You can’t always guess what the future will hold. But you can bet your bottom dollar on one thing—there’s bound to be a whole bunch of tech breakthroughs that seemed incredibly important at the time only to have been left by the wayside.
Our team here at Bored Panda has spelunked into the darkest corners of the net to find you some of these tech innovations that seemed so amazing just a handful of years ago but which sound bizarre, hilarious, or even useless now. Check them out below and, as you scroll down, upvote the pics that you liked the most. Got a strong sense of nostalgia? We’d love to hear all about the tech you remember the most fondly, so be sure to write us a comment or two with your thoughts.
Bored Panda chatted about the future of technology and work with Aaron Genest, an expert on labor in the tech and innovation industry. Aaron, who is an Applications Engineering Manager for Siemens Software and the President of SaskTech, said that making accurate predictions about what tech and devices will be long-lived and stand the test of time is a very difficult thing to do. Difficult… but not impossible.
“I’d argue that most people underestimate the timelines necessary to produce the technological goods on which we rely and the investment made to allow them to exist. By looking ‘upstream’ in that investment space, we can have a pretty good idea of what whole industries are betting on,” he said. “For instance, it takes almost two years to develop and produce a computer chip and get it to market for a phone, and five years to get something into a new kind of car. So if we want to have a sense for what, for instance, the gadgets in our cars will look like in 2026, we just need to look at what the car manufacturers are asking their suppliers to design today.”
#1 The Motorola Razr. Still The Coolest Cell Phone To Be Produced
Image source: Boojibs
#2 See-Through Electronics
Image source: rysterf
#3 Batteries That Let You Check How Much Energy Was Left
#4 The GE Alarm Clock That Everyone Seemed To Have
Image source: 2ezyo
#5 TVs With A VHS Player Built Into Them
Image source: Wikimedia Commons
#6 Phones With Internet On Them In The First Place
Image source: passingpleasantries
#7 Cassette Tape That Let You Connect Your iPod To Your Car Stereo
Image source: reddit
#8 Digital Mp3 Players With These Songs
Image source: Luminous_Fantasy
#9 Remember When Laptops Used To Have That Little Rubber Cl!t For A Mouse?
Image source: reddit.com
#10 Portable DVD Players
Image source: ldn_elek
#11 Watches That Lit Up Blue
Image source: itslikesoulman
#12 Netflix’s DVD Service
Image source: suburbanmen
#13 Those Backwards Seats In Station Wagons
Image source: or_worse__EXPELLED
#14 Movies On An iPod With A 2-Inch Screen
Image source: nowuzit
#15 That Singing Fish
Image source: StevenBalthaser
#16 Cd Players That Held Multiple Cds At Once
Image source: EXSUPERVILLAIN
#17 CD Players With 45-Second Skip Protection
Image source: Philips
#18 Old School PC Microphones
Image source: wanpakujozu
#19 Pagers Are Now Collecting Dust
Image source: Wikimedia Commons
#20 Thick Big Screen TVs Only Rich Kids Had
Image source: photobucket
#21 Car Phones
Image source: steverotter
#22 Robot Dogs
Image source: PussyAnalBreath
#23 Speakers That Attached To The Monitor
Image source: Smeg98
#24 A DVD Or VHS Player In A Car
Image source: photobucket
#25 Digital Cable And Being Able To Watch A Ton Of Useless Channels
Image source: photobucket
#26 These iPhone Apps Where You Drank Fake Beer
Image source: onmilwaukee
#27 Can I Interest You In A Sidekick II With Aol Messenger?
Image source: TheConfusingWords
#28 Hit Clips
Image source: marceling
#29 A TV With A DVD Player In It
Image source: ryuguy
#30 Paper Toss iPhone Game
Image source: mrkowalscheme
#31 Fake Lighter Phone Apps
Image source: play.google.com
#32 Having The Option And The Ability To Update Your Facebook From A Text Message
Image source: SillyActuary
#33 The Original Ipod And The Million Buttons It Had
Image source: RobertoSport
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