The future is impossible to predict unless of course you have a time machine, which I don’t see anybody possessing. Anyways, that doesn’t stop us from trying to know what could happen in the future given the state of the things.

We are all on the lookout for any hints that may foretell how things will unfold, whether it be about life, or work, or other things, because that gives us a sense of comfort or potential opportunities that can be capitalized upon.

This is especially true of the technology landscape because things evolve so fast that it is almost impossible to know where we are headed and what may or may not turn out to be the next world changer.

Therefore, we turn towards credible people who have experience in the field and hold their predictions as more valuable than any other person, but you know what? Even they fail most of the times. Let’s take a look at what people had to say about the technology that we take for granted today.

Telephone

We cannot imagine today’s life without the phone. It’s invention truly brought the world a lot closer and almost turned it into a single community. Anybody could be reached just a phone call away.

But initially, people were very skeptic about this world changing technology. In fact, Sir William Preece, Chief Engineer of British Post Office in 1878, said, “The Americans have need of the telephone, but we do not. We have plenty of messenger boys.”

The telephone quickly became widely popular as we all know but people’s habit of being skeptics didn’t die. In fact, the next iteration of the telephone, the cellular phone, received the same skepticism, and this time, from its own inventor.

Marty Cooper, the inventor of the mobile phone said, “Cellular phones will absolutely not replace local wire systems” and while that is technically true, because landlines are still around, I think it is safe to say that cell phones have taken over.

Television

The television is one of the most important mediums of information and entertainment throughout the world. Almost everyone has one in their living room and we can’t imagine life without it.

Despite the fact that most of the content consumption is done online, the TV is still going strong, though it has had to adapt into more modern iterations and become “smart” for the modern day world. That only shows you the enormous utility of TVs.

But in 1946, Darryl Zanuck of 20th Century Fox studio said, “Television won’t be able to hold on to any market it captures after the first six months. People will soon get tired of staring at a plywood box every night.”

Looks like he vastly underestimated people’s ability to stare at a “plywood box”. In fact that has become something that people consider more of a relaxation time, with some snacks in hand of course!

Internet

I do not even have to talk about the importance of the internet in our lives and how it has changed the world entirely in just a couple decades. Seriously, try to imagine what life was like pre-internet.

You wouldn’t even be reading this right now if not for the internet. It provided a base for other technologies to be built upon it that have changed people’s lives, made multi billion dollar businesses and have have advanced the world so much, technologically speaking.

So, it may surprise you to know that Robert Metcalfe, the guy who co-invented the Ethernet, had to say this about the internet in the year 1995, “I predict the internet will soon go spectacularly supernova and in 1996 catastrophically collapse.”

Boy was he wrong!! What is funny about that is, he vowed to eat his words if his prediction failed and guess what? At a conference in 1997, he liquified a food processor to shred a copy of the article containing his prediction, and drank it! (which is technically, drinking his words).

Computers

In my own opinion, computers have to be among the top 3 inventions of all time. It is almost magical the way a few pieces of hardware can come together to provide the experience that a computer can. Absolutely magical!

I am sure no one could have predicted the pervasive effects that computers would have in today’s world, owing to the insane innovation that has happened in this field making computers a fraction of the size and multitudes faster.

So, it is not too surprising, the skepticism people had back in the 20th century about the utility of computers. Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, said in 1943, “I think there is a world market for maybe five computers.”

Of course, that’s because computers were as large as buildings then and no one had thought they would be the size of
today’s laptops, so, I’ll let that one slide. haha!