I don’t know what circles you travelled in that considered C a toy, as it demonstrated its utility when it was announced by Bell Labs in that it had already been used to rewrite a substantial portion of the fledgling UNIX operating system kernel and its utilities, and to port it to highly dissimilar computer architectures. In five years, C compilers were selling at $500 a pop for the PC. C had supplanted BASIC as the programming language of choice for micros. Mainstay BASIC had become the toy.

For you to imply, however, that technologies considered to be toys in their early commercial forms will nevertheless become highly established and standard accoutrements of our daily lives is debunked history. No, you didn’t specifically state that, but omitting the obvious failures leaves no room for doubt what your intent is. Why didn’t you mention the Apple Newton? Circuit City’s DIVX video disc players? Digital Audio Tapes (DAT)? Iridium? Net PCs? PointCast? WebTV? VideoTex? Zip drives? Microsoft Surface? Microsoft Bob? Aereo? Clinkle? The Sinclair MTV-1 Micro TV? Digital Compact Cassette? Bubble memory? Quadrophonic Sound? Token Ring? Cue Cat? Sony’s MiniDisc? ISDN? Microsoft Zune? Sony’s MemoryStick? The Segway? Laserdiscs? Apple Ping? Microsoft Kin? The Ouya? Google Buzz? Twitter Music?

I hope my list of flops is a convincing counter-argument to your list of successes. I made sure to list more than you did, even though you list four variations on GUI (GUI, the mouse, the Mac and graphics development), color screens twice (one being Windows, in reality a GUI), and three on networking (PC networking, PC server and peer-to-peer). The Internet (the web or hypertext, actually), streaming, and VOIP can remain as categories of applications enabled by networking.

While a16z may have multiple technologies it’s betting on that would be implicated by your commercial success argument, the most obvious target would have to be VR. So let me add to my list several tech flops in the VR space: 3D TV, Google Glass. Nintendo VirtuaBoy. Eyetop. Data Gloves. And this beauty from the 1940s:

While VR has great potential and obvious benefits, the head-mounted display (HMD) implementations as seen above are commercial duds, and particularly so when needed to be tethered to a high-end PC or console as the Oculus Rift, Sony Playstation VR, and HTC Vive. The hardware requirements of these models won’t deter VR adoption (as those who can’t afford it but are nonetheless interested in VR would instead opt for Google Cardboard, Samsung Gear VR or other less-expensive fare), but could help create a more loyal user community.

No, the larger obstacle is the historically negative portrayal of VR use and the advanced computer hacker/gamer, too involved with some hobbyist gimmickry to concern himself with life outside of his mom’s basement. Nobody wants to be identified with that guy. Nobody wants to be seen as awkward or clumsy. Nobody wants to be known as the guy with the bulky assemblage of gadgets clipped to his belt who considers himself to be admired by society, unaware he’s ridiculed. I’m sure you’re already familiar with Time magazine’s portrayal of Palmer Luckey last year.

Strap a VR HMD on your head, and you’re instantly transformed into that guy, oblivious to the people around you; unaware of them staring and pointing you out to others; vulnerable to their pranks. Normal people are acutely sensitive to their social position, and recognize those so hyper-connected to their computer activities are cut-off from activities in their immediate surroundings. Taken to its extreme, that disconnect can leave its users extremely vulnerable.

The toys you pointed out that became commercial successes did so when they were sufficiently sophisticated enough to handle real world tasks. When they were sufficiently integrated into the user workflow. When you didn’t have to go into a separate room, or put on a special outfit, or sit in the short bus with a helmet strapped on your head in order to do your job or collaborate with others.

In all fairness, I might be pointing out the shortcomings of VR headsets because my team is working on competing technologies, the use of autostereoscopic displays to make the room-sized holodeck and Iron Man interfaces a reality. But, honestly, I’m working on this technology because it’s simply a more intuitive, natural way to work with computers. We’re creating the future we want to live in.

We recognize the hard work the talented people who brought headset technology so far have done. And our software does support them as well. But a headset is just too clumsy an interface to work with on a regular, long-term basis. Coordinating user input with it is too.

The emperor, wearing an HMD, is convinced he’s actually wearing clothes. And no one can convince him otherwise. Especially those with real jobs, and real bills to pay; who don’t have time to play with toys.