When Is a New Tech ‘Ahead of Its Time’ — Or Just Doomed?

It’s a tricky thing to figure out

Clive Thompson
OneZero
Published in
7 min readNov 29, 2021

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“Segway” via Pixabay

When a bunch of techies are beavering away on a new tool, it can be tricky to figure out:

Is this a genuinely useful new thing? Or is it just some expensive prototype, a pipe dream that’ll never take off?

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Clive Thompson
OneZero

I write 2X a week on tech, science, culture — and how those collide. Writer at NYT mag/Wired; author, “Coders”. @clive@saturation.social clive@clivethompson.net