Nostradamus-wannabes and Their Inaccurate Predictions about the Future

There’s an old saying that goes, ‘Predicting the future is easy. Getting it right is the hard part.’ It is true that

humankind has made great leaps in science and technology, but we have yet to master the art of prophecy.

It turns out that predicting the future is tricky business, but time and again, we insist on doing so. Below are

the most well-known predictions, spanning the past 150 years, that didn’t quite turn out as expected.

1876: ‘This “telephone” has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication.’ — William Orton, President of Western Union

1889: ‘Fooling around with alternating current (AC) is just a waste of time. Nobody will use it, ever.’ — Thomas Edison

1903: ‘The horse is here to stay but the automobile is only a novelty – a fad.’ — President of Michigan

Savings Bank advising Henry Ford’s lawyer, Horace Rackham, not to invest in the Ford Motor Company.

1943: ‘I think there will be a world market for maybe five computers.’ — Thomas J Watson, IBM CEO

1946: ‘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.’ — Darryl Zanuck, 20th Century Fox

1966: ‘Remote shopping, while entirely feasible, will flop.’ — Time Magazine

1981: ‘Cellular phones will absolutely not replace local wire systems.’ — Marty Cooper, inventor

1995: ‘I predict the Internet will soon go spectacularly supernova and in 1996 catastrophically collapse.’ —

Robert Metcalfe, co-inventor of Ethernet

2005: ‘There’s just not that many videos I want to watch.’ — Steve Chen, CTO and co-founder of YouTube

expressing concerns about his company’s long-term viability

2005: ‘Next Christmas, the iPod will be dead, finished, gone, kaput! It will never take off.’ — Sir Alan Sugar,

entrepreneur

2006: ‘Everyone’s always asking me when Apple will come out with a cell phone. My answer is, probably never.’ — David Pogue, The New York Times