What does a "Second Life that doesn't suck" look like? What would have made it not suck? What does a "Newton that doesn't suck" look like? What would have made it not suck? I know of no example of the 2ndL but as far as a "newton that doesn't suck" it sure as hell wasn't the Palm Pilot. That sucker was virtually indistinguishable from the Newton and people adopted them like hotcakes. The Newton was simply too early. Apple had a digital camera, too. Again, for clarity: of the people in this discussion, I'll bet I'm the only one who has actually played with 3d printing. And I did it a long goddamn time ago. And the things that made it moderately compelling in 1998 are the things that make it moderately compelling in 2012... the only difference is that 14 years later, a whole bunch of people who don't understand it have it in their heads that it's cool because they saw a blog post about candyfab.
Newton --> iPad And you can't tell me those products aren't successful. But that's beside the point -- I'm not here to lay the blueprint for the Next Big Thing or argue the particulars of what might have been. My point is that you can't isolate a handful of failed executions of an idea and then conclude that the whole concept is doomed to obscurity or failure.
The Newton was never intended as anything but a business organizer. Comparing it to an iPad simply illustrates your ignorance of the platform. MY point is that VR isn't "a handful" of failed executions of an idea. MY point is that a whole bunch of clever people have been devoting their lives to it for decades and its adoption is no higher now than it was when Reagan was president. Kind of how MY point is that 3d printing has been around for over 15 years and the reason it hasn't set the world afire is that nobody really wants it.