Was the VM a failure?

[Bernd]

Many theories about the Voynich Manuscript portray it to be an ingeniously clever cipher or a novel method to encode a foreign or constructed language, often claimed to be invented by a famous person. Indeed all (serious) attempts to make sense of the text have utterly failed so far.

But is this hypothesis really feasible? Despite the countless things we do not know about the VM, we can make two statements with great confidence:
1)The mechanism by which the VM text was created did not gain traction and become widely used around the time the VM was made in the 15th century.
2)No even remotely similar encoding mechanism evolved in the next ~600 years until today.
3) Despite countless attempts since Wilfried Voynich's time a century ago, the 'code' remains uncracked.

This should raise some serious doubts.
While examples for brilliant inventions that were lost in time exist (Antikythera mechanism), I do not think this is a parsimonious hypothesis. Given the overall rather amateurish and provincial look of the VM, I think it is far more likely that:
.)If the VM contains enciphered information, the encipherment process is probably too cumbersome and ineffective for most scenarios.

.)The VM served a very narrow and probably personal purpose that did not require the decipherment process to be practical for a wider audience, maybe relying on a-priori knowledge of the contents like a mnemonic aid.

Or - the VM text was never meant to contain any information and was created for whatever different purpose altogether. Again we fail to find comparable examples.

I am not fond of deliberate hoax hypotheses, simply for the almost fractal complexity and level of details we can see in the VM text and imagery, unnecessary for a hoax. But it certainly cannot be ruled out. Yet, no even remotely complex hoax document was ever uncovered.

Regardless of the intention behind the VM, what we can say for sure is that it's creation process wasn't a success story that was frequently repeated. It may have served a purpose for the author or a very small circle, and I do believe it was important for its creator(s) because of the sheer work involved, but it appears unlikely the project was of any broader significance beyond that.

Had it been a ground-breaking and practical invention, it would either have spread fairly quickly or re-evolved in the next hundred years. I think we should keep that in mind.