Bad Ideas Never Die.
The automobile was invented by Karl Benz in 1885 and the airplane by the Wright brothers in 1903.
Just three years later the first flying car story appeared. And in the 98 years since then, flying cars have received copious coverage in the nation's media.
In 1945, Ted Hall introduced his flying car, a development that was received by a wildly enthusiastic public. Roads would become obsolete, traffic jams a thing of the past. Every major aircraft manufacturer hoped to cash in on Hall's invention. The lucky buyer was Convair. In July of 1946, Convair introduced Hall's flight of fancy as the Convair Model 118 ConvAirCar. Company management confidently predicted minimum sales of 160,000 units a year. In spite of the hype, only two ConvAirCars were ever built.
In 1949, Moulton Taylor introduced the Aerocar, a sporty runabout with detachable wings and tail. The Aerocar received a tremendous amount of publicity at the time. The Ford Motor Company considered mass-producing it, figuring they could sell 25,000 a year.
Bad ideas never really die. In its November 9, 1998 issue, Fortune devoted a two-page spread to the Aerocar. "People dream of this," said the Aerocar's current owner. "They want to get off the highway and get lost in the clouds."
As recently as August 2, 2002, The New York Times carried a major story (nearly a full page) on the Taylor Aerocar. "A car with wings," said the Times "is many a flyboy's dream machine."
Then there's Paul Moller who has spent four decades developing the M400 Skycar. Today, $200 million, 43 patents and three wives later, his dream has still not taken off, although it has received extensive coverage in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Forbes, Investor's Business Daily and two big stories in USA Today, including one just last month.
Convergence captures the imagination, but divergence captures the market. Today we have many types of airplanes (jet planes, prop planes, helicopters) and many types of automobiles (sedans, convertibles, station wagons, minivans, sport-utility vehicles.)
No flying cars though.
Why divergence and not convergence? Because convergence requires compromise and divergence satisfies the evolving needs of different market segments.
An automobile needs to be heavy enough to stay on the highway; an airplane needs to be light enough to take off from a runway. No flying car will ever be as drivable as an automobile or as flyable as an airplane.
The autoboat, another convergence concept that has been floating around for decades, suffers from the same disease. "Drives like a boat, floats like a car," is the consumer's verdict. Convergence has become an obsession in the high-tech and consumer electronic industries, especially at Microsoft. "Has William H. Gates become the Captain Ahab of the information age?" asked The New York Times. "Mr. Gates' white whale remains an elusive digital set-top cable box that his company, the Microsoft Corporation, is hoping will re-create the personal computer industry by blending the PC, the Internet and the television set into a leviathan living-room entertainment and information machine."
In 1999, Microsoft pumped $5 billion into AT&T and secured a contract to install its TV software in as many as 10 million AT&T set-top boxes. Not a single box made it to the top of a television set serviced by an AT&T cable system and since AT&T is now out of the cable business, the contract is just another convergence dead end.
Irreconcilable differences will always doom such convergence concepts. Television is a "passive" medium; the Internet is an "active" medium. A couch potato will never put up with the complexities of interactive TV and an Internet junkie will never surf the Net with an awkward box designed for another purpose. Like automobiles, different market segments demand different products.
Yet the press, the pundits and virtually the entire high-tech community is solidly behind the convergence concept. Who could possibly doubt that one day it will all happen?
Any student of history, that's who. "Those who cannot remember the past," wrote George Santayana, "are condemned to repeat it."
Divergence is more than a theoretical concept; it's a law of nature. In his book The Origin of Species, Charles Darwin credits divergence for the millions of species that now populate the earth, like the many branches of a tree that diverge from a single trunk. "The great tree of life" was his metaphor for the creation of species.
Darwin's genius was in recognizing that species like cats and dogs might have a common ancestor, but that they had "branched off" or diverged in response to environmental changes. Over time, the differences between each species becomes exaggerated. In Darwin's terms, "nature favors the extremes."
The computer might have had a common ancestor (the mainframe), but today we also have midrange computers, network computers, personal computers, laptop computers, tablet computers and handheld computers. The computer didn't converge with another technology. It diverged in response to consumer demands.
Television might have had a common ancestor (broadcast TV), but today we also have cable TV, satellite TV and pay-per-view TV. Also analog and digital TV. Regular and high-definition TV. Standard (4/3) and widescreen (16/9) formats. Television didn't converge with another medium. It diverged in response to consumer demands.
The telephone might have had a common ancestor, but today we also have cordless phones, headset phones, cellphones and satellite phones. Also analog and digital phones. The telephone didn't converge with another technology. It diverged in response to consumer demands.
Companies today are pouring billions of dollars into such convergence concepts as smart phones, smart gas pumps, smart homes, smart watches, smart clothing, smart refrigerators, smart toilets and smart appliances. This is a tragic waste of time and money. Companies would be more innovative, more profitable and more successful if they would focus on the opposite idea: divergence.
But don't count on it. As you can see, bad ideas never die.