Misjudging Or Underestimating The Advancement Of Technology?

How many times have you been proved wrong when predicting something about technology? Don’t despair, you are in good company. Just look at some of your predecessors.

"Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?"

H.M. Warner, Warner Brothers, 1927

"The telephone has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication. The device is inherently of no value to us."

An internal Western Union memo, 1876

"I think there is a world market for maybe five computers."

IBM chairman Thomas Watson, 1943

"There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home

Ken Olson, founder, chairman & president of DEC, 1977

"640k ought to be enough for anybody."

Bill Gates, 1981

"Computers in the future may weigh no more than 1.5 tons."

Popular Mechanics, forecasting the relentless march of science, 1949

"Everything that can be invented has already been invented."

Charles H. Duell, director of the U.S. Patent Office, 1899

"A rocket will never be able to leave the earth's atmosphere."

The New York Times, 1936

"The wireless music box has no imaginable commercial value. Who would pay for a message sent to nobody in particular?"

David Sarnoff's associates in response to his urgings for investment in the radio in the 1920s.

"There is no likelihood man can ever tap the power of the atom."

Nobel Prize-winning physicist Robert Milliken, 1923

"Television won't last because people will soon get tired of staring at a plywood box every night."

Producer Darryl Zanuck, 20th Century Fox, 1946

"Drill for oil? You mean drill into the ground to try and find oil? You're crazy!"

Drillers who Edwin L. Drake tried to enlist to his project to drill for oil in 1859

"Well-informed people know it is impossible to transmit the voice over wires and that were it possible to do so, the thing would be of no practical value."

Boston Post, 1865

"Airplanes are interesting toys, but of no military value."

Marechal Ferdinand Foch, Professor of Strategy, Ecole Superieure de Guerre.

"Louis Pasteur's theory of germs is ridiculous fiction."

Pierre Pachet, Professor of Physiology at Toulouse, 1872

"Radio has no future, x-rays are clearly a hoax and the aeroplane is scientifically impossible."

Royal Society president Lord Kelvin, 1897-99

"The atom bomb will never go off - and I speak as an expert in explosives."

U.S. Admiral William Leahy in 1945

My advice – Never comment on future technology.