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Failed Tech Predictions

FAILED TECH PREDICTIONS (Aud Seme That Came Close) From stubborn naysayers to expert futurists, many people have made attempts to gaze into their crystal balls and predict the nebulous haze that is the future. Of course, not everyone can be right. Here's a look at technology's most notorious blundering predictions, as well as some that nearly came close to becoming a reality. Mided Tangets P PREDICTION R REALITY "[The] 'telephone' has too many shortcomings to be.considered as a means of communication." 1875 - Western Union Not only is the telephone a primary mode of communication, it has spawned an ubiquitous mobile market that connects billions around the world. "Fooling around with alternating current is just a waste of time. Nobody will use it, ever." - Thomas Edison 1878 Today, all home appliances that plug into the wall run on alternating current. 1889 1900 "A rocket will never be able to leave the Earth's atmosphere." - New York Times Since 1942, when the first human-made object - a German V2 rocket - was successfully launched into space, modern rocketry has literally transcended beyond man's imagination and galvanized unprecedented space exploration. "I think there is a world market for maybe five computers." - Thomas Watson, President of IBM 1925 Forrester Research predicts that there will be two billion PCs in use by 2015. Nuclear-powered vacuum cleaner 1936 Regrettably, this ambitious project never saw the light of day, and the closest equivalent would probably be newer vacuums that run on power-efficient digital motors. 1943 "..your mail will be delivered within hours from New York to Australia by guided missiles." - Arthur Summerfield, U.S. Postmaster General We don't need our mail to be delivered within hours by guided missiles - we have e-mail messages that do it in less than a second. 1950 1955 1959 "Remote shopping.will flop." - Time Magazine 1966 In the age of the Internet, online retail and e-commerce are booming like never before, with more than 85 percent of the world's online population having made a purchase over the web. 1974 1975 BARKI Robot pets One prediction assumed that by the end of the 20th century, pets would be wired with brain electrodes, allowing them to close windows or adjust beds on command. Unfortunately, Fido still has to be trained the traditional way: doggy treats. 1986 "By the turn of the century, we will live in a paperless society." - Roger Smith, GM chairman 1995 Even though many facets of our lives have entered the digital age, it's unlikely we'll ever completely lose our dependence on paper. 2000 "I predict the Internet.will go spectacularly supernova and in 1996 catastrophically collapse." - Bob Metcalfe, Co-inventor of Ethernet Not only has the Internet not collapsed upon itself, it 2004 continues to expand and has grown by over 445 percent since the year 2000. "Two years from now, 'spam' will be solved." - Bill Gates Sorry Bill, recent estimates place the amount of spam circulating the Internet at more than 97 percent of all e-mail messages. Predictions That Close Came 1924 Flying Car Automotive designer Eddie Rickenbacker predicted that flying cars would be the vehicle of the future. Although we haven't perfected a commercial car that can zip us through the clouds, MIT-trained engineers have developed the "Terrafugia Transition" - an ultra-light plane that can also drive on streets. 1962 Video Telephones With the help of Skype and other video chat applications, we have successfully integrated video communication into our lives. Still, it hasn't reached the lofty visions of 1960s that imagined video telephones would replace voice-only ones. 1965 Machines Will Be Capable of Doing Any VWork Humans Can Do It may not have happened by 1985, as predicted by artificial intelligence founder Herbert Simon, but with the number of machine and computer-run processes today, this reality is getting nearer every day. Enomerns Teduology Assumptions amazon.com é iPhone Amazon Can't Sell Books! 1995 2007 iPhone = iPhony? "I'm dubious that Amazon..will ever generate the huge profits that their stock prices suggest." "There's no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share." -Thomas Friedman -Steve Ballmer By the end of the 2010 fiscal year, a total of 73.5 million iPhones were Amazon is trading today between $175 and $200 per share. The online retailer not only dominates the book business, it's also a leader in enterprise cloud computing solutions. sold, granting it a quarter of the smartphone market share. O SOCIALCAST SOURCES: MSN.com | PBS.org | PCWorld.com | NYTimes.com | PaleoFuture.com | Discovery.com | Forester Research | BBC.co.uk © 2011 SOCIALCAST INC. ALL OTHER TRADEMARKS HEREIN ARE RECOGNIZED TO BE THE PROPERTY OF THEIR RESPECTIVE OWINERS. SOCIALCAST OCALCAST

Failed Tech Predictions

shared by ColumnFive on Jul 30
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From stubborn naysayers to expert futurists, many people have made attempts to gaze into their crystal balls and predict the nebulous haze that is the future. Of course, not everyone can be right. Her...

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