Technology predictions that did NOT happen

http://listverse.com/2007/10/28/top-30-failed-technology-predictions/

Throughout history man has been making predictions of the future. With the advent of technology, the predictions moved away from religious topics to scientific and technological. Unfortunately for the speakers, many of these failed predictions have been recorded for all future generations to laugh at. Here is a selection of the 30 best.

Main Farnsworth

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



snip for the remaining 21

We can't get Solar and wind going in 2 years. So we have to start a 12 year nuclear power plant program?


WTF?

We need to keep this in mind. We really can solve most of our problems if we just approach them more positively.

It's the constant negativity that gets us in trouble. I was so hoping that the Obama administration would just start an avalanche of positive ideas. It hasn't happened. With people like Rahm Emmanuel and Timothy Geithner at his side, what is to be positive about?

Obama should look around and find really positive folks for his administration. That would bring the country together behind him.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarke's_three_laws

1 When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.

But even beyond that specificity, such things as this are usually exhibit B or C if not quite A against constant squawking from doomers that peak oil means a return to subsistence farming and the barter system, or that USD devaluation means we have a TEOTWAWKI event coming, and so on.

Never underestimate human ingenuity to both screw things up AND quickly find another way to get out of the mess. It's a cycle.

This is why I roll my eyes at the Luddite types that constantly declare that "Technology won't solve our problems".

Predicting the future is damn near impossible, even projecting from current circumstances and current technology is damn near impossible. We all have 20 - 20 hindsight. I doubt any of us can successfully predict what will be the predominant source of energy in use 100 years from now.