Worst Ever Technology Predictions ...

[klr]

http://www.t3.com/news/sugar-ipod-error ... ion?=37516

1. The iPod will never take off – Sir Alan Sugar in 2005

2. No need for a computer in the home – Ken Olsen, founder of Digital Equipment Corp in 1977

3. "Nuclear-powered vacuum cleaners will probably be a reality within ten years" – Alex Lewyt, president of the Lewyt Corp vacuum company

4. TV won't last because people would, "soon get tired of staring at a plywood box every night" – Darryl Zanuck in 1946

5. In 1933, after the first flight of the Boeing 247, a plane that could hold ten people, a proud Boeing engineer reportedly said, "There will never be a bigger plane built."

6. "We stand on the threshold of rocket mail" – US postmaster general Arthur Summerfield in 1959

7. Nobody would ever need more than 640KB of memory on their personal computer– Bill Gates in 1981, allegedly.

8. "The Americans have need of the telephone, but we do not. We have plenty of messenger boys" – Sir William Preece, chief engineer at the Post Office in 1878

9. Spam will be solved – Bill Gates, 2004.

10. "X-rays will prove to be a hoax" – Lord Kelvin, President of the Royal Society, in 1883.

The bold Sir Alan is reputed to have said: "Next Christmas the iPod will be dead, finished, gone, kaput ..."

Pity he wasn't right.

Strangely, what might well be the worst technology prediction ever is missing from the list:

"I think there is a world market for maybe five computers" - Thomas J. Watson Snr., head of IBM, 1943

Maybe that's because it's might actually be an urban legend.

[Don't Panic]

"I think there is a world market for maybe five computers" - Thomas J. Watson Snr., head of IBM, 1843

Wow, he was well ahead of the curve back then.

[Mallardz]

"I think there is a world market for maybe five computers" - Thomas J. Watson Snr., head of IBM, 1843

Wow, he was well ahead of the curve back then.

I noticed that too.

[klr]

Maybe he'd had a chat with Charles Babbage and Ada Lovelace.

[Clinton Huxley]

I always liked the one predicting that nuclear power would provide electricity "too cheap to meter".

[Matthew Bailey]

I always liked the one predicting that nuclear power would provide electricity "too cheap to meter".

Well, with new Liquid Thorium reactors, it very well could. One reactor on every block and you'd have enough power for everyone and then some.

Matthew Bailey

[Feck]

CDs BBC Tomorrows World " Great new media blah blah never jump or get scratches blah blah last for ever blah blah "

[Berthold]

All the people (a lot!) who said that a device heavier than air cannot fly (when birds and insects obviously do it!).

A Prussian military authority stated that rockets can't fly in the vacuum of space "because the exhaust gases have nothing to push against there".

[Russell]

In general, anything to do with Artificial Intelligence, the big things are always 10 years away.

[klr]

In general, anything to do with Artificial Intelligence, the big things are always 10 years away.

Just what do you think you're doing, Dave?

[Clinton Huxley]

One of the worst must be Arthur C. Clarke's about miniature household elephants.

Foolish boy.

[lpetrich]

I've never heard of that latter one, but I know about the New York Times editorializing about the impossibility of spaceflight back in 1920. A day after publishing an article on Robert Goddard's work on rocketry, some editorial writer harrumphed that space travel is impossible. This was because of Newton's Third Law of Motion and there being nothing in outer space to push against. Goddard settled that question by firing some of his rockets in vacuum chambers. They still worked.

Fortunately, the NYT issued a retraction the day after the launch of the Apollo 11 spacecraft, after over a decade's worth of direct counterevidence.


On the other side, several people in the 1950's, 1960's, and 1970's had made predictions about the progress of artificial intelligence that seem almost ludicrously optimistic in retrospect. Computer stuff has progressed enormously since then, both in hardware and in software, but AI is still in a very primitive state. I've tried various chatbots, and I've found that they very miserably flunk the Turing Test. Natural-language translation was hyped very early on, but it still produces absurdities like the old joke about translating "the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak" into Russian and back, and getting "The vodka is good, but the meat is rotten". Etc.

[klr]

I've never heard of that latter one, but I know about the New York Times editorializing about the impossibility of spaceflight back in 1920. A day after publishing an article on Robert Goddard's work on rocketry, some editorial writer harrumphed that space travel is impossible. This was because of Newton's Third Law of Motion and there being nothing in outer space to push against. Goddard settled that question by firing some of his rockets in vacuum chambers. They still worked.

Fortunately, the NYT issued a retraction the day after the launch of the Apollo 11 spacecraft, after over a decade's worth of direct counterevidence.


On the other side, several people in the 1950's, 1960's, and 1970's had made predictions about the progress of artificial intelligence that seem almost ludicrously optimistic in retrospect. Computer stuff has progressed enormously since then, both in hardware and in software, but AI is still in a very primitive state. I've tried various chatbots, and I've found that they very miserably flunk the Turing Test. Natural-language translation was hyped very early on, but it still produces absurdities like the old joke about translating "the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak" into Russian and back, and getting "The vodka is good, but the meat is rotten". Etc.