What’s This Generation’s Segway?

What’s This Generation’s Segway?

A recent Reuters report makes a fairly sound case for the demise of Google Glass, which is obviously giving headline writers across the internet the opportunity to label it as This Generation’s Segway. But that’s far too important a title to give away without a long discussion and the posting of many, many GIFs of people falling off Segways. In the name of science, of course.

Being “the next Segway” doesn’t just mean something that’s dumb and a commercial failure (if that was the case, we could just trawl Kickstarter). No, to truly meet the heady criteria, it needs to be something that’s objectively useful, practical, and a good piece of design, but so shudderingly uncool that it could never succeed. Being the perfect launchpad for an entire YouTube fails genre doesn’t hurt either.

Obviously, Google Glass is a pretty solid contender — it definitely looks mall-copish enough. But since it’s not actually all that handy (and arguably has a shorter battery life than most Segways) I’m not sure it takes the crown.

Nominations below, please. Extra points if accompanied by a GIF of a small child falling off your choice.


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