New technology has changed the way we communicate, date, operate, get around and spend time over the past 10 years. But there have been high-profile deceptions and delays for every album. That includes overpriced gadgets for making juice, face computers, promises of taking a vacation in space and companies claiming to be saving the world.
The failures served a purpose, serving the technology industry and the people who fund, regulate or consume their products as reality checks. Tech companies have been trying to grasp their impact on society for the last decade, then distance themselves from it. The popular "move quickly and break things" slogan of Facebook sounded crazy in 2010 and laughably naive in 2019 in reality, the company had broken things.
It was a decade when tech firms were thrown at billions of dollars, and yet many of the promises made by those firms never materialized, smashed into our ears, or were indefinitely postponed. And while technological failures are nothing new, they brought the industrial innovation complex closer to Earth and made us all a little more realistic-if not less fun.
Just like the right people.
The benevolent, world-saving
"Don't be evil" tech company read the famous motto of Google, which sat on top of its code of conduct until 2018 when it was quietly demoted to the last line.
That's about how many of the biggest tech firms and CEOs were on the market at the beginning of the decade. Not only were their goods going to make everyday life simpler or more fun, but they would also make the world better-even if their business models were focused on commercials and your personal data.
"Initially, Facebook was not created to be a corporation. We have always been primarily concerned with our social mission," said Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg in a letter from 2012, just before the company's initial public offer. He outlined high-profile visions, including that Facebook, through transparency, will create a more "honest and transparent conversation" about policy.
Then, the decade turned to misinformation, spreading hate speech on social media. Ahead of the 2016 U.S. election, Facebook, Twitter and Google's YouTube were used to spread disinformation, while Google was working briefly on a China search engine that would filter content. Businesses User data collected but not covered by mountains, as major data breaches hit Equifax, Yahoo and others.
Workers are fighting back in response, developing into silent armies seeking to turn their company to social goals.
Google co-founder Sergey Brin's Face Computers unveiled Google Glass in 2012 by wearing a smart glass prototype on stage. Its real PR Outing came later that year when skydivers jumped live from a blimp above San Francisco at a Google developer conference.
Google said the $1,500 Glass will allow people to interact more with the world around them by displaying information in front of the face instead of on a screen. Rather, his legacy was concerns about our privacy rights from recording devices, the word "glasshole," and at least one bar fight. In 2015, the company stopped selling Glass to customers and switched it to a commodity at work, targeted to doctors by everyone from factory workers.
It wasn't Google alone. HoloLens was made by Microsoft, a technologically innovative piece of eyewear that looked like round steampunk goggles and used augmented reality. For $2 billion, Facebook purchased virtual-reality goggle manufacturer Oculus and invested heavily in and marketed it as a gaming and entertainment platform (and the future of social media). Good Summer, the augmented reality headset offering immersive and mind-blowing entertainment, succeeded in raising $2.6 billion and launching only one consumer kit of $2,295.
We that eventually wear glasses showing useful information on top of the real world, equipped with smart assistants whispering in our ears. The early attempt by Google at a face-wearable app was not intended to be that tool.
A more convenient way to eat food.
Colorful, hungry, full of vitamins, juice on call. Trying to crack Silicon Valley seemed to be an unlikely thing. But in the 2010s, a number of eating advances culminated in the impatience of businessmen to plan and even consume the calories needed to survive.
One of the most notable technical failures of the decade asked the question: What if you spent $699 on an intricate machine extracting juice from your own fruit and vegetable pulp bags? The solution, discovered in 2017 by intrepid Bloomberg journalists, is that instead of overpaying for a computer, you should pinch those packets with your hands. The machine was Juicero, collecting $120 Million in revenue before just five months later suspension.
Many advances in food have fallen short of their groundbreaking expectations. Smart ovens have become fire hazards; meal kit delivery start-ups have disappeared; robots have thrown salads, mixed drinks and flipped burgers; and pod-based devices for random foods (cocktails, tortillas, cookies, yogurt, jello shots) have failed. And then Soylent is -- A drink-shaped meal designed to save time by cutting out "good taste" and "chewing." Soylent has managed to find a small but enthusiastic fan base, and has even recently entered solids with a line of Squared meal-replacement bars.
The real food change of the decade came from delivery apps that wage on-demand workers to bring meals made in real kitchens to your door. Many companies struggle with weak and frustrating pay workplace demonstrations when striving to be competitive.
Social Networks Non-Facebook
Recall Path? Color? Yik Yak, Meerkat and Buzz from Google? And iTunes Ping, the short-lived effort by Apple to socialize its music hub? Start-ups as well as the tech giants have introduced social products over the past decade, but few have been popular.
Google Buzz was in 2010 and in 2011 it was quickly replaced by Google+. The app failed to attract users and faced problems of privacy, such as a bug that revealed data from more than 52 million people. Although some of its best features live on in Google Photos, it was finally declared dead this year.
Vine burned bright for too short a time before Twitter, who bought the company for a reported $30 million in 2012, closed down in 2016. (Speaking of Twitter, it was partly thanks to its success among politicians, celebrities and people who are nuts online, even though it is much smaller than Facebook.
At the beginning of the decade, Facebook dominated and remains dominant at the end, partially by purchasing or overtly copying any rivals along the way. Instagram and WhatsApp were purchased, combining both more tightly with the brand of Facebook. In spite of major scandals and fumbles, its global user base has grown to over 2 billion people.
A crowdfunding, DIY revolution
It seemed like the next wave of devices were coming from outside the normal Silicon Valley product factories for a short time. They'd be dreamed up by amateur hobbyists, prototyped on 3-D printers, and financed by fans rather than venture capitalists (although still made in Shenzhen, China). With some impressive accomplishments-Oculus, Peloton, Boosted Boards-it turns out it's pretty hard to get an idea to market from your cocktail napkin.
The unsuccessful Coolest Cooler, featuring both Bluetooth and a blender and earning more than $13 million on Kickstarter in 2014, is a notable disappointment. It failed to deliver goods to a third of its supporters; many that were delivered were not running. Others have never materialized, like iBackPack, Which was to create a hotspot for WiFi. The people behind it earned over $800,000 and were accused of using those funds to buy bitcoin and pay off credit cards by the Federal Trade Commission. Skarp Laser Razor, a rasier with questionable hair removal technology, was able to obtain more than $4 million in donations from interested consumers before Kickstarter suspended its infringement campaign Effective project policies.
(Kickstarter said that the vast majority of its goods are delivering it and that it strives "to be quite transparent that not all projects are going to go smoothly.")
However, commercial 3-D printers have not lived up to the hype. In every house, we were supposed to have a printer spitting out new LEGOs and screws, art projects, and even food. The devices ' high cost and the skills needed to use them were unable to cope with overnight shipping.
Drones dropping shipments
"If it's going to work, and it's going to happen, and it's going to be a lot of fun," said Amazon Chief Executive Jeff Bezos.
The year was 2013, and Bezos was announcing the next big thing in package delivery on "60 Minutes": drones. He said quadcopters could drop packages from warehouses at the doors of customers within 30 minutes. (Bezos owns The Washington Post)
In 2016, Amazon showed off its first commercial drone delivery in the UK's rural area, a 13-minute Amazon Fire TV streaming device and a popcorn pack. His new drone version at MARS, his strange tech conference, was on show earlier this year, promising again that drone deliveries will come soon.
Yet Amazon packages are still being shipped by customers as of the end of the decade. In addition, in 2018, Amazon announced it would add 20,000 delivery vans to its ground fleet from third-party distribution partners. Other companies, including Uber, UPS and Alphabet's Wing, also tested drone deliveries, and in the next decade we may have boxes from the sky on porches.
Vaping to cure smoking
And a way to stop cigarettes entirely was meant to be safer than smoking. Although vaping has actually caught on, in recent years the biggest selling point has blown up. In the United States, eight deaths and more than 2,500 cases of lung-related diseases were associated with vaping.
Critics say fun-sounding flavors and colorful devices, most notably from the Juul company, have made vaping wildly popular among teenagers— one in four vapes for high school students, according to the United States. Centers for control and prevention of diseases. Now vaping companies are being investigated by the FDA and lawmakers. But if we rely on the tobacco industry's past, vaping is unlikely to go away Soon, anytime.
Amazon's big phone play Apple and Google have direct access to billions of people with their mobile operating systems and hardware — 2.5 billion devices run Google's Android operating system and 900 million iPhones are in use.
A company that is noticeably absent from our pockets is Amazon, but not for lack of experimentation. Amazon announced its Fire Phone in 2014 after several years of stealth development. The smartphone didn't look like much, started at $199, ran on Android's customized version, and was only available on AT&T. Amazon reported an unused inventory of $83 million at the end of 2014 and stopped the Fire Phone year after its introduction.
Now that Amazon is vying for voice-assistant supremacy against these two firms, the absence of a smartphone is even more conspicuous. It's put Alexa with a microphone in anything, from cameras to speakers, and hopefully, eye glasses. (It's on smartphones, but you've got to launch the Alexa app first.) In the meantime, Apple's Siri and Google's Assistant are in pockets, built into the heart of the app.
Tourists in space
The big-name billionaires love space is no secret. Despite their passion, this decade the three most courageous aspiring space barons have set and missed deadlines to send people into space.
Richard Branson said Virgin Galactic would be flying visitors into space by 2020, but at the beginning of last year, his final test flight was two test pilots and a crew member. Bezos said at an Air Force Association conference in late 2018 that with people on board this year, Blue Origin will send a test flight into the upper atmosphere, but the latest test flight on Dec. 11 did not contain any humans. Elon Musk revealed in 2017 that SpaceX took deposits in 2018 to carry two passengers around the moon. There was no such trip. He has to reach a different goal for the whole next decade, set in 2011: to send someone to Mars by 2031.
There are plenty of customers involved. Virgin Galactic has sold tickets to over 700 people who would like to take a $250,000 seat trip to space.
If there's one thing we wouldn't want to rush on this list just to meet a deadline, it's loading civilians into private rockets and throwing them into space.
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