Alan Kay, an engineer at PARC in 1971, said that ‘the best way to predict the future is to create it’. But people have all sorts of guessing hobbies and even professions. What is normal here is to be wrong. In fact, there are very good examples in the field of technology where celebrities sink to the bottom. Here are some of the most notable examples.
Radio Waves (1864)
“It’s just an experiment that proves Master Maxwell was right; we have mysterious electromagnetic waves that we can’t see with the naked eye, but they’re there… I don’t think the wireless waves I’ve discovered will make it.” has any practical application.” .
Mathematician Jamse C. Maxwell formulated the laws governing electromagnetism in 1864. Heinrich HertzThe German physicist soon succeeded in sending and receiving radio waves in a controlled experiment. Even so, the scientist did not see any practical meaning in his work.
Telephone (1876)
“The idea of placing a ‘telephone’ in every city is silly… Why would anyone want to use this strange and useless device when they can send a messenger to the telegraph office and send a clear message in writing to anyone? Is this the big city of the United States?” “The phone has too many flaws to be considered a serious means of communication. The device has no value to us.”
Alexander Graham Bell For many years, the inventor of the telephone had the chance to patent the telephone faster than anyone else. Many did not trust this idea. He offered his invention to the Telegraph Company, which would later become Western Union, before founding the Bell Telephone Company in 1876. Examining this idea, the committee wrote a report highlighting this insight.
Cars and Horses (1903)
“The car is a fashion, an innovation. Horses are permanent.”
This was told to Horace Rackham by the president of the Michigan Savings Bank. Henry Ford’s attorney. Despite their apparent initial success, the banker saw that bicycles were not in demand, and he hoped the same would happen with cars.
His mistake cost his company dearly because he refused the option to invest in Ford Motor Co. The legendary Model T would hit the market five years later, in 1908, and would be an absolute revolution.
CP (1943)
“I think there’s a world market of about five computers.”
The appointment is magnificent, but there are doubts as to whether it really took place at that time and in what context. To begin with, you need to put it into perspective. ENIAC was created in 1943, considered the first “computer”, and that didn’t seem to be within the reach of many. Thomas WatsonMr. Weiger, who was president of the prestigious IBM at the time, seemed clear that this market didn’t have much of a future.
Even so, they at IBM wanted to downplay it by explaining that this statement was actually produced at a shareholder meeting in 1953 and referred to the IBM 701 Electronic Data Processing Machine. This computer was very expensive for the time (rented between $12,000 and $18,000 per month) and was selling better than expected, according to Watson, “we expected to receive an order for five machines, we came home with orders of 18”.
PC (mid 70’s)
“There’s no reason anyone would want to have a computer at home.”
attributed to this quote if you were kenHe is the founder of the mini computer manufacturer Digital Equipment Corporation, one of the references of the era when computers began to triumph in companies.
These words were heard by company employee David H. Ahl, who was working on a personal computer for the home user. Olsen apparently refused to support this development and its commercialization and eventually closed the venture.
Mobile Phones (1992)
The idea of a wireless personal communicator in every pocket is “a greedy dream.”
Andy Grove, the legendary CEO of Intel at the time, said these words at the Mobile Conference in 1992. The New York Times covered these statements as part of a report that talked about how underdeveloped mobile technology was at the time. time. Maybe it was this way of thinking germ One of the biggest mistakes in Intel history: not betting on the iPhone years later.
Internet (1995)
“I predict that the internet will soon go into a spectacular supernova and crash catastrophically in 1996.”
Robert Metcalfe He was one of the giants on whose shoulders the Internet was born. One of the creators of Ethernet – it’s nothing – wrote this sentence in an article in Infoworld Magazine (page 61), stating that he would denigrate his own words if he was wrong. There were compelling reasons that made some sense at the time: He predicted data connections would become overloaded, many security issues would occur, and flat rates would not be enough to finance the growth of the network.
By 1999 it was clear that they had sunk to the bottom, so Metcalfe had to actually eat them. She put the page with the words of the article in a blender and “ate” them at the WWW Conference that year. Before he did that, yes, he assured the audience: the ink on the paper was not poisonous.
Internet Again (1998)
“As the failure of ‘Metcalfe’s law’, which states that the number of potential connections in a network is proportional to the square of the number of participants, becomes clear, the growth of the Internet will slow drastically: Most people!” have nothing to say! By 2005, it will become clear that the impact of the internet on the economy is no greater than that of fax.”
Paul KrugmannMr. Wendy, who would win the 2008 Nobel Prize in Economics, wrote about this in an article in Red Hering magazine on June 10, 1998. Indeed, people had a lot to say. Too much.
Music Service Subscription (2003)
“The subscription model for purchasing music has gone bankrupt. I think you can make Second Coming available with a subscription model and it may not be successful.”
Steve Jobs He voiced these words in an interview with Rolling Stone. People didn’t want to subscribe to music, they wanted to buy it. Defending the opening of the iTunes Store, he explained, “They bought 45’s, then LPs, then cassettes, then 8 tracks, then CDs. They’re going to want to buy the downloads.” It seemed right for a while, but the birth of Spotify completely changed that paradigm.
iPhone (2007)
“The iPhone has no chance of gaining significant market share. No chance. It’s a $500 subsidized product. They could make a lot of money. But if you look at the 1.3 billion phones actually sold, I prefer the iPhone.” Our software has 2% or 3% of 60%, 70% or 80% of them; That’s what Apple can take.”
The CEO of Microsoft at the time, Steve Ballmerseemed completely convinced of the smartphone’s all-changing failure. His words were published in USA Today. Years later, Ballmer would explain what led to the error in this way and apologize for his business model, out of curiosity.
At the time, he explained, “I wish I’d thought about the model of subsidizing phones through carriers. And there was a novelty in Apple’s business model that would essentially have this factored into the monthly cell phone bill,” he explained at the time. Later, in an interview with Charlie Rose, he once again admitted to the mistake of not betting on mobile.
Cloud computing (2008)
“The computer industry is the only industry more fashionable than women’s fashion. I may be stupid but I have no idea what anyone is talking about. What is it? [nube]? This is bullshit. This is madness.”
Once again, this quote was surprising because of the person pronouncing it; it was neither too much nor too little. Larry EllisonThe person who used these words at the OracleWorld conference in 2008.
At the time, the concept was still in its infancy, and Oracle was advocating its database model on a local infrastructure (“on-premises”) – a customer data center – rather than from third parties. Over time Oracle will realize his mistake and become a (minor) contributor in this segment.
These are just a few of the many examples from the tech world (or companies) making statements that later turned out to be major mistakes.
In some cases, these statements did not actually exist and were simply attributed to these individuals – that’s what happened to Bill Gates and “640K is enough for everyone”. Others hit, yes, much more.
Image | Steve Petrucelli
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