http://listverse.com/history/top-30-failed-technology-predictions/
1. “There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home.” — Ken Olson, president, chairman and founder of Digital Equipment Corp. (DEC), maker of big business mainframe computers, arguing against the PC in 1977.
2. “We will never make a 32 bit operating system.” — Bill Gates
3. “Lee DeForest has said in many newspapers and over his signature that it would be possible to transmit the human voice across the Atlantic before many years. Based on these absurd and deliberately misleading statements, the misguided public … has been persuaded to purchase stock in his company …” — a U.S. District Attorney, prosecuting American inventor Lee DeForest for selling stock fraudulently through the mail for his Radio Telephone Company in 1913.
4. “There is practically no chance communications space satellites will be used to provide better telephone, telegraph, television, or radio service inside the United States.” — T. Craven, FCC Commissioner, in 1961 (the first commercial communications satellite went into service in 1965).
5. “To place a man in a multi-stage rocket and project him into the controlling gravitational field of the moon where the passengers can make scientific observations, perhaps land alive, and then return to earth – all that constitutes a wild dream worthy of Jules Verne. I am bold enough to say that such a man-made voyage will never occur regardless of all future advances.” — Lee DeForest, American radio pioneer and inventor of the vacuum tube, in 1926
6. “A rocket will never be able to leave the Earth’s atmosphere.” — New York Times, 1936.
7. “Flight by machines heavier than air is unpractical (sic) and insignificant, if not utterly impossible.” – Simon Newcomb; The Wright Brothers flew at Kittyhawk 18 months later.
8. “Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible.” — Lord Kelvin, British mathematician and physicist, president of the British Royal Society, 1895.
9. “There will never be a bigger plane built.” — A Boeing engineer, after the first flight of the 247, a twin engine plane that holds ten people.
10. “Nuclear-powered vacuum cleaners will probably be a reality in 10 years.” -– Alex Lewyt, president of vacuum cleaner company Lewyt Corp., in the New York Times in 1955.
#1 by AFKAN on 03/19/2008 - 1:42 am
One pedantic comment as an old PDP 11/70 “PEEK/POKE/POP” head:
DEC didn’t make the “big business mainframe computer.”
That was IBM.
DEC made the MINIcomputer.
It was rendered obsolete by the MICROcomputer – the PC.
None of them could have imagined what is being done now with software, but, if memory serves, DEC was doing pretty clever stuff in parallel processing with a program called LINDA.
Enough woolgathering!
Kids in elementary school have more computing power than NASA had when it sent men to the Moon…
Their focus seems to be internal – alternative parallel (personal) universes, rather than external.
Incidentally, Jim Bakker’s son noted (I think he was citing Barna, the religions demographer) than only FOUR PERCENT of today’s adolescents believe in Christianity.
Internal focus and Gaia worship…
Incidentally, note that the strongest naysayers of the Discontinuous Future are those who were in the most profitable positions for themselves and their enterprises as recipients of the highly profitable First Mover Advantage.
Here’s a development that has completely skipped the Lamestream Media:
http://itnews.com.au/News/72057,childlike-intelligence-created-in-second-life.aspx
That “child’s” intelligence will develop at light speed…
Think about what this will lead to ten years from now…
#2 by Z on 03/19/2008 - 2:17 am
Like many people, I want to know the future. The real future. One of the things that stuck out at me when I first started reading at BUGS was BOB’s prediction that American politics would start becoming racialized. Well, if anyone watched the speech given by Obama yesterday, I think we can conclude that IT’S HERE!
Race has surpassed everything from the war in Iraq to even the economy as the centerpiece of the American political landscape. When a white women Democrat who ran for vice President in 84 starts pointing out things usually only heard on Stormfront, you know times are a changing.
And there is no going back. Now there’s no question that there will be times when the media will try to make it look like the country is near multicultural paradise, but just like the Soviet Mayday parade, this will all be superficial. And there will also be times when power structure will make it look as if white “extremists” are the reason the country is “failing to integrate” (Read: whites are not accepting their own genocide).
The fact is, and it doesn’t matter how much the elite wish it to be, multi-ethnic states do not work. The same way socialist economies don’t work. And all the Mayday parades in the world won’t make them work.
Its been very entertaining watching this Presidential race. And I can’t express how much I want Obama to win. An Obama victory will do more for the interests of the white race than a 10,000 man torchlight parade conducted every weekend. When people ask how this could be, I tell them this antidote:
IN 2004 the San Francisco Mayor started marrying Homosexuals in that city. This appeared to be a huge blow to Christians who worry about that issue. But the result of those actions caused the gay marriage referendum to go on the ballot on almost 20 states. It has been pointed out that this brought much more people to the polls than would have if not for it being on the ballot. Its very possible that the fear of gay marriage brought Bush enough voters to the polls which lead to his victory. So because of the actions of the Mayor of San Francisco, George Bush ended up winning a second term. Now to the Christians, they thought the world was collapsing when this started happening in SF. But in reality, those actions by the SF mayor did more to hurt the gay marriage issue than if he had done nothing at all.
Before learning at BUGS, I would have never learned to think this way. But as BOB has pointed out “you can be king, I just want to run the world.” All that money that people at Stormfront sent to Ron Paul, would have been better spent going to Obama.
#3 by Bob on 03/19/2008 - 11:24 am
Z:
“just like the Soviet Mayday parade,”
That reminds me of a joke that was going around Moscow during the latter May Day parades:
“Saudi Arabia has gone Communist.”
“They just announced there is a shortage of sand.”
#4 by Bob on 03/19/2008 - 11:35 am
AFKAN, woolgathering by us elders is Ok if, as you do here, you then go ahead and card it for USE.
That’s what I try to do here.