Ask HN: What were some great ideas that were too early for their time?

Capability based security[1], which Multics had.

Not to be confused with app permissions, it's a very different concept.

It'll probably start being adopted in about 5 more years.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capability-based_security

Tesla's understanding of electricity. Most would agree he was way ahead of Edison, who used his position to suppress the advancement of Tesla's ideas. Eventually, Tesla was able to demonstrate alternating current on a large scale, but he had so much more to contribute that has not yet seen the light of day.

- Virtual reality - seems to be too early the second time now - Moon landing - it was just a showcase what will we achieve now - Light bulbs in ancient Egypt

It's still not ready, it makes quite a few users nauseous. It's a huge bug remaining to be fixed.

Maybe try the incandescents

The Newton. Computer vision recognition. 5th generation (inference) AI. Protein folding.

Google Wave was basically Slack.

And it could have been so very much more, had they not crippled the UI like that.