Saturday, April 14, 2012

10 Ill-Informed Predictions From History


"I must confess that my imagination refuses to see any sort of
submarine doing anything but suffocating its crew and floundering
at sea." --H.G. Wells, 1901

"What is dangerous is for Americans not to be in the
market. We’re going to reach a point where stocks are correctly
priced, and we think [that point is] 36,000." --James Glassman,
Wall Street analysis author, 1999

"The Japanese don’t make anything the people in the U.S. would
want." -- John Foster Dulles, 1954

"The expectation on the iPod is that Hewlett-Packard’s version
will probably outsell Apple’s version relatively quickly." -- Rob
Enderle, 2004

"Over the next century, Law will be simplified. Lawyers will have
diminished, and their fees will have been vastly curtailed." --
Junius Henri Brown, columnist, 1893

"Of all the nations, [Germany] is probably the least corrupted by
the lust of conquest...." -- Boston Daily Globe, 1901

"In 20 years, [bigotry and war] will be over. People are simply
going to learn that they can get more from being groovy than
being greedy." -- Arlo Guthrie, 1969

"X-rays will prove to be a hoax." -- Lord Kelvin, 1899

"Printed books will never be the equivalent of handwritten
codices, especially since printed books are often deficient in
spelling and appearance." -- Johannes Trithemius, German scholar,
1492

"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 management memo, 1876