Posted on 04/28/2018 4:52:10 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
Is Bitcoin a greed-driven fad or will the blockchain technology that underlies it revolutionize the internet? Will artificial intelligence produce a world of ease and plenty or turn on us and kill us all? Is that jet pack you always wanted arriving any day now, or basically never?
There are no shortage of people who make their livings by claiming to have answers to these questions. You should probably meet their claims with a healthy dose of skepticism.
Futurists aren't all snake oil salesmen, of course, and it's sensible for both individuals and businesses to think ahead and develop contingency plans for possible future scenarios. But history also offers plenty of reasons to be skeptical of "experts" with crystal balls.
In the past, a great many of them have often been outrageously wrong.
You may have heard the infamous 1977 quote by Digital Equipment Corp. president Ken Olson -- "There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home" -- but as a highly entertaining recent roundup of failed tech predictions by blog Relatively Interesting illustrates, Olson's flub was just the tip of a very large iceberg.
Here's a small sampling of the sometimes hilarious quotes that made the list. I can't guarantee the historical accuracy of all of them (many quotes have incredibly murky origins), but I can promise they'll remind you that confidence is no guarantee of actual competence when it comes to predictions of the future of tech.
"There is not the slightest indication that nuclear energy will ever be obtainable. It would mean that the atom would have to be shattered at will." -- Albert Einstein, 1932.
So....people who invested in the Radio Telephone Company. Did they get rich, or did they lose their money?
Around 1952, I was 5 years old. My 10 year old Brother knew everything. He belonged to a gang, not a bad gang, just a bunch of local kids.
One day we were standing around an old barrel which was burning tar. The question came up: Will man ever land on the moon.
Joe thought for a few seconds and said, “no”.
That was it, I knew we would never land on the moon.
Add to the list of you want. Here’s my addition:
“The next generation of interesting software will be done on the Macintosh, not the IBM PC,” said Bill Gates in a BusinessWeek article in 1984.
11. Jeff Sessions is about to spring his trap.
“I believe OS/2 is destined to be the most important operating system, and possibly program, of all time,” Bill Gates said in 1987.
1966: “Remote shopping, while entirely feasible, will flop. Time Magazine.
1981: Cellular phones will absolutely not replace local wire systems. Marty Cooper, inventor.
1995: “I predict the Internet will soon go spectacularly supernova and in 1996 catastrophically collapse.” Robert Metcalfe, founder of 3Com.
If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor.
Barack Obama, 2010.
And don’t forget that the polar ice caps are going to melt in 2013. I think that the inventor of the internet, Al Gore said that.
In 1962, Decca Records refused to sign the Beatles, saying “guitar groups are on the way out” and “The Beatles have no future in show business,”.
We have a todays winner !
bttt
In the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, the learned wizards of smart were all crowing about how Japan’s “Fifth Generation Computer” was going to be the next wonder of the world.
Ah yes, Edward Feigenbaum, the greeaat learned man.
While not a tech prediction, the rock group Rush figured that when they released their album “2112” in 1976 it would be their last - but they would go out on their terms.
They finally did hang it up a few years ago after 40+ years!
With regard to tech - I’m still waiting for the regular use of flying cars!
Bookmark
I made a prediction once.
I bought the very first issue of People Magazine,went home,read it,and told my husband that it was just garbage and would never last.
Oh well !
On the non tech field as well, I recall reading about how Randy Travis was turned down by every label in Nashville as they considered him “too country” (they apparently made the same comments about Dwight Yoakam). Executives at Warner Bros in Nashville figured that they would be happy if a few thousand copies of Travis’ debut album “Storms of Life” were to have sold (it ended up going gold and then later platinum).
Rush never made a bad album over all of those years, IMHO. Whether you like the earlier years or the 1980s and 1990s period, they always made very good to excellent music.
Interesting. That's precisely the same reaction I had when I first heard KC & The Sunshine Band on the radio.
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