Archive for the ‘predictions’ Tag
It would be a wonderful thing to have the ability to predict the future. I’m not one to predict anything because my range of knowledge on many things is severely lacking. In the past I’ve taken the lead from science fiction writers whose ability to predict many future things is scary and all too accurate. These following seven items from Time magazine are a little bizarre and show that any of us can make ridiculous predictions and be as wrong as everyone else has been.
In 1992, TIME magazine offered up an article predicting what to expect in the new millennium. Lance Morrow, a writer, quoting political scientist Michael Barkun, wrote, “The human mind abhors a vacuum … Where certainties are absent, we make do with probabilities, and where probabilities are beyond our power to calculate, we seek refuge from insupportable ignorance in a future of our own imagining.” Here is a roundup of some of the looniest predictions since the advent of TIME — the magazine, not the concept — in 1923:
- The future human will be a Cyclops. “In distant centuries or millenaries man will be a Cyclops, a Polyphemus, a being with one eye only.” So said Dr. Thomas Hall Shastid in a 1933 article.” This future eye, explained Shastid, would be in the center of the face, below a high forehead, where the bridge of the nose once rested.
- Grandchildren of the television age won’t be able to read. TIME addressed the potential downsides of a newly television-obsessed culture. “By the 21st Century our people doubtless will be squint-eyed, hunchbacked and fond of the dark,” the writer predicted. “But why am I carrying on like this? Chances are that the grandchild of the Television Age won’t know how to read this.”
- Every medical malady will be treatable with a miracle pill.
- “Frogmen” will live in underseas bunkers and tend to kelp farms. One way to address food shortages of the future, according to the RAND Corp. in 1966: imagined that “Huge fields of kelp and other kinds of seaweed will be tended by undersea ‘farmers’ — frogmen who will live for months at a time in submerged bunkhouses.”
- Spouses will be able to secretly control one another’s moods with “grouch pills”. RAND predicted that if one spouse is in a particularly cantankerous mood, his or her partner, “will be able to pop down to the corner drugstore, buy some anti-grouch pills, and slip them into the coffee.”
- Tomatoes will be square. The mechanization of agriculture during the middle decades of the 20th century will drastically change the face of farming. “Another phenomenon in the not-too-distant future,” envisioned the Research and Development Chief at Deere & Co., “is square tomatoes, which, after all, could be more easily packaged by machine — and fit better in sandwiches.”
- We will be able to feel and smell whatever’s on our television sets. According to Nicholas Negroponte, then director of M.I.T.’s Media Lab, the 21st century will bring “full-color, large-scale, holographic TV with force feedback and olfactory output.” The images on your TV, in other words, will be feelable and smellable.
It boggles the mind that trustworthy publications and think-tanks would dare to put these crazy ideas into print. I suppose some people insist on getting their names and ideas out there for the public to ponder over. Any publicity is good publicity and helps them to attain their 15 minutes of fame.
WHAT PREDITIONS WOULD YOU MAKE ? ? ?
How many times a week are you told by others that your way of doing things could be better, meaning their way. It’s amazing to me how everyone thinks their way is the absolute best way. I can understand it totally because at times I feel that way myself.
I’ve had close friends and family with no practical experience in much of anything tell me how I should invest my money, romance a woman, what food to eat, and what kind of job I should have. Everyone is an effing expert in everything it seems. It’s funny that the guy with no girlfriends or prospects is the expert on romance. The guy who doesn’t have two cents in his pocket or bank account is the one telling me what stocks are going to go through the roof. Maybe it’s the woman with no children who spends all of her time telling her married girlfriends how to raise their children. It’s maddening.
To quote one of my favorite song lyrics, “Opinions are like assholes and everybody’s got one.” I’ve learned over the years who I can rely on for good information and those hundreds who haven’t had a good idea about anything in recent memory. I’ve also learned not to voice any of my own opinions unless I’m asked. I may stand in a group of friends and listen to them tell each other how to live their lives without saying a single word. It makes me the guy who never has to hear those dreaded words, “Your advice sucked.”
I suppose it’s always been that way. People telling people what will happen in the future, how they should live their lives and they do it in such a way it’s seemed logical at the time. Here are some predictions I’ve discovered from so-called experts that were so bad I just had to pass them along.
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"Computers in the future may weigh no more than 1.5 tons." Popular Mechanics, forecasting the relentless march of science, 1949
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"I think there is a world market for maybe five computers."
Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943
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"I have traveled the length and breadth of this country and talked with the best people, and I can assure you that data processing is a fad that won’t last out the year."
The editor in charge of business books for Prentice Hall, 1957
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"There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home."
Ken Olson, president, chairman and founder of Digital Equipment Corp., 1977
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"This ‘telephone’ has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication. The device is inherently of no value to us."
Western Union internal memo, 1876.
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"We don’t like their sound, and guitar music is on the way out."
Decca Recording Co. rejecting the Beatles, 1962.
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"Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible."
Lord Kelvin, president, Royal Society, 1895.
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"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.
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"The bomb will never go off. I speak as an expert in explosives."
Admiral William Leahy, US Atomic Bomb Project.
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"Stocks have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau."
Irving Fisher, Professor of Economics, Yale University, 1929.
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"Airplanes are interesting toys but of no military value."
Marechal Ferdinand Foch, Professor of Strategy, Ecole Superieure de Guerre.
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"Man will never reach the moon regardless of all future scientific advances."
Dr. Lee De Forest, inventor of the vacuum tube and father of television.
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"Everything that can be invented has been invented."
Charles H. Duell, Commissioner, U.S. Office of Patents, 1899
As you can see even people with impressive resumes aren’t experts in everything like they think they are. I‘m certainly glad I never had these experts whispering in my ear and giving me advice about anything important. Everything comes back to good old “common sense”. Constantly being negative about things just stifles creativity and can make you one miserable and unhappy SOB and also reward you with an honorable mention on this blog.
My sincerest sympathies go out to all those folks in New York New Jersey and the surrounding areas who are suffering through the terrible flooding and destruction. I can’t begin to imagine how devastating and horrible that situation must be.
I expect the media to now turn it’s attention to the recovery efforts with all of the poignant stories they’ll report or create as need be. It’s critical that they don’t lose the ratings surge created by Sandy. They’ll milk the recovery for all it’s worth until we’re exhausted from their incessant preaching and dire predictions of the next “epic” event.
My best estimate for their switch to the next great catastrophe will be just after the Thanksgiving weekend. The History Channel will lead the charge with a constant barrage of bullshit programming on the end of the world as we know it on December 21, 2012. They’ll be forced into continuously reporting something exciting and scary because we all know you can’t get much ratings mileage out of the big countdown of shopping days left till Christmas.
Can 100,000 dead Mayans be wrong? The media is a fine tuned albeit liberal machine and should be reasonably successful in terrorizing a large portion of the population about the upcoming “end of days”. Ahhhh, it takes me back to December of 1999 when the dire predictions of Y2K were being pumped for all they were worth costing businesses billions of dollars in computer time and to what end. Nothing happened. Planes didn’t fall from the sky, thousands were not killed when traffic lights malfunctioned around the world. Just so much BS.
Could I be wrong? Maybe, but don’t bet on it. I’ve had enough of the media and their games and I hope you have too. I need a fresh cup of that horrible coffee I made this morning and a handful of Halloween candy leftover from last night. That’ll teach me.
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