Future tech that didn't make it

Well, they did, but... very short lived.

Likewise with bubble memory.  Can you imagine what 1TB of buble memory would look like?  ;-D

macnoyd wrote:

Well, they did, but... very short lived.

Likewise with bubble memory.  Can you imagine what 1TB of buble memory would look like?  ;-D

It's look like a server rack. :D

I do still have systems with bubble memory. Back then, 16K was big. 

I will note that some rotary engines were used, and some are still in use. The reason they did not become commonplace is complicated, but in general, repairs were convoluted, and issues with their complexity versus economics at the time made them less desirable after the 1970s fuel shortage faded around '77/78. 

I've had cars with them, and they are indeed a nightmare to repair. My general sentiment was what the industry planned at the time: If the engine fails, replace it as a whole module. 

Still waiting for flying cars, self-lacing footwear, and hoverboards, too. At least we have touch screen technology, which did make it, but is now so horrible designed as to be not worthwhile. The pervasive touch keyboard sort of defies the simple premise of what the technology implied. TBH, pen touch screens, where you write on them, are older tech, and yet remain more futuristic. 

Also,what about VR? That died on the vine twenty years ago, and still pops up from time to time.

Holographic projectors? I saw a demonstration one time of an ionising projector that displayed graphic images in the air. What happened to that technology?

Digital paper: Likewise, many years ago, at (IIRC) either a CES or a CeBIT show, I saw a physical paper-like medium (or more like mylar), that could store a digital image, and be refreshed. It held its current image on battery power, and it took a few seconds to change, but you could make an entire 200p book of the stuff, and in theory, load a new book into memory, and rewrite the pages. Instead ot this, we got Kindle, which is nowhere near the same thing. Read 'digital paper' would have provided the same tactile experience as a book, magazine, or manual, but you could change its contents--in the language of today, you would swap SD cards in the spine. 

This would have in a word, been awesome. 

What about heads-up display glasses for computers? Those keen one-eye glasses with a translucent system image over one eye. We could make those now, so, why do they not exist?!

Last, 3D technology. We went from red and blue glasses, to shutter goggles, to screens with polarised film layers, but little to nothing has properly delivered 3D content as it was portrayed, and every time it crops up, it also seems to die off. I was always a fan of the shutter-based pseudo-3D games, such as on the Vectrex, or on the Nintendo Famicom, but now that we have the kit to do that with a handheld console, without the goggles, it has become a novelty item again, and quite ignored.