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Museum of Failure Opens In Sweden (failuremag.com)
Slashdot reader swellconvivialguy writes: A new museum in Helsingborg displays more than 70 failed products and objects, including the Apple Newton, Google Glass, Sony Betamax, Harley-Davidson perfume, and the Donald Trump board game. According to curator Samuel West, "none of the companies that I contacted wanted to cooperate. I approached quite a few innovation directors and asked them for examples of failure that they've learned from. I thought it would be easy to get them to collaborate but none of them -- zero -- choose to cooperate."
The curator urges people to accept failure -- "as an essential aspect of progress and innovation."
The curator urges people to accept failure -- "as an essential aspect of progress and innovation."
I have always thought the Harley-Davidson Cat Collar should go in a display like this one. I bought one for our kitten once, though he's definitely not a failure of a cat. In the process of scratching and grooming he ended up rendering the Harley-Davidson logo on it illegible. Since then I have always said that Harley-Davidson can't even make a cat collar that lasts.
An asshat recently asked this question: "Why do you set yourself up for massive failure? All. The. Fucking. Time?"
My (corrected) response: "If you have to ask that question, than you know nothing about success."
Let me elaborate... failure is a learning process. You can learn more from failure than you can from success. If the world already views you as a failure, say, for being the fat retarded kid on the short bus, than you have absolutely nothing to lose by trying to succeed. Not once, not twice, not thrice, but as many times as possible in a lifetime. Failure becomes permanent only when you give up. I have absolutely no intention of ever giving up.
I have a Newton. It's battery compartment is a dismal failure. There are fussy little parts of the door that break off. I have long maintained that the reason Apple uses sealed-in batteries in their mobile devices is because they're not good enough designers to make a robust battery compartment. (Battery compartments, especially when they are designed to work with off-the-shelf consumer batteries, are an extremely difficult design challenge).
Betamax was only a failure in the consumer market. The professional version, Betacam, was one of the most widely used videotape formats for professionals. So, eh, kinda sorta a failure, I guess.
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The Vasa museum is a commemoration of a spectacular failure (and is a good museum). That's naval history rather than modern tech, but the principles are the same.
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Betamax recorders were in production for almost 40 years, the tapes were produced for 50 years. That's a high level of longevity for any digital format. Production of the units survived right into the DVD era, and it's probably DVDs which killed it in the end, not VHS. VHS had 40 years to kill it, and failed.
Additionally, Betcam is still in production as is HDCAM, they have two form factors, one of which is the same as Betamax, if you watch any anime, they are still almost all mastered on HDCAM, i.e. high-definition version of Betamax tapes.
It's only a very limited viewpoint that considers Betamax a flop / failed product. If we're going that far we should consider Apple Macs a failure because Windows is industry-standard.