The World's Worst Predictions

0:00Throughout history, experts, executives, scientists, and journalists have tried to predict what the future will look like. Some of these predictions were insightful, and others were so spectacularly wrong that they became famous in their own right. They dismissed revolutionary inventions, underestimated new technologies, and confidently predicted the exact opposite of what happened. Learn more about some of the world's worst predictions on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. The End This episode is sponsored by Quince. Autumn is here, which means it's time to start bringing out all your cold weather gear. And for me, it means taking out my Quince Mongolian cashmere sweaters and my Quince blankets. I have a thick fisherman's blanket for sitting on the couch and an organic waffle bed blanket that I use as a bed cover.

1:00My Quince products not only keep me warm, but they look really good too, and they do so at a fraction of the price of other retailers. Everything at Quince is priced 50 to 80% less than similar brands. They work directly with ethical factories and cut out the middlemen so you're paying for high quality, not brand markup. Find your next fall favorites at Quince. Download the Quince app for app exclusive offers or go to quince.com. Get free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. Now available in Canada and the UK too. And when Quince asks you where you heard about them, let them know it was everything everywhere daily. It's the best way to support the show. This episode is sponsored by Hexclad. I've been using Hexclad in my kitchen for over a year now, and I've only increased my collection because they work so well. But what exactly makes Hexclad so special? It's because it's a hybrid of nonstick and stainless steel cookware. Laser-etched hexagonal surfaces are what make Hexclad different.

2:04The stainless steel ridges help with searing underability, while the nonstick valleys help food release easily so you get performance without having to scrub forever after the meal. My Hexclad pans heat evenly and clean up take seconds. Don't go into football season with cookware that makes game day meals harder than they need to be. Upgrade your kitchen with Hexclad and make cooking, hosting, and cleanup easier all season long. For a limited time only, my listeners get 10% off your order with my exclusive link. Just head to Hexclad.com slash daily. Support the show and check them out at H-E-X-C-L-A-D dot com forward slash daily. And make sure to let them know that I sent you. Predicting the future is difficult. Some people have pulled off incredibly press-y and guesses about what the future would hold. And others haven't just been wrong, they have been spectacularly wrong. They may have overestid or underestimated technologies or trends or completely missed what was obvious to everyone else.

3:12To be fair, predicting the future isn't easy, if it were, everyone would do it. But there's a difference between being wrong and being spectacularly wrong. And that is the focus of this episode. And we'll start with one of the worst predictions by someone who is otherwise quite talented, Irving Fisher. Irving Fisher was an American economist, statistician, and Yale professor born in 1867. He became one of the most influential economists of the early 20th century, especially for his work on interest rates, inflation, capital theory, and the relationship between money and prices. His ideas helped shape what later became modern monetary economics. Many economists, including Joseph Schumpader, Milton Friedman, and James Tobin, considered him to be one of the greatest economists the United States has ever produced. However, his reputation was tainted by one enormously wrong statement. On October 15, 1929, just days before the stock market crashed, he said, quote,

4:13Stock prices have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau. He was speaking to the purchasing agents association at its monthly dinner meeting. He also said at that meeting, quote, Largely through the influence of the investment trust movement, the public has been waking up to the superior attraction of stocks over bonds. And I believe the operation of investment trust as a whole have acted to stabilize the stock market rather than to make its fluctuations more violent. End quote. Needless to say, the stock market wasn't more stable and it wasn't sitting at a permanently high plateau. It wasn't just that he was wrong, it's that he was wrong just days before everything fell apart. And speaking of bad timing, another horribly time prediction appeared in a New York Times editorial on November 9, 1903. The editorial titled Flying Machines, which Do Not Fly, responded to Samuel Langley's attempt to test a flying machine just days earlier.

5:15The editorial wrote, quote, it might be assumed that the flying machine, which will really fly, might be evolved by the combined and continuous efforts of mathematicians and mechanicians in from 1 million to 10 million years. No doubt the problem has attractions for those it interests, but to the ordinary man it would seem as if effort might be employed more profitably. End quote. It turned out that they didn't need to wait 10 million years or even 1 million years. Just 69 days later, the Wright brothers conducted their first powered flight at Kitty Hawk North Carolina. So they were only off by a factor of several million. Lord Kelvin, who was one of the discoverers of the laws of thermodynamics, was wrong about a whole host of things. He was invited to join the Aeronautical Society, which he declined, saying, quote, I have not the smallest molecule of faith in aerial navigation other than ballooning or of the expectation of good results from any of the trials we hear of.

6:19I would not care to be a member of the Aeronautical Society. End quote. When X-rays were discovered that could penetrate the human body, Lord Kelvin said, quote, X-rays will prove to be a hoax. And not to be outdone when radio was invented, he said, quote, radio has no future. And quote, wireless telegraphy is all very well, but I'd rather send a message by a pony or a boy. It should be noted that he later recanted his views on radio after actually using it after a transatlantic voyage. Skepsisism about flying is somewhat understandable for the period, but it wasn't the only transportation technology that people doubted. According to a 1922 biography of Henry Ford, a banker advised prospective Ford investor, Horus Rackham, quote, the horse is here to stay, but the automobile is only a novelty, a fad, end quote. Rackham thankfully ignored that advice, invested $5,000 into Ford Motor Company, which he later sold for $12 million.

7:24Someone who did pass up a world-changing investment was William Orton, president of the Western Union telegraph company. Before he founded Bell Telephone, Alexander Graham Bell offered Orton the chance to buy the telephone patent for $100,000. Orton turned him down and wrote about the telephone in an internal corporate memo, saying, quote, the idea of installing telephones in every city is idiotic. Why would any person want to use this ungangly and impractical device when he can send a messenger to the telegraph office and have a clearly written message sent to any large city in the US? This telephone has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication. The device is inherently of no value to us. End quote. Bell Telephone would go on to become the largest company in the United States. Darryl F. Zannock, the powerful head of 20th Century Fox Studios, was massively wrong when predicting the future of television.

8:31He said in 1951, quote, television won't be able to hold on to any market of captures after the first six months. People will soon get tired of staring at a plywood box every night. End quote. Not to be outdone, Orton E. Dunlap, a junior, a writer for The New York Times, published in 1939, quote, the problem with television is that the people must sit and keep their eyes glued on a screen. The average American family hasn't time for it. Therefore, the showmen are convinced that for this reason, if for no other, television will never be a serious competitor of broadcasting. End quote. Being wrong isn't just about inventions and technology. Some people have really whiffed on cultural trends. The Beatles manager Brian Epstein and his 1965 memoir recounted what happened when the Beatles tried to get signed by Decker Records. As Epstein later recalled, quote, We had coffee and Mr. Row, a short plump man, said to me,

9:33Not to mince words, Mr. Epstein, we don't like your boy's sound. Groups of four guitarists are on the way out. End quote. Likewise, in 1911, The New York Times published a review of an exhibition by the painter Pablo Picasso in Paris. They wrote, quote, It is to be regretted that this unquestionably talented artist should now make his debut with a series of childish, not to say, Inbecile scribbles that are no interest either as independent works of art or a steps towards achieving the complete work. They have neither material beauty nor that spiritual significance nor merit of any other sort. End quote. However, without a doubt, the worst predictions have been in the area of computers. Throughout the history of computing, there are example after example of people underestimating exactly what computers could do. In 1949, Popular Mechanics Magazine made a very tame prediction. At the time, the NEA computer used 18,000 vacuum tubes and weighed 30 tons.

10:39They predicted, quote, computers in the future may only have 1,000 vacuum tubes and perhaps weigh 1.5 tons. The computing pioneer John von Neumann not only made a horribly wrong prediction in 1949, but he predicted that his own prediction would be wrong. He said, quote, It would appear that we have reached the limits of what it is possible to achieve with computer technology. Although one should be careful with such statements as they tend to sound pretty silly in 5 years. End quote. One of the oddest predictions regarding the internet came from someone who played a pivotal role in the creation of computer networking. Robert Metcalf was the co-inventor of Ethernet and also founded the company Threecom. In the mid 1990s, he was convinced that the growth of the internet would cause it to collapse in a spectacular fashion. He said, quote, Almost all of the many predictions now being made about 1996 hinge on the internet's continuing exponential growth.

11:44But I predict the internet, which only just recently got this section here on InfoWorld, will soon go spectacularly supernova and in 1996 catastrophically collapse. End quote. Of course, the collapse of the internet did not occur in 1996, nor in any year thereafter. Metcalf was a good sport about being wrong. In 1997, he made a video of himself blending a piece of paper with his prediction on it and drinking it. So he literally ate his words. Many people back in the 90s were skeptical of the internet. Perhaps the most famous wrong prediction came from the Nobel laureate economist Paul Krugman, who said, quote, The growth of the internet will slow drastically as the flaw in Metcalf's law, which states that the number of potential connections in a network is proportional to the square of the number of participants becomes apparent. Most people have nothing to say to each other. By 2005 or so, it will become clear that the internet's impact on the economy has been no greater than the facts machines. End quote.

12:48Needless to say, the impact of the internet has been a bit greater than that of the facts machine. One of the best selling tech products of all time has been the iPhone, but there was a time when no one was even sure if Apple could or would release such a device. In 2006, the New York Times tech writer David Pogue wrote, quote, Everyone's always asking me when Apple will come out with a cell phone. My answer is probably never. I cannot imagine Apple giving veto power to anyone over its software design. It just ain't going to happen. End quote. Less than one year later, Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone. Even after the iPhone was announced, many people thought it would fail. In particular, Microsoft CEO Steve Balmer thought the iPhone would fall in its face. In April 2007, before it actually went on sale, he said, quote, Right now we're selling millions and millions and millions of phones a year. Apple is selling zero phones a year. In six months, they'll have the most expensive phone by far in the marketplace and let's see how they do.

13:55But there's no chance the iPhone is going to get any significant market share, no chance. End quote. Well, as we know, the iPhone ended up becoming the best selling phone of all time. Of course, Apple isn't immune to getting things wrong either. In 2003, Steve Jobs explained that the streaming music business model would never work. He noted, quote, The subscription model of buying music is bankrupt. I think you could make available the second coming in a subscription model and it might not be successful. If it costs you $10 a month or over $100 a year for a subscription fee to rent that song, that means for me to listen to my favorite song in 10 years, I paid over $1000 in subscription fees to listen to my favorite song 10 years from now. And that just doesn't fly with consumers. They don't want subscriptions. End quote. Spotify became a multi-billion dollar business proving Steve Jobs wrong. That predictions are usually less interesting because somebody was wrong than because they reveal how difficult it is to imagine a future that breaks sharply from the present.

15:04Experts tend to project existing technologies, habits and markets forward while revolutions often come from changes that make those assumptions obsolete. The telephone, airplane, computer, internet and smartphone all looked limited or unnecessary to people who understood the world as it already existed. History's worst predictions are reminders that expertise can explain the present very well while still offering no guarantee of seeing what comes next. The executive producer of everything everywhere daily is Charles Daniel. The associate producers are Austin Otkin and Cameron Kefer. My big thanks go to everyone who supports the show for on Patreon. Your support helps make this podcast possible. And I also want to remind everyone about the community groups on Facebook and Discord. That's where everything happens that's outside the podcast and links to those are available in the show notes. As always, if you leave a review on any major podcast app or in the above community groups, you too can have it read in the show.