It is better to be a has-been or a never-was? For entertainers such as Garth Brooks, retirement has meant a lucrative second career playing private concerts and Las Vegas shows. For failed garage bands, the post rock star life style means reality as a music teacher or in insurance sales. It might be easy to poke fun a people or products that became outdated, but it still beats never arriving.

For some technology products, establishing anything approaching success proved impossible despite superior backing and an innovative product. In 2004, the Federal Communications Commission began to push a CableCARD system. CableCARDs are a special-use device that enables U.S. consumers to see and record digital cable television channels on video recorders, personal computes and televisions. The CableCARD does not require the use of set top boxes that are provided by cable companies. Despite the advantage of this system, which was to empower third-party televisions and DVRs, the CableCARD never caught on. Motorola pushed the invention, but it found the filed to be relatively fruitless. The FCC tried to force cable operators to use the card in set-top boxes, but the level playing field never emerged due to a combination of technology problems and cable industry resistance.

Technology failures were not limited to entertainment devices. The two-wheel personal transportation system — or Segway — was supposed to change the manner in which society traveled. The inventor of the Segway even predicted that it would render the car obsolete. Cars are still going strong, and the Segway is all but obsolete. The device failed to improve after its release. And rather than expand its territory, towns have started to restrict its use. Rather than change transportation, the Segway seems to be a relic of time when American where at their most health unconscious.

The Segway and the CableCARD are two technology failures that live on as examples of mistakes rather than as innovations.