Technology: We are living in a tech world and I am a tech girl.
I think there is a world market for maybe five computers.—Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943.
I predict the internet ... will go spectacularly supernova and in 1996 catastrophically collapse.—Bob Metcalfe, InfoWorld, 1995.
The internet, computers, and our world—what a loaded concept. In the field of technology, the computer is the most predominant invention that has affected the entire way society functions. Computers are everywhere. The infinite amount of services we are all scrambling after is delivered to us at high-speed through the internet. The trick will be getting our human brains to keep up. Even Google has taken on God.
Music: Remember that old musical instrument, what was it called, a guitar?
We don’t like their sound, and guitar music is on the way out.—Decca Recording Co. rejecting the Beatles, 1962.
In February 2005, “ … by next Christmas the iPod will be dead, finished, gone, kaput.”—Sir Alan Sugar, English entrepreneur and broadcaster.
After the Beatles came Hendrix, Frank Zappa, Santana, Roy Rogers; the list goes on. Here’s a prediction I’m comfortable with making; the guitar will always be “in.” And as for the iPod, Apple has sold over 100 million units to this day. In fact, right now I’m listening to an iPod; actually three of my co-workers surrounding me are, too. What’s next? Perhaps an iPod device to insert into one’s head—music, podcasts, and more—twenty-four hours a day.
Transportation: I drive, excuse me, ride a Mustang. You know, the horse.
No one will pay good money to get from Berlin to Potsdam in one hour when he can ride his horse there in one day for free.—King William I of Prussia, 1864, in reaction to the invention of trains.
The horse is here to stay but the automobile is only a novelty—a fad.”—The president of the Michigan Savings Bank telling Henry Ford’s advisors not to invest in the Ford Motor Co., 1903.
“There will never be a bigger plane built.”—A Boeing engineer, after the first flight of the 247 in 1933. The twin-engine plane held ten people and traveled from England to Australia in ninety-two hours.
Riding a horse may be free, but in today’s world, time is money. The faster the better—no matter what the financial or environmental cost. And as far as Boeing’s 247 seating only ten people and taking over ninety hours to get from England to Australia, today’s largest airplane, the double decker Airbus, takes twenty-one hours on the same route and has 555 seats. How much bigger could an airplane get?
Here’s my prediction; the future will always be unpredictable. Can’t argue with that.
