Trailing Edge Technology

Thursday, December 26, 2019

Tuesday, October 21, 2014

The Agenda Microwriter

This was a personal organiser that was invented in the mid 1980's. It's unique selling point was that it included a device called a microwriter which was essentially a chord based keyboard.

For various reasons the device did not succeed but in my opinion this is a tragedy because once learned the chord keyboard was a tremendously practical and efficient way to input data.

Pros

- You could type with one hand
- For most letters the shape of the chord had a resemblance to the letter shape so it was easier to remember.

Reasons I think it failed.

- It did not get sufficient market share to gain traction
- Once the Agenda failed the Microwriter technology was not licensed cheaply enough. It was possible to buy USB versions of the microwriter keyboard but the price was not competitive (so nobody bought them).
- There were other chord keyboards available.

Introduction

This is a blog about a philosophy I have related to technology products. Below are some terms in popular use used to describe technology. Among these are the following:

Bleeding Edge Technology - is a category of technologies so new that they could have a high risk of being unreliable and lead adopters to incur greater expense in order to make use of them.

Leading Edge Technology - It is almost always used to describe the best; not necessarily the newest.

I would like to propose new category of technology. However, it seems somebody has beaten me to the term. Perhaps I unconciously read it on his blog. Oh well, no matter, great minds think alike and all that.

Trailing Edge Technology - category of technologies/devices that one can only judge at the best by using the passing of time as a guide. This may include technologies which failed commercially but that lie dormant until such time as they are recognised for what they are.

I would also like to propose that that these technologies should exhibit a characteristic known as AntiFragility which is a term invented by Nassim Nicholas Taleb.

To be continued ...