Videophones and Skype. The future arrives - no one cares.
Every quarterback who’s from Pennsylvania who goes to Notre Dame is the “next Joe Montana.” It’s the law, I think. Since you and I are contemporaries and both from Northeast PA, you’ll understand what I mean when I think Joe Zone also carries some of the blame for hyping Pawlus to the skies, what with featuring him on NewsWatch 16 just about every week.
A few other sports things I can think of, mostly in the UK:
SuperMax cricket. Teams played two innings of 10 overs a side, and the field had “Max Zones” where all scoring including boundaries counted double. I think the New Zealanders invented it during the 90’s. Great idea, and it prefigured Twenty20, but it was just a little too ahead of its time. This is one of those “Next Big Things” that did eventually become the next big thing in a slightly altered form.
In the same vein, 50-over games of two 25-over innings a side. The Australians are still pushing it, but it seems that ship has sailed.
Baseball in the UK. Seriously, Channel 5 thought in the 90’s that baseball would be a hit in England too. Didn’t work.
Ski jumping in the UK! Everyone thought they could be the next Eddie the Eagle! Obviously they didn’t see that clip of him lying in the hospital in a full-body cast after a particularly bad crash.
Jai alai in the US. It’s still a minor sport with some devotees but at one point in the 70’s a group planned to turn it into the big time with teams all over the US. IIRC the mob got involved and actually had one of the main operators whacked in a parking lot, and the money dried up very quickly after that.
Brien Taylor got into a bar brawl two years after being drafted and wrecked his arm. He never made it to the Majors.
If you’re thinking of Bryce Harper, the jury is still very much out on him. He just started his first minor league season in Hagerstown.
SI Cover: Link
Harper’s 2011 status: Link
I know guys embedded in the videogame industry who’ve told me the tech to do worthwhile VR could exist if anybody would focus on it, but hardware cost would still be too high and the utter failure of the 90s stuff means nobody with a brain will touch it. It’ll probably get revisited in a decade or so.
Yeah, I think it DID revolutionize music, it’s just that it didn’t change every other genre to “electronica.” Techniques gleaned from electronica are used all the time in mainstream music now.
The odd thing is that “pure electronica” has fallen out of the mainstream. I think that’s because it turns out people like lyrics.
When I was a kid, I used to love reading about all the different mega-engineering projects like super-long bridges, super-tall skyscrapers, etc. that were “just around the corner!”
Some of these were built: the Channel Tunnel was the one I remember being the most excited about.
But where’s my Bering Strait bridge? They* still* haven’t built that bitch. And we also don’t have a road that crosses the Strait of Messina yet even though various people have talked about building one for approximately the last five billion years.
Isn’t this a background thing on of the Mad Men series? There’s a demanding client who’s got this sport which he thinks is going to be huge but no-one else does and there’s some debate if it’s worth taking him on as a client.
M. Night Shyamalan is the next Steven Spielberg.
I threw up all over that machine, on the first date of my life.
I had high hopes for VR back in the day, but the hardware was insufficient. The same with holographic tech also. The software was barely adequate also. But seeing developments like Wii give me hope that its day will come back soon.
I think what killed development was not those hurdles, but everyone was seduced by the Internet - a heck of a lot cheaper development costs, and much greater rewards - and much greater usability for the average user. VR still has rather limited applications*, while the Internet continues to expand its wares.
I think computing power, hardware and software, has caught up to the basic requirements but the optical tech is still lagging. And until we can hack the brain, we will never have true Matrix-level VR. Audio and visual are almost there, and haptic systems are not far behind, but taste and smell are a long way away, if ever.
*As for apps, I think VR tourism would be successful, especially for museums and other cultural venues. It would be nice to ‘visit’ the Louvre without having to pay for air fare to Paris and spend hours waiting in lines. Another app would be to expand on Wii Fitness and create virtual dojos or gyms, a la the scene in the Matrix.
As for the OP, I keep waiting for wearable computers/tech. Any year now - it will be huge!!!
Harold Miner, the first “next Jordan”.
Damn you Annie, you total sadist, now I’ve got to go out and buy a motorbike, or get an eighteen year old girlfriend or something.
And just WHERE can I get some hair dye ?
Lots in football but the Englisg press seem to overhype English football players. Micheal Owen is up there. He’s had a decent career but both like what was expected of him.
Another “The Next Beatles” act: Klaatu. Electric Light Orchestra was also going to be the next Beatles, and were even accused of being a sound-alike band. They had significant success in the 1970’s, though.
A lot of my favorite acts were once touted as the ‘next great thing’ and never made it:
The Jayhawks were going to be the next Eagles. Their first albums were met with critical adoration, but they never had a major commercial breakthrough.
John Prine and Steve Goodman were both touted as “the Next Dylan”, which has already been pointed out to be the kiss of death for most artists. Goodman died young, but Prine maintained his critical darling status right up to today but has never had a major hit.
Warren Zevon exploded on the scene in the 1970’s, and Rolling Stone called Zevon’s first two major albums two of the best albums of the 1970’s in their end of decade retrospective. Everyone expected him to rise to the heights of people like Bowie and Springsteen. Alcohol and OCD and other personal problems caused his output to be sporadic, and his songs are generally too dark and too literate to be commercial successes. But he died a hero to other musicians.
Wilco was going to be monster after Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, but they’ve never broken into the big leagues. Ten years later they’re still playing 1,000-2000 seat venues. Not a failure, but not huge.
Beck has never quite lived up to his early hype. He’s had reasonable success, but he’s not packing in arenas or anything.
Moving away from music, I just finished the first book in a two-part biography of Robert Heinlein. There was a lot of stuff in there that a lot of people thought would be the ‘next big thing’ but never happened:
- One world government
- Social Credit
- General Semantics
- Interplanetary manned space missions
- Nuclear power
- Socialism
- Flying cars
- Starvation/Malthusian population bomb
Nuclear power happened.
Socialism . . . well, depends on how you define it.
Not really, I believe Sam Stone is referencing a belief that almost all of our power would be via cheap Nuclear Power and not the small percentage in the US or world wide we have actually achieved. This was clearly where many thought we were headed in the fifties.
I agree not a failure, but not really hitmakers either. Which is sad, because they do have a number of catchy, pop-sounding tunes (even on Yankee Hotel Foxtrot) that I could see getting some radioplay.
But I think the problem is one of timing. If they had hit 10 years earlier, they would have been able to take ride the alt-rock craze of the early to mid-90s. And while they may never have been as big as Beatles, I could see them being an arena-filling act in the vein of Smashing Pumpkins.
What need would it answer? There’s not much ship traffic across the Bering Strait now.
How come no band is ever “the next Sex Pistols”?