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A guy on a forum in 2019 told me my "tech predictions" post was too nice, so I started digging up the dumb ones
I used to write these soft takes about how old predictions were "understandable at the time," and someone replied with just "dude, the 1995 Newsweek piece said the internet would never be a real market." So now I only post the ones that make the experts look silly, like the 1981 quote claiming 640K of memory should be enough for anybody. Which old prediction do you think aged the worst?
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cole_bailey8519d ago
The Ken Olsen one from 1977 gets me every time, where the head of Digital Equipment said there's no reason anyone would want a computer in their home. That guy ran a whole computer company and couldn't see it. Same deal with the 1981 quote about 640K, people forget that one might not even be real but everyone repeats it anyway. Here's the thing though, the ones that age worst are always from the guy who should know better, not some random columnist. When the expert in the field says the thing is impossible, that's the one that ends up on a poster 40 years later. If you want the worst one, go find what the head of the patent office supposedly said about closing up shop because everything had been invented. That one still gets passed around like it just happened yesterday.
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