Because bikes are inherently big, you can’t navigate sharp corners with them, you can’t stand in 1 place comfortably with them, you can’t carry them up stairs easily, it takes energy to use them etc.
Not a chance. Our cities are decades away from even been fully wheelchair accessible. Nobody ‘redesigned’ them to cope with cars, either, they just tweaked things a little bit - because cars were a natural evolution from what had gone before.
A typical one-mile distance to the nearest public transport cannot be described as a commuter infrastructure. That’s why things exist to cover the gap - buses, trams, etc. One quickly-googled example - the Croydon tram in London cost £200m to build, and carries 20m passengers a year. Assume half of those are regular users (100 journies per year), who in your scenario would be using Segways. £200m into those 100000 people makes the cost of Segways needing to be £2000 - but you haven’t paid for any Segway-related infrastructure. And £2000 is way out of the reach of a large part of the population.
And what the hell is wrong with a fifteen minute walk, anyway? Plus, would you rather be on a Segway or a tram when it’s raining?
You’ve got a rosy-eyed view of Europe. Many of us are nearly as car-dependent as America (the Irish actually on average drive more miles per year than Americans), and things like home delivery as you describe are costly and far from universally-available.
Have you never seen a folding bike?
I own one of those! 
Phonographic video! I’ve got “Star Wars” War of the Worlds", “Dracula” and a few more. As with anything, there are collectors around for them. The picture quality was sloigly higher then with a VCR. 
And most importantly, Han shoots first!
[QUOTE=Beware of Doug]
You’d think that after all this time the phone people would have caught on that nobody wants the goddamn thing.
[QUOTE]
It’s interesting to note that even in Star Trek, in all its various incarnations, anything resembling a videophone is hardly ever seen. To my recollection, the one landmark SF movie where videophones do figure fairly prominently is 2001: A Space Oddysey. The specific context in which it was used–a father talking to his little girl, is a good example of why one might actually want to have this technology available. You probably don’t want to see your boss’s face when he calls you at the office, but I imagine most people wouldn’t mind seeing their loved ones, and it’s odd that this particular application wasn’t enough to push the technology further along.
My pick’s an oldie, but a goodie:
Victor Home Recording units.
They offered you the ability to record radio programs for later listening, and were the only method availible for ordinary people in their homes (other than contracting a recording firm) until reel-to-reel tape recorders.
However, they had the misfortune to be introduced in October 1930. As a result, they were dead by the late 1930’s, due to a lack of customers.
I think my grandmother had one of these at her house. It was a big, wooden piece of furniture, with AM and shortwave radios, and a top-loading phonograph which, I think, only played 78s. I remember there were one or two blank disks intended for recording. I don’t know if they ever used it, but it sure would have been fun to hear my father or uncle speaking as boys in the early 1930s.
Here in Atlanta, you CAN carry your bike onto the train, and what’s more the buses have bike racks in the front. What’s more the train stations have elevators though I can tell you from experience that it ain’t all that hard to carry a bike up and down a flight of stairs if it’s not crowded with other commuters.
I remember reading an article in some cool magazine (Popular Science?) in the late 70s that showed the inner workings of Polavision.
Never heard of Polavision?
It was to home motion picture film what Polaroid cameras were to still photography. Here’s a picture.
Very cool process, but it came much too late for anyone to be interested; video cameras were already appearing on the consumer market.
I have always wanted a Xircom Rex PDA. This was a tidy little pda that was fully built within a PCMCIA card. So small it slips into any pocket. No docking station needed – just plug it in to the PC card slot. Clearly, it was no good for data entry, but I just want my contacts and my meeting schedule. It’s a shame that it died and I am left to carry a Palm device.
I remember that. IIRC, you got a silent movie that lasted 2-3 minutes.
There was also the Fisher Price PXL-2000 video camera for kids.
It used HQ audio cassettes! These things go for BIG money on eBay. I understand film school students lust after them.
I owned one for a few months shortly after it was introduced. It came with a small pad of paper where you could jot down phone numbers and appointments so you could enter them at your computer and then synchronize. Ended up being too awkward.
I considered mentioning it in the OP.
Tablet Computers
A few major companies released tablet computers in the early nineties. They bombed. Several of them (IIRC including Microsoft) tried again about two years ago. I’d use my tablet pc for some things, but it has no floppy drive and I can’t get the data transfer cable to work (I may need to put a Windows 3.1 partition on this computer).
Wire Recorders
As the name suggests, you could record sound onto wire. Quality wasn’t great. You needed a very long cable for more than a few minutes. Then, open reel tape machines debuted.
Re Nixie Tubes
I love those things. I wish I could pump the gas back in and reseal them.
Re Segway
The busses here have bike racks on the front. You are allowed to bring a bike onto the train (though I think they may require the purchase of bike permit)
The Segway was what 3 feet high by 2 feet wide by a foot long
It’s a hell of lot easier to carry a bike up stairs than to carry an 80 pound Segway.
sigh The Cook and Clean Center
I had a miniscule apartment that had one of these…I owned just enough stuff that I didn’t bother putting anything in the cupboards, I just ran the dishwasher every morning as I went to work, and everything was ready when I got home=)
Also, can’t find any link online, but around 1990 or so, in the Navy Exchange catalog they had a spiffy toy, an appliance you put a washed potato in, and filled a bin with oil, and it would slice and fry potato chips and conveyor belt them out into a paper towel lined plate=) … sort of a toy like those coffee maker/toasteroven/heating tray thingy that you can find in gizmo catalogs=)
The “Echo” communication satellite—basically, a big, metalicized balloon that radio signals were bounced off of. There’s just something oddly charming about it.
Maybe I’m missing your intent, but the videophone in Star Trek seems quite common. It’s certainly not used as a plot device often – I’m sure it’s cheaper and more expedient to shoot Kirk/Picard/whatever talking to a disembodied voice from the bridge and receiving an offscreen answer – but there are numerous examples of characters having discussions with a talking head on a console.
along the lines of tablet PC’s and PDAs
The OQO
It still exists, and sells, but it’s yet to be a common device.
I thought the CrossPad was a neat idea. It’s basically a clipboard with a built-in digitizer, so whatever you wrote (with a special RF pen) gets saved as digital data. I used to own one and found it of some use, but the implementation wasn’t good enough for everyday use. It was rather large and heavy, and the PC software for managing the data was very limited. And the RF pen wasn’t very pleasent to write with.
Another one…atomic pens.
And “Go Motion,” a stop-motion animation technique. (I guess it didn’t go “nowhere,” completely, but it’s close to.)
My quote was that bikes are inherently big. Theres nothing stopping us apart from technology from making a segway that’s not much broader across than your shoulders and weighs next to nothing.
Bikes, on the other hand, are limited by their form factor to be a certain size which means even if they weighed nothing, they would still be tricky to take up stairs.