The thread “when design goes to far…” When Design Goes too far.... touched on concepts that depicted the future but never materialized.
Its fun to look back at history and see how close or far off we were. This blog http://www.paleofuture.com/ captures some of those concepts that didn’t quite make it.
Damn, I could use a robotic banana grabber…wait that came out wrong. 
No it didn’t 
I love to see how products that saw the light of day way later were predicted decades ago, but in a style that reperesents the zeitgeist. True robotpunk OK, most of that stuff was driven by technological euphoria but maybe some ideas are worth to give them a second try. I think it happens quite often that products come out some years too early. Later, when it would be the right time to try it again, nobody dares to burn his fingers again on the topic. After people have forgotten the “failed antecessor” → success
Paleo is one of my favorite blogs. I read it regularly…
Oh they tried hard on that one. webvan raised a shit load of money on the premise that people hate to shop for food and produce…guess it’s like driving a car, if you can do it, and know what your doing, you hate to have anybody else do it for you. It’s laughable, not being able to look, smell, thump a cantaloupe and decide if its right for my purposes.
