Predictions Sure To Go Wrong

[bayonetbrant]

http://paleofuture.gizmodo.com/the-internet-bah-1995-512627689

From 1995

Every voice can be heard cheaply and instantly [on the Internet]. The result? Every voice is heard. The cacophany more closely resembles citizens band radio, complete with handles, harrasment, and anonymous threats. When most everyone shouts, few listen.
. . . Nicholas Negroponte, director of the MIT Media Lab, predicts that we'll soon buy books and newspapers straight over the Intenet. Uh, sure.

These expensive toys are difficult to use in classrooms and require extensive teacher training. Sure, kids love videogames—but think of your own experience: can you recall even one educational filmstrip of decades past?

We're promised instant catalog shopping—just point and click for great deals. We'll order airline tickets over the network, make restaurant reservations and negotiate sales contracts. Stores will become obselete. So how come my local mall does more business in an afternoon than the entire Internet handles in a month? Even if there were a trustworthy way to send money over the Internet—which there isn't—the network is missing a most essential ingredient of capitalism: salespeople.

[skeptical.platypus]

The Internets: disproving the prediction that 100 monkeys typing gibberish will eventually produce the complete works of Shakespeare, every day.

[BanzaiCat]

Hindsight is an amazing thing. Just think if any of us had the thought to start up a Yahoo, or a Google, or a YouTube...or to at least claim those URLs, back in the day...

I'm beginning to think the technology curve is flattening out. Advances from the beginning of the 20th century to the latter part of the 20th century are pretty amazing; I was always in awe of old timers born around 1900 whom grew up from the horse-and-buggy era and live to see the Space Shuttle. Now, THAT is awe-inspiring.

For me, technology improvement has basically just been newer/better versions of things that already existed, not new and amazing things. With a few exceptions, I'm sure, but think about it. Rotary phone > Button phone > Boxy car phone > Cumbersome flip phone > Better flip phone > Smart phone > etc. It's still a phone. Granted, a phone you can play Carcassonne on, but it's a phone, not a quantum field time traveling device or an AI Cortana or anything.

[GDS_Starfury]

then you must have a shitty phone.

[BanzaiCat]

A Windows phone. Should have stuck with the 5, dammit.

[skeptical.platypus]

Hindsight is an amazing thing. Just think if any of us had the thought to start up a Yahoo, or a Google, or a YouTube...or to at least claim those URLs, back in the day...

I'm beginning to think the technology curve is flattening out. Advances from the beginning of the 20th century to the latter part of the 20th century are pretty amazing; I was always in awe of old timers born around 1900 whom grew up from the horse-and-buggy era and live to see the Space Shuttle. Now, THAT is awe-inspiring.

For me, technology improvement has basically just been newer/better versions of things that already existed, not new and amazing things. With a few exceptions, I'm sure, but think about it. Rotary phone > Button phone > Boxy car phone > Cumbersome flip phone > Better flip phone > Smart phone > etc. It's still a phone. Granted, a phone you can play Carcassonne on, but it's a phone, not a quantum field time traveling device or an AI Cortana or anything.

Big Data & the Cloud. It's going to be the next step toward the Datastream Age.

Quantum Physics -- we've already teleported data across a room. Quantum computers are coming.

We've already broken the foot long sandwich barrier -- can 18 inches be next. (Yeah, to your point, that's still a sandwich. Now, a sandwich we could play Carcassonne on. . . )

We have no idea what's coming next. I think we're on the slow end of a parabolic curve.