3 ms·

Ask HN: What were some great ideas that were too early for their time?

I'm curious what were some of the more innovative ideas that were just too early (e.g. the tech was impossible or too expensive) but would have been viable in the future or are today.

OhNoNotAgain_99 4y ago
tomaszs 4y ago
- Virtual reality - seems to be too early the second time now - Moon landing - it was just a showcase what will we achieve now - Light bulbs in ancient Egypt
- mikewarot 4y ago
  It's still not ready, it makes quite a few users nauseous. It's a huge bug remaining to be fixed.
  - solardev 4y ago
    Maybe try the incandescents
orangecat 4y ago
Google Wave was basically Slack.
- mikewarot 4y ago
  And it could have been so very much more, had they not crippled the UI like that.
jleyank 4y ago
The Newton. Computer vision recognition. 5th generation (inference) AI. Protein folding.
thagerty 4y ago
Tesla's understanding of electricity. Most would agree he was way ahead of Edison, who used his position to suppress the advancement of Tesla's ideas. Eventually, Tesla was able to demonstrate alternating current on a large scale, but he had so much more to contribute that has not yet seen the light of day.
mikewarot 4y ago
Capability based security[1], which Multics had. Not to be confused with app permissions, it's a very different concept. It'll probably start being adopted in about 5 more years. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capability-based_security https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capability-based_security