iPhone, TV, internet: Scientists’ flawed predictions – 11/04/2023 – Tech

To predict, according to the dictionary, is to announce through a revelation, founded knowledge, to anticipate through intuition or conjecture something that will happen.

Although common sense may say that it is not advisable to do so, foresight is necessary in all aspects of life: any decision involves some degree of visualization of the future.

But as the brilliant physicist Neils Bohr said, “predicting is very difficult, especially if it’s about the future.”

And when trustworthy voices venture to guess what will happen and fail, they are never forgotten.

Let’s say it’s because some lesson can be learned from these catalogs of errors. But, to be honest, every prediction is still fun.

Recently, for example, an editorial published 120 years ago, in October 1903, by the American newspaper The New York Times (NYT), one of the most respected and awarded in the world, was circulated.

The headline was “Flying machines that don’t fly.” In the final lines, the author concluded:

“…one could assume that the flying machine that would actually fly could evolve with the combined and continued efforts of mathematicians and mechanics within a million to 10 million years.”

Then, six weeks later, on December 17, the Wright brothers performed the first sustained flight in a heavier-than-air aircraft.

To be fair, the author of the article was commenting on a failed flight attempt he witnessed.

However literate he was, he was not a famous physicist and inventor, as was William Thomson, Lord Kelvin, who in 1895 declared that “heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible.”

In fact, Lord Kelvin is one of the classics of the art of prediction.

In 1897 he concluded that “radio has no future” and in 1900 assured his fellow scientists that “X-ray is a hoax.”

He was on the threshold of a revolution that would bring unimaginable technologies.

Below, we have listed a collection of wrong predictions about some of the most used inventions today.

‘A wooden box’

“Although television may theoretically and technically be viable, commercially and financially it is impossible,” said Lee DeForest, a radio pioneer and inventor with more than 180 patents, in 1926.

However, the idea of ​​seeing images from a distance had a long history, and in the 1920s the fantasy became reality.

There was no single “inventor” of television. A large number of “experimenters”, businesspeople and public organizations participated.

While the device was being perfected, presentations were made to the press and the public.

In 1939, the NYT published an article titled “Act I, Scene I: Domestic Broadcasts Begin April 30. World’s Fair Will Be the Setting” by Orrin E. Dunlap Jr., a broadcast journalist.

In his opinion…

“The problem with television is that people have to sit down and keep their eyes glued to the screen; the average American family doesn’t have time for that.”

A similar opinion was expressed in 1946 by Darryl Zanuck, co-founder of the film studio 20th Century Fox:

“Television will never retain an audience. People will quickly get bored of looking at a plywood box every night.”

Contrary to their predictions, television has become an important focal point in the daily lives of many Americans and the rest of the world.

Today, nearly 80% of Americans watch television daily. A person watches about 141 hours of television per month or 1,692 hours per year, on average.

Assuming you reach the average life expectancy of 78 years, that equates to about 15 years of your life.

And all this just in the United States, where people “shouldn’t have time for this.”

‘A supernova’

Like television, the internet was developed with the time and work of many people.

And it was the World Wide Web that made it accessible to everyone.

Although it had been there for a few years, it was in 1995 that the internet began to take hold more firmly.

Reactions were mixed. Among the skeptics, astrophysicist Clifford Stoll stood out, who in his book “Silicon Snake Oil” predicted:

“I don’t think phone books, newspapers, magazines or video stores will disappear with the spread of computer networks. I also don’t think my phone will merge with my computer to become some kind of information device.”

But the most memorable prediction came from internet pioneer Robert Metcalfe, the billionaire inventor of Ethernet technology and founder of 3Com Corporation.

In a classic article published in December 1995 in InfoWorld, he wrote:

“Almost all predictions made now about 1996 depend on the continued exponential growth of the internet. But I predict that the internet (…) will soon go into a spectacular supernova and in 1996 will collapse catastrophically.”

And he didn’t stop there: he promised to eat his words about the collapse of the internet if the “supernova” prediction turned out to be wrong.

In 1997, taking the stage during an international conference on the World Wide Web in Santa Clara, California, Metcalfe acknowledged that the internet was not a supernova.

Since he was committed to eating his own words, he attempted to do so by eating a large cake decorated to resemble his InfoWorld column.

But the audience booed him: he wasn’t going to get away so easily.

Metcalfe had to tear up the InfoWorld column, put it in a blender with some water to make it into a pulp, and eat it.

Despite the spectacle, not everyone learned their lesson and insisted on predicting the end of the web.

Just a year later, and citing a law named after Metcalfe, renowned economist Paul Krugman anticipated its imminent demise.

“Internet growth will slow dramatically as the flaw in ‘Metcalfe’s Law’ becomes clear: most people have nothing to say to each other!” than fax.”

Not only was he wrong, but this prediction appeared in an article published by technology magazine Red Herring. The title: “Why Most Economists’ Predictions Are Wrong” (no joke).

Although he didn’t have to eat his words, he secured a place in this peculiar pantheon of fame.

‘No possibility’

“Cell phones will never replace the corded telephone.”

Obviously it was a completely wrong provision.

The curious thing is that the person who said this in 1981 was none other than the inventor of the cell phone, Marty Cooper, who made the first call with the device in New York, in 1973.

And speaking of phones…

“There is no chance of the iPhone gaining significant market share,” former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer told USA Today in 2007.

“No chance,” he emphasized. “They can make money. But if you really look at the 1.3 billion phones sold, I’d rather have our software in 60%, 70%, 80% of them than have Apple’s 2% or 3%.”

Given that the iPhone would become the most successful consumer technology product of all time, this is probably one of the worst predictions in history.

This text was originally published here.