Whenever I see companies like this with a spectacular demo but no product to show, I always think of the Richard Feynman quote, "For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled."
This is a good point, but demos (real, hardware-based demos, "not made in powerpoint") are also critical to prove that one has a working technology.
There is still a big step to make it cheap, reliable and appealing enough to be commercially successful, but "X is possible and we know how to do it" demo is good base to build from. My 2c.
You don't need working demos or even abide to physical laws to attract investors. Thanks to the power of social media you just have to choose a good cause, make it look cool and create a fake demo video. Most people just repeat what they read, critical thinking is a thing of the past.
See WaterSeer [0], SolarRoadways [1], Fontus self-filling waterbottle [2], ...
Sure, but all 3 of the projects listed had people very early on point out that back of the envelope calculations don't add up and warned them that their projects are going to fail. Each of those those groups proceeded to ignore or not understand the evidence presented to them and continued to collect money. At that point I consider it a scam. Ignorance is not an excuse.
That being said what we are seeing here is a education problem. The masses of people who (including government officials) who seem to be so gullible and lack basic science skills and critical thinking to understand how some of these technologies might work is astounding. And with the 3 efforts listed above it has slowly come out that the minds behind the idea did not know how it would all work either. A good example of that is fontus. This as dream big art design project. How awesome is that? We can make a 3d model of this cool device! A year later confessing to taking apart dehumidifiers to "understand" how they work as if it was some mistry. As if they could somehow crack this alien technology then they too could build one!
At the rate these too good to be true ideas are coming out one has to stop and think that maybe, just maybe, somebody is gaming the system.
It's easy to find someone who is certain your idea is impossible even if someone's already done it! Even when they're right they haven't accounted for anything that will work, they've just got one way it won't. Edison ended up finding ten thousand ways a lightbulb doesn't work.
There's a substantial difference between someone dismissing your idea, and someone demonstrating how it breaks the laws of physics. Every project will have its naysayers, yes, but when your idea is literally impossible maybe it's time to listen to them.
EM drive was just a recent example of my point - that people touting a little bit of science have been wrong to declare something impossible many times.
NASA and others are still testing those drives so last year might be a bit premature to write the idea off?
The difference is we don't know how the EM drive is working (or are we sure it is working).
The 3 projects in the parents flat out don't work, and we know why they don't work -- or at least know to what extent they will work.
By the logic you have presented then we should be funding projects that wish to compress all 8 bit connotations into 7 bits. I can go make a nice video of how awesome it would be if we could do this. How it would change the world. Literally, if somebody could compress every 8 bit combination into 7 bits it would change the world overnight. Should we fund a product that advertises it could do this with a nice video and a website?
>EM drive was just a recent example of my point - that people touting a little bit of science have been wrong to declare something impossible many times.
There is a big difference between Edison and what is going on with these projects. It's not merely that somebody found a way that it won't work, it's they showed the laws of physics will prevent it from ever being a reality. These projects are not billed as research projects. They are billed as "let's just make it" projects.
Anybody can come up with an product that if made would change the world. The hard part is coming up with a feasible idea that will change the world.
Not a single one of the projects listed in the parent ever produced a viable working prototype. They sold a promise they could not keep. Yet keep taking money.
True. I'm not saying Lily Drones was a scam, they could've made it to production under sane management, but there are other projects attracting a lot of funding even though they are bound to fail from the start.
I'm not sure if the people responsible are even aware that it won't work - they might be 'scamming' without knowing, due to lack of common sense. It's really sad and enrages me more than it should.
I think you're romanticising a past that never existed. Critical thinking is a tool only ever used by a small subset of the population, and even they are subject to their own biases.
Pedlars of snake oil have featured in cautionary tales since time immemorial.
Do you happen to know of any good scientific breakdowns of this project ala Thunderf00t and his Water Seer / Solar Roadways / Fontus videos? Doesn't have to be a video necessarily, just somewhere I can read more about why the project won't work as described. Thank you!
I think the killer was really the very low projected price of the pre-order, even today nobody makes a drone that does what Lily was supposed to do for less than $999.
They figure out they could do it but not at that price point, they would be losing a loot of money on each unit.
That's one thing that keeps me away from most Kickstarter projects and very early pre-orders from new or unknown companies.
Even if the technology is feasible and there's a working prototype, there's still a lot of work to do to get it mass produced, and problems and unanticipated expenses can crop up all along the way, especially for people who've never gone through the process before.
but next was well on its way to declaring bankruptcy...
Next had terrible sales.. even jobs said so. The factory they built was so underutilized, they assembled the computers by hand instead of using the equipment because it was less work than doing the maintenance on it. It was designed to produce 150,000 machines a year... next sold 50,000 machines total over 6 years (an average of 700/month).
After 6 years, Next abandoned the computer market, focusing on software. They tried to sell the factory to Canon, who pulled out of the deal. They laid off 2/3rds of their employees.
On multiple occasions, investors were forced to put in more funding just to keep Next solvent.
Just a couple of years after abandoning hardware, they agree to merge with apple.
I wasnt able to find an exact number, but the amount of money apple paid for next may actually exceed the total revenue next pulled in during the 12 years they were in business.
Seems safe to assume that NeXT's existence was predicated largely—possibly entirely—on Steve Jobs reputation to actually deliver millions of units. In the end, he arguably "made it work" by the thinnest of margins.
A better, if flawed, comparison to Lily might be the Apple I: entering an established, growing market with a product which lowers the threshold for adoption in very specific ways. (I'll defer to more informed, educated, and insightful individuals to carry this comparative analysis any further...)
Steve Jobs was one of a handful of people in the world who could pull off such feats. I think tyleo's comment still stands when it comes to everything (and everyone) else.
