There seems to be a lot of them about at the moment:

• 3D TV/Cinema - you know my feelings on goggles, anaglyphic lenses and flickering shutters (BTW, I love this stuff, but I’m not a “normal consumer”)

• eBook readers - the screens on the ones in Waterstones feel half baked, and are not in colour - they seem worse than the screen on my Newton.

• Hybrid cars - we so want electric cars that we put two drive trains on the same vehicle

• Smart phones - I like my iPHone, but the whole interface begs for speech control / recognition, but you still get a QWERTY keyboard.

And more.

I feel we are very much in a transitional phase at the moment. There are a lot of immature products being brought to market that have a few more years R&D required before they are worth considering.

I've been banging on about this for years.

Frankly I'm not overly impressed with the state of western engineering innovation.

See the sig.

vvvvvv

That electricity transmission work of Intel's is what I'm interested in, instead of those charging pads you set devices on that have to be plugged in themselves

G-Wizz, Pryus and the like = Epic Fail
Honda Clarity = Epic Win
H2 FTW!

Err, aren't we always in a transitional phase?

My thoughts exactly CC.

Yes and no, some technologies are stable and are only refined slowly, others you can look at them and go "hmm, that's more of a prototype than a finished product".

For example, office desks, they haven't changed much for a decade or so, yes, new styles come along, but the normal office desk hasn't changed much. High tech stuff is in near constant flux...

You can also look at some products and they are good and usable in their own right - the original Nokia 6110, the 6210, 3110 etc. the iPhone 3GS seems to have levelled off to a "mature" product, the first two generations were interesting, but obviously flawed, but the 3GS (and the 3G with newer software) feel more complete.

3D technology falls into the category of "interesting concept, do away with the silly prototype stuff (the glasses) and we might make a mature product out of it."

It is just that some transitions are slower than others.

Office desk design and technology has evolved but more in terms of fashion then function. A desk is a pretty simple product though so less scope for change.

With any tech. be it automotive or display or communication we seem to be in a state of constant change. New and improved models come out every year.