If the predictions below came true, you and I might be living as communists, riding our horses to go on vacation, sharing the world’s five computers, and watching nothing but silent films for entertainment. For better or for worse, the following predictions about politics, culture, entertainment, and more did not come true.
Television: I happily gave nine years of my life to TV.
The average American family hasn’t time for television.—New York Times, 1939.
Television won’t last. It’s a flash in the pan.—Mary Somerville, pioneer of radio educational broadcasts, 1948.
Television won’t be able to hold onto any market it captures after the first six months. People will soon get tired of staring at a plywood box every night.—Daryl F. Zanuck, producer, writer, and actor who played a major part in the Hollywood studio system.
However much Americans complain about not having enough time, they always manage to squeeze in some good ol’ boob tube watching. Today the average American watches more than four hours of television each day. That’s twenty-eight hours per week, which equals two months of nonstop TV-watching per year. Oh no, think of the children. In a sixty-five-year lifespan, the average person will have spent nine years just watching television—I think that’s quite a strong market holding.
Movies: The nominee for best silent picture film of the year goes to …
Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?—H. M. Warner, Warner Brothers, 1927.
The cinema is little more than a fad. It’s canned drama. What audiences really want to see is flesh and blood on the stage.—Charlie Chaplin, actor, producer, director, and studio founder, 1916.
Sorry Charlie. No stage could re-create the special effects in Blockbuster hits like Pirates of the Caribbean or The Matrix. With HD and Blue Ray technology, you practically can see actors sweat as if they were right in front of you. In the U.S. alone, moviegoers spent $9.23 billion at the box office in 2007 and over 70 percent of the population rents or goes to movies regularly. Not only does the public want to see actors talk, they want to see them date, eat, party, parent, shop, run, cry, breakdown, and hurt themselves, as proven by the growth in sales of celebrity magazines this last year (hey, you buy them, not me). One example: OK! Weekly jumped 54 percent, to over 800,000 copies an issue, and US Weekly, In Touch Weekly, and Life & Style Weekly all rose 5 percent to 10 percent.
Politics: Politics and lies together forever.
We will bury you.—Nikita Krushchev, Soviet Premier, predicting Soviet communism will win over U.S. capitalism, 1958.
It is unknowable how long that conflict will last. It could last six days, six weeks. I doubt six months.—Donald Rumsfeld on the U.S. and Iraq War.
Sensible and responsible women do not want to vote.—Grover Cleveland, U.S. President 1905.
The invasion of Operation Iraqi Freedom has lasted over five years and it looks like there is no end in sight. Women vote, hold positions in the Supreme Court, Senate, Congress, and run for president. How’s that for sensible and responsible?
