The 12 Worst Tech Predictions of All Time
The history of technology is littered with some incredibly lousy prophecies, often made by some very smart, very successful, and very wealthy executives. We trolled the timeline of technology to find the most misguided (and in some cases just plain crazy) calls in the industry's storied past, from the telephone to television to YouTube. Sure, it's easy to call out the most foolish forecasts with the benefit of perfect hindsight. It's also a lot of fun -- there are some doozies.
Andriy Popov / Alamy Stock Photo
"No one will need more than 637KB of memory for a personal computer. 640KB ought to be enough for anybody." --Bill Gates, co-founder and chairman of Microsoft
Gates has denied saying this, but the misguided prediction remains widely attributed to him around the Web. Accurate or not, the quote is not likely to keep the wealthiest individual in America up at night.
If you’re Bill Gates, you can afford to be wrong every now and again. Looking back, though, it seems most of the major how-did-we-live-without-this technologies and innovations spawned at least one ill-advised statement: Telephones, personal computers, satellite communications and the Internet, to name a few. In some cases, it’s a prediction about a company or a strategy that goes awry. (Portending of Apple’s doom is an all-time favorite.)
SEE ALSO:
Top 10 Tech Newsmakers Of 2010
"There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in his home." --Ken Olsen, founder of Digital Equipment Corp.
Olsen was a tremendous entrepreneur and executive, but he was off by a couple of billion units with this call. In 2008, Gartner estimated the number of installed PCs worldwide had hit 1 billion, and the research firm predicted that number would double by 2014.
SEE ALSO:
Top 10 Tech Newsmakers Of 2010
"I predict the Internet 0x2026 will soon go spectacularly supernova and in 1996 catastrophically collapse." --Robert Metcalfe, founder of 3Com, inventor of Ethernet, tech pundit and columnist
Metcalfe came to eat his words -- or at least drink them. In his keynote speech at the Sixth International WWW Conference, Metcalfe relented, put a copy of the infamous InfoWorld column in a blender, and quaffed the pureed prediction.
SEE ALSO:
Top 10 Tech Newsmakers Of 2010
"We'll soon buy books and newspapers straight over the Internet. Uh, sure." --Clifford Stoll, astronomer and author
OK, Stoll might not have run a tech firm, though he did work at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in the '80s. But we can't leave him out when talking bad tech predictions -- he literally wrote the book on them. "Silicon Snake Oil," along with a companion essay in Newsweek, essentially chalked the entire Web up to a passing fad, calling online shopping (among other things) "baloney." Stoll's book is available on Amazon.com.
SEE ALSO:
Top 10 Tech Newsmakers Of 2010
"There is practically no chance communications space satellites will be used to provide better telephone, telegraph, television, or radio service inside the United States." --T. Craven, FCC Commissioner
Among the companies that would later disagree: DirecTV, DISH Network, Sirius Satellite Radio, and XM Satellite Radio. The FCC is the federal regulatory honcho for radio, television, wire, satellite, and cable communications, though its Web site does say its "jurisdiction covers the 50 states, the District of Columbia, and U.S. possessions." Technically, space wasn't part of Craven's charter.
SEE ALSO:
Top 10 Tech Newsmakers Of 2010
"0x2026 Apple is already dead." --Nathan Myhrvold, former CTO of Microsoft
Myhrvold wasn't the first to declare that Apple had gone rotten, and he certainly wouldn't be the last (see next slide). Myhrvold went on to say that smart moves might save the brand name. It seems that iPod, iPhone, iPad, etc. would qualify.
SEE ALSO:
Top 10 Tech Newsmakers Of 2010
"I'd shut [Apple] down and give the money back to the shareholders." --Michael Dell, founder and CEO of Dell
Myhrvold shouldn't have to stand alone in Apple ignominy -- he's far from the only person to have issued last rites for the company, just one with a higher profile than most. Except maybe Dell, who took the chance to rib his competitor before a 1997 tech conference crowd. At around 300 bucks a share today, investors are probably glad Steve Jobs didn't heed the advice.
SEE ALSO:
Top 10 Tech Newsmakers Of 2010
"There's just not that many videos I want to watch." --Steve Chen, CTO and co-founder of YouTube
Chen's concern in 2005 about YouTube's long-term viability was put to rest two years post-launch, when Google paid $1.65 billion to acquire the site. Today, YouTube boasts a billion video views a day, and 24 hours of new content is uploaded every minute.
SEE ALSO:
Top 10 Tech Newsmakers Of 2010
"The Americans have need of the telephone, but we do not. We have plenty of messenger boys." --Sir William Preece, chief engineer, British Post Office
The inventor and electrical engineer's 1876 quote conjures an image of hundreds of Dickensian pips running around clutching fistfuls of communications. Nonetheless, the telephone won out, and "messenger boy" ceased to be an in-demand career choice in England.
SEE ALSO:
Top 10 Tech Newsmakers Of 2010
"We are on a tear to be the undisputed winner in China." --Meg Whitman, former CEO of eBay
How quickly momentum -- and confidence -- can change. Less than a year later, the online auction giant announced it would shutter its Chinese business. Whitman, meanwhile, set her sights on the California Governor's Mansion without success.
SEE ALSO:
Top 10 Tech Newsmakers Of 2010
"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." --Darryl Zanuck, film producer, co-founder of 20th Century Fox
Plywood boxes, maybe, but flat screens in HD? Nah. Of course, remove a few key words from Zanuck's quote, replace them with some digital entertainment buzzwords, and the legendary producer sounds decidedly current.
SEE ALSO:
Top 10 Tech Newsmakers Of 2010
"We will never make a 32-bit operating system." --Bill Gates, co-founder and chairman of Microsoft
This Gates sound bite isn't as controversial as the more famous memory gaffe. This writer, meanwhile, is clacking away on a 64-bit Windows machine.
SEE ALSO:
Top 10 Tech Newsmakers Of 2010
"We will never make a 32-bit operating system." --Bill Gates, co-founder and chairman of Microsoft
This Gates sound bite isn't as controversial as the more famous memory gaffe. This writer, meanwhile, is clacking away on a 64-bit Windows machine.
SEE ALSO:
Top 10 Tech Newsmakers Of 2010
-
About the Author(s)
You May Also Like