I just got my reminder email that the Kickstarter for the Emotiv Insight is ending in 3 days (38 hours now). Just like the Ouya, Oculus, and Google Glass, I’m deciding to pass. Not because I don’t believe in the products, but because I think it is too soon. These first-run products are too limited. They are all, in my opinion, important evolutionary steps in their particular niche of the human tech tree, but none meet or exceed what I imagine to be the potential inherent in their design.
Kickstarter has been amazing for getting these revolutionary products (sans Google Glass) into the hands of consumers without needing the infinite pocketbooks of, say, google. I do think human trials are an important fist step in the process, but only google really has the capability to do an 8,000 person beta test. So the other products, even though nobody knows really what they’re for, or how they will be used, have to be dressed up as a finished product. (I guess the Ouya is the outlier here, it’s a perfectly viable product already, just needs more games, IMO. It’s also not doing anything particularly revolutionary.)