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Museum of Failure
- marginalia_nu 4y agoIronicaly, the museum of failure fails to load for me.
- memorable 4y agoIt loads for me, but it took like at least 20 seconds
- lo_zamoyski 4y agoThey should add themselves to the catalogue.
- lsbehe 4y agoI have to reload every page multiple times until it loads. Can we please stop having static websites rely on 65 (???) scripts.
- anaganisk 4y agoBut how else can the bing tech can show you ads about, DeLorean, Coke II or google glass.
- status200 4y agoI was thinking that this website should add itself to the list since it is so frustrating to use...
- playingalong 4y agoHow do you demonstrate failure then?
- fbn79 4y agoI dont think Google Glass can be seen as failure. The product is still on market, it only has changed the target audience.
- salmo 4y agoI love this idea. So many failures follow the “first is not best”, then many failed business tales. But most of these are the expected and the analysis is shallow. Snark added is unnecessary. Many are fad products or acknowledged R&D experiments that I wouldn’t necessarily call “failures.” I expected more when having to give my email. A categorized page of bullets with Wikipedia links would be more useful. The details and references would be higher quality. Cool idea, just needs more development and research to provide real value.
- lo_zamoyski 4y agoIndeed. An entertaining idea in the abstract, perhaps, but this is just weak sensationalism and poor execution. I don't see anything substantive that explains how something failed. Instead of taking the right attitude of discovering where something ostensibly went wrong, it seems to relish in dismissive ridicule in the style of FailArmy.
- inanutshellus 4y agoI think you nailed it. The hook is "failure is how you succeed" but they show dead end products with perfunctory blurbs and facile presentations. I'd've expected these, yes, but also more substantive "failed 'til I didn't" exhibits such as representations of the hundred+ prototypes that James Dyson purported to have made before finally figuring out the bagless vacuum. Or... photos of Abraham Lincoln and a long, long, long list of his failed attempts to progress before finding himself in the presidency.
- Nomentatus 4y agoPardon my picking nits: He wasn't entirely a failure; he was a very successful railway lawyer. As for his loss to Douglass, that may well have been strategic - a design from the beginning to force Douglas to endorse state sovereignty (not slavery everywhere.) That would get Douglas the senate win, but it was also pretty clear in advance that could split his party, the Democrats, in two. It did. That may have been a bigger strategic victory for his party than him personally getting into the White House.
- ch215 4y agoThis reminds me of the 'Library of Mistakes' in Edinburgh, a free public library which promotes the study of financial history. https://www.libraryofmistakes.com/ https://www.libraryofmistakes.com/
- taneq 4y agoI hope they have a red hot section on the last 20 years because wow.
- DoingIsLearning 4y agoWasn't it JPL at NASA that also kept some sort 'mistakes were made' database in order to prevent recidivating on the same failure?
- Toutouxc 4y agoMaybe the site could add its own implementation into itself. It's totally broken for me.
- Steltek 4y agoOh man, the Nokia NGage! I still remember the "taco talking" mockery (back when people used phones to make calls). Symbian OS was so much better than the competition. Apps and games were feasible, compared to the j2me wasteland. I remember it for not being a too far fetched idea as I playing with the software on my S60 device more than making calls. https://museumoffailure.com/nokia/ https://museumoffailure.com/nokia/
- justintoon 4y agoI believe the official term was "sidetalkin'" https://sidetalking.com https://sidetalking.com
- Cyberdog 4y agoI found a picture of myself on that site. I don't remember taking it and I don't remember sending it to this site, but apparently I did both of those things at one point in my life. How bizarre. https://sidetalking.com/page-1.html https://sidetalking.com/page-1.html - In the red shirt with the game.com.
- impalallama 4y agoOh looks like this came to where I live last year. Shame I didn't hear about it then.
- bullen 4y agoI had an N-Gage, the first phone I talked on in stereo using headphones (obviously). It was probably the best portable device I ever had. Musicplayer, console, stereo phone!!! So much ahead of it's time it even makes a modern "smart" phones look wrong. You could change battery yourself without tools. Real buttons! How many misclicks do we count per day, probably a couple of billion?
- thejackgoode 4y agoMy favorite place of this sort is Vasa museum in Stockholm It hosts a huge 70m warship that sank in 1628 on her maiden voyage 1.5 km into it. Highly recommended to visit. https://www.vasamuseet.se/en https://www.vasamuseet.se/en
- chmod775 4y agoI have a fond childhood memory of going to a place that looked much like that. After asking my parents it turns out we went there when I was 6. Since the memory stuck with me for almost twenty-two years, I can highly recommend it!
- redleggedfrog 4y agoI love the irony that the site displays a blank white screen for me. Well done!
- eCa 4y agoNot an invention, but one of my favourite failures is Shackleton’s antarctic expedition[1], which among the many trials includes what must be one of the greatest navigational feats in history: 1300km in an open boat across the Antarctic Ocean after a year being stuck in the ice. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_Trans-Antarctic_Expedition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_Trans-Antarctic_Exped...
- doitLP 4y agoBligh’s open boat voyage[1] after the mutiny on the Bounty has them beat at 6400km, but the Shackleton expedition certainly had to deal with much more adverse conditions. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutiny_on_the_Bounty#Bligh's_open-boat_voyage https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutiny_on_the_Bounty#Bligh's...
- dorfsmay 4y agoVisited last weekend. Interesting for sure. Funny to see how many times and for how long we've been trying to do VR! Some of the "failures" were unfair IMO, like minitel and Block Buster: It's like saying using wind sails on ships was a failure because it was replaced by steam engines.
- ljw1001 4y agoSomeday I want to own a company that fails like blockbuster
- ghaff 4y agoIn the case of Blockbuster, it's reasonable to argue that they should have at least taken advantage of their brand (and relationships) to get into the DVD rental by mail business which would have, relatively speaking, not been a big stretch. Though phasing out retail would have been disruptive. Of course, streaming was a whole different game. (As would be original content.) And it's not like Netflix is looking especially robust at the moment.
- BizarroLand 4y agoBlockbuster had a chance to buy Netflix in the early 2000's for $50,000,000. I bet it spent a while regretting not making that purchase, but then again, if they had Netflix may have become a passing fad and never branched out into the online streaming market. https://www.inc.com/minda-zetlin/netflix-blockbuster-meeting-marc-randolph-reed-hastings-john-antioco.html https://www.inc.com/minda-zetlin/netflix-blockbuster-meeting...
- ghaff 4y agoI had forgotten that. Yes. I suspect they’d have done the DVD by mail thing but then would have stagnated however many years later.
- thunky 4y agoIt blows my mind that Netflix is still mailing DVDs. Not only that, but their DVD plan is far better then their streaming plan because it includes decent (not Netflix produced) movies.
- jjulius 4y agoWhat are the years listed below the items on the home page supposed to denote? The DeLorean dates are "1989-1990", but it was sold, and production ended, in the early 80's. There are symbols next to each date, but I can't find their meanings anywhere on the website.
- mikestew 4y agoThat was about the point at which I found something else to do with my I-don't-want-to-work time: Back to the Future (in which a DeLorean play a prominent role) was released in 1985. The car itself: 1981. Sooooo, what do those dates signify? Then the site claims New Coke/Coke II came out in 1981. Umm, try 1985. Olestra? Nope, try again (I'll leave the lookup as an exercise). I know all of these things are wrong at a glance because...well, I'm old, and for example I know that New Coke didn't come out when I was in high school because I was married to my ex-wife at the time, and she hated it. And I saw Back to the Future at the cinema. I was there, man. So I don't know what those dates are supposed to signify.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- gw99 4y agoI would be happy to produce something that ended up in there. At least it would serve an educational purpose :)
- cecilpl2 4y agoThis reminds me of an amazing place I stumbled upon while traveling around Croatia: The Museum of Broken Relationships. https://brokenships.com/ https://brokenships.com/ It's full of tokens and mementos, both happy and sad, along with stories of relationships that have ended for a variety of different reasons.
- kabdib 4y agoProud to have worked on one of the failures in this exhibit :-) I also had a number of the products I've worked on land in the Weird Stuff warehouse (and, oddly, another surplus hardware warehouse near Seattle). Badge of honor :-)
- divbzero 4y agoAlong the same vein, several academic journals allow for the publication of negative results: 1. Positively Negative (PLOS One) 2. The Missing Pieces (PLOS One) 3. The All Results Journals 4. ACS Omega 5. F1000Research 6. PeerJ 7. Journal of Negative Results in Biomedicine 8. Journal of Negative Results in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology 9. Journal of Articles in Support of the Null Hypothesis 10. Journal of Pharmaceutical Negative Results https://www.enago.com/academy/top-10-journals-publish-negative-results/ https://www.enago.com/academy/top-10-journals-publish-negati...
- jvalencia 4y agoI went to the link and it didn't load for me. I figured it was just a funny joke, but then I realized other people saw things. Missed opportunity :-D
- will5421 4y agoIs the joke that the page won't load?
- bombolo 4y ago
- Vaslo 4y agoI was a chemist in my first career incarnation. I always argued there should be a journal of failed chemistry. There are so many methods that you try and fail and it can take a few days of work to give up. Imagine if there was already a reference to see what was tried and failed. I know there’s a lot more money in what works, but still.