Séamas O'Reilly: Why we shouldn't stop trying and failing to make weird new things

Let’s put our failures in the past, or the future will never be what it used to

Sat, 10 Dec, 2022 - 07:13

My column about DVDs struck a chord with people. By that, I mean people like me; nostalgic sad-sacks desperate to keep alive the meaningless touchstones of their youths. It also prompted follow-on chatter about other failed technologies that never got their moment. I’m reluctant to react to these reactions. My readers, you included, should best be treated like the braying, mangy dogs that they are. I should also state for the record that this column is not solely dedicated to defunct media formats, but I can’t help but feel that those people saying “DVDs had their chance and blew it”, had a point.

More tantalising surely, are those things which failed to launch entirely. Take MiniDiscs, the format billed as the CD-killer on its release in the mid-nineties, and rolled out worldwide as the new, and best, way to listen to, and record music and audio. Perhaps nothing represents the baffling path of progress better than MiniDiscs, which boasted the shiny newness of CDs, and the re-writability of cassette tapes, while also being smaller and more high definition than either. They were sharp and smart and, nearly 30 years after their launch, still look more stylishly futuristic than they have any right to. What I’m getting at is this: judged entirely on technical benefits and cultural trends, we should have seen the death of CDs there and then. As it happened, MiniDiscs didn’t even outlast cassette tapes and, outside of strong sales in Japan, were all but non-existent by the early 2000s.