively and hyped, but stupid.
I also have to come to the defence of the cuecat, if only because the same basic concept, in a different time and place has worked, namely Qr Codes.
It’s reliant on context of course. Typing on a phone is more irritating than on a computer, so it is more convenient, and it’s in Japan, where PC internet use is dramatically lower compared to any other industrialised country.
Google: “how to fold a fitted sheet”
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&safe=off&q=%22How+to+fold+a+fitted+sheet%22&btnG=Search
Chris @33: me too. Nothing beats the feeling of an A5 device that has 50-odd books and magazines on it when you’re travelling. Except the sinking feeling as the bus drives off with it.
Nope, as yet A5 @ 800×1000 is as big as they get and that is pricey (Dymocks want $900), while the 600×800 ones are $500 or so. This year we should see prices drop and with any luck some bigger screens. I am torn between replacing the bus-lost one with a similar model and waiting in the hope that I can get a bigger one soonish.
The downsides: page turns are slow (1 second), so a small screen means a large proportion of your time is spent waiting. Also, second hand books don’t legally exist (licensing problems), but on the other hand free and pirate edition abound. Battery life is poor, generally about a week, and connectivity is limited (wireless takes you back to 10-12 hour battery life).
The upside: paper books suck. They’re hard to find, heavy and bulky to carry, fragile to store and a bitch to search. Buying them takes time and it’s too easy to lose your place. But then, once you finish a paper book you can sell it.
What annoys me is that I get about a week out of a Cowon iAudio 7 music player, and about a week out of a Sony PRS-505 ebook reader. But the Cowon gets about a day displaying books on its poxy little screen (I go blind!), and the Sony gets about 5 hours playing music. WTF! I’d happily pay the combined cost for a Sony-size reader with a 16GB music player built in if the thing got a week of listen+read time. Bah!
Lefty E @ #3, thanks: after 2 strenuous weeks and 2000km travel in the last week, my first belly laugh in the period.
Segway. Mmm, reminds me of the Leyland
P76P38, “half a car”. (Alternatively, as Dave Allen quipped in relation to the slinky sexy model seductively moving the gear stick in a UK Leyland ad:)Jetskis.
Noisy, anti-social, philistine, pointless.
Doof music.
Ditto.
moz @ 41 said
I use a tiny font so I don’t find it too bad. Hopefully refresh rates will improve with time so as my eye sight deteriorates and I have to make the font bigger I won’t notice
One of my fabourite inventions that never went anywhere was stripping. This was a data strip that could be printed with a dot printer and held up to 40k data in a strip that could be printed on the bottom of documents to contain the data within it. The strip could then be read by a scanner. I saw this in 1984. It went nowhere. Until now, when it is used on passports.
I want an Hawaii Chair. That’s one smart product if you want to disenage your hips from the rest of your body.
Er try this: LINK
You know what’s a really dumb, pointless invention? Those plastic novelty hats they sell that have the skull-boring, brain-eating insect hidden inside of them. You put the hat on, and the next thing you know, the insect bores a hole through your skull and eats part of your brain. Could eat the whole thing, too, if you don’t take the hat off fast enough.
Why would anyone invent a thing like that? Who did they think was going to buy it?
I can’t believe I just sat through a video on how to fold a fitted sheet. Still I remain committed to my flat sheets, I’m even contemplating starting a flat sheet society. fitted sheets are over-rated…admit it.
Ever ridden one? I had a go up at Caloundra over Christmas, and I’ve never had more fun with my clothes on.
You’re bouncing up and down over the waves, the spray in your face, leaning into the turns like a motorbike, going faster than a WW2 torpedo. If I lived up there, I’d buy one tomorrow. Seriously.
After having ridden both jetskis and motorcycles, the real thing (ie, a motorcycle) is a hell of a lot more fun than the pale water-based imitation.
That said, I can’t agree that jetskis are dumb in quite the same way as the Segway. Jetskis may annoy other people, but they are somewhat fun to ride and for the demographic that buys them the fact that they annoy other people is often a feature, not a flaw.
As for two-stroke pushies, a lot of the engines being sold on ebay are highly illegal – they’re far more powerful than allowed under the rules on powered bicycles.
“for the demographic that buys them …”
SNOB!
Not implying anything about the social class, more the age and gender.
Single men in their early twenties have been riding/driving machines that scare old ladies since the penny-farthing.
For dumb inventions you can’t go past the military-industrial complex.
Its encouraging in a way that its successor – the military-entertainment complex – is now spending more to come up with the Turkeys. Maybe they’ll go bankrupt.
On smart inventions may I plug the seawater condensing greenhouse here?
The Dork and Nerd prize really does belong to the Segway owner I reckon. I understand that it needs 5 solid state gyroscopes to keep upright, plus a some serious computing power.
So if the battery goes flat you have to drag this totally dead thing home – oh yuck. Mind you I once saw a hat with a solar panel that drove a fan to keep the wearers head cool.
I think it was probably on Bob Browns head or not, or should have been. Maybe It was Gareth Evans head, its all just a vague memory now.
Huggy
On a much smaller scale: Dick Smith used to sell “LED Jewellery” kits. Five minutes of soldering mounted in a round black object apparently to be worn by your lady friend. In public. The LED’s, usually red, the size of baby peas and supposedly arranged attractively and flashed to a disco beat.
It was without a doubt the dumbest idea ever conceived by men with a passion for 555 IC timers and zero contact with live women.
(like that solar powered hat thing mentioned above)
Speaking of penny farthings, did you see the annual penny farthing race in whichever Tasmanian town that it is held?
Huggybunny @ 56 – a real nerd builds their own segway.
Look, probably 1/3 of the people you see riding a Segway who are not security or tour groups are folks with a mobility disability – you just can’t tell, because they are on a Segway.
Also, I ride a Segway, not as an alternative to walking, but as an alternative to driving. I’ll happily run a 2 mile errand on a Segway, that I would otherwise take the car. When I do that, I’m standing, and moving, and balancing. When I’m in my car I’m just sitting.
So please, stop with the pot shots at “the dumb invention”, and think for a second… It wouldn’t be the first time that the intended market is not the actual market.
Thanks,
Brian
“Dean Kamen was able to convince a bunch of presumably not-stupid people to invest 100 million US dollars in developing the thing”
Ah, yeah, right, ummmm. No.
Dean Kamen previously developed a transporter thingy for the elderly using the same digital-controlled gyroscopic motors used in the Segway.
All the Segway does is put handlebars on the thing.
Personally, I think he was looking for a cash-in on the basis of “I’m a clever guy, much smarter than all those dot-com guys*. I want me some moola”
So he took his transporter for the elderly and infirm and created the sports model.
How he got through 100M for a set of handlebars is beyond me, though it does show a certain something that even Steve Jobs could stand in awe of.
* which is true actually.
Well, I know it’s been done elsewhere, but here’s an invention I think is dumb because I just don’t get it:
Twitter!
And in conclusion, can I just say:
GET OFF MY LAWN!!!
Wow, that felt really good!
*stomps inside*
*draws shutters*
*peers suspiciously out at the neighbourhood through crumbled venetians*
Brian: Sounds like it’s great for you – though in what way is it superior to the mobility scooters the elderly use?
The fact remains that if significant numbers of people started using them as a car replacement, they’d represent a major hazard to pedestrians and would clog footpaths far more than walkers do.
Who cares if fitted sheets leap out of the linen cupboard? They are the renegades of the manchester world and won’t be boxed in your perfect little ordered world. Plus they are so much easier to put on a bed…and they don’t untuck themselves in all but the most vigourous of vigourous night activities… no sleeping on bottom sheets pulled completely asunder is a boon granted to us by modern haberdashery… a boon I say!
oh right, the things that are easier to wrangle onto a bed and wont untuck are the renegades, eh? I’ve heard these arguments before and I don’t buy it. Flat sheets dare to be simple, they revel in their lack of sophistication, and whilst, tis true, they require some finesse and skill to ensure that there is no sheet migration, a well made bed will remain just that, regardless of the vigour of your nightime pursuits, in fact the we flat sheeters don’t restrict such activities to PM.
If that really occurred then we could spend more money on footpaths (or perhaps
decent separated shared cycle paths would be more appropriate) instead of roads. If they replaced car trips rather than people walking then I think it would be a good thing. I’m guessing that one of the main reasons they are so expensive is because of patents – the implementation is not that complicated and the parts not that expensive.
Adrian @48
Loved the Hawaii chair. I can’t imagine what it would be like actually to try and type, or even read a computer screen, while gyrating. Sounds like a recipe for typos AND nausea simultaneously. The bonus in the link was the presenter with the too-obvious face-lift, or was that a rictus induced by too much Hawaii chair use? Send in the kahunas, I say, to teach them some respect.
Furious Balancing
I too wasted two minutes and 34 seconds watching someone fold a fitted sheet. Why would you do that when you could just stuff it into a basket (time taken 2.3 seconds)? Apparently at the end, you can’t even tell it is a fitted sheet. Wow! So then when you are looking for a fitted sheet, do you have to pull them all out to see which is which, and then spend another couple of minutes refolding the ones you couldn’t tell apart.
BTW, I’ll happily use flat or fitted, as long as I can be anal about the colour scheme…
Chimpanzee riding a Segway in Japan. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pFv8CAniYQ
Try to look away…
I resent these comments about solar-powered fans in hats.
I own one, and will be rocking it to the max this weekend at Golden Plains. Chicks go mad for a man who knows how to keep cool in style.
Although, looking at the Vic regional forecast, I’m more likely to need a rain-powered heater-hat.
“Chicks go mad for a man who knows how to keep cool in style.”
Ahem! Take it from one who knows: they go mad ONLY if you’re ALSO driving a Segway, operated by a Universal Remote, and talking on a mobile blackberry while making hummous with a wind-powered food processor(TM)
If you can achieve all of that, you won’t be in the least concerned about being followed around by a flock of deranged chickens.
My fitted sheets never stay fitted for more than one night (if I’m lucky) and I don’t do nothin’ in bed except read and sleep. (Which just goes to prove, I suppose, that books are dangerous.)
“The fact remains that if significant numbers of people started using them as a car replacement, they’d represent a major hazard to pedestrians and would clog footpaths far more than walkers do.”
Kind of like Bicycles?
Fitted sheets can be downright dangerous. At least when we decided the linen cupboard was perfect for wine.
The problem wasn’t so much retrieval of the sheet (in a non-folded, explosive-like state), but rather the full bottle of Merlot that came out with it.
Bloody things need an MSDS…
[ those fecking fridges with teh internet on them.
An internet-connected computer that serves you cold beer. What’s not to like?]
Life expectancy of computer bit: 2 years
Life expectancy of Fridge bit: 10+ years
Time spent with dead, ugly internet bit in fridge: 8 years.
Fitted sheets are infinitely superior to stupid time-consuming untucking flat sheets. I say this as a person who has made beds for a living. They are simplicity itself to fold and bung in the linen cupboard, something I’ve been doing for many years. Hurrumph!
Flat sheets? I just spread em on the bed. Don’t bother to tuck the corners in.
(Reacting to unhappy early youth where my stepmother stood over me with a ruler and continually hit me across the knuckles with it, until I had foled the sheets into the corners of the bed properly.Seriously.)
When it comes to dumb inventions, you gotta admit this is the dog’s balls.
But instead of knocking those brave enough to think the unthinkable and dream the impossible dream, shouldn’t this thread also propose some alternatives?
Here’s a few ideas for the LazyWeb 2.1.
Flavoured paint.
Cat boots.
Inflatable guitar amps.
Biodegradable tombstones.
Diet Whisky.
Round dice.
Unicycle Gladiators!
Sports socks for snakes.
Powdered water.
Topless Offices.
Premium economy class.
Triple-sided DVDs.
Wifi-enabled condoms (“If you wish to proceed with this connection, please enter your credit card details now”).
Edible contact lenses.
Oh so retro datasticks made out of discarded floppies.
Home delivered takeaways.
Inflatable boxing gloves.
Oscar TM shaped vibrators.
Bacon flavoured tofu.
Alpine beaches.
Segways with four wheels, enclosed cabins and sound systems. And a trunk for storing stuff.
Washable keyboards.
FB@50
You’re mad mate. Fitted is the only way.