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Worst and Best Predictions on Technology
prostoalex writes "Dow Jones News asked several mahor scientists and technologists about their worst and best predictions of the future. The story, republished at Yahoo! Finance Singapore quotes Lester Thurow, Professor of management and economics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Sloan School of Management; Nicholas Negroponte, Founder and director, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Lab; Glover Ferguson, Chief scientist, Accenture; Alan Nugent, Chief technology officer, Novell; Peter Cochrane, Director, ConceptLabs; Michael Earl, Dean, Templeton College, University of Oxford. There seems to be a common agreement on having overrated the ability of machines to talk back to users and vice versa."
"It won't be big and professional like the GNU HURD"
"640k ought to be enough for anybody"
"3DFX is set to dominate the graphics industry for the next 5 years"
I'm still disappointed and waiting for my nuclear powered vacuum cleaner.
...over-rated the ability to make the technology work properly in the first place?
- I am made of meat.
People always overrate the future, its the one constant..
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
I predict we need more machines that talk back to authors when they find mahor spelling mistakes.
Money for nothing, pix for free
Oh, come on! How could you not see that coming? ;-)
Note to M1-ers: a curt but otherwise insightful message is not "Flamebait" or "Troll".
What!? No flying cars?
If Mr. Edison had thought smarter he wouldn't sweat as much. --Nikola Tesla
Nothing really imaginative on the horizon.
:-)
CPUs, for example - who cares anymore? 95% of us couldn't care less about upgrading, and the chances are that the last upgrade was just for the sake of it, not because we really needed a faster processor. Not like 10 years ago, when it was, 'Wow! The Pentium is going to be a big leap forward'.
Memory - so cheap, who cares anymore? Even 5 years ago, I was thinking, 'Wow! I've finally managed to afford 128 megs of RAM!!!' Most other people had 32 or less. Now, who cares? I could afford a gig of RAM, but what's the point?
Hard disks - mine is about 20% full, and has been for months. No need to upgrade.
Monitors - the few people who actually need a screen bigger than 17 inches can now afford them. LCD monitors are no longer a novelty.
Mice - optical mice are no longer a novelty
Bandwidth - OK, so ADSL is still 'exciting', but for how long? In two years, anybody who wants it will have it.
Optical storage - recordable DVD is here. CD-R is rediculously cheap. Who needs more storage than that?
OK, that's hardware, what about software?
Linux kernel - it's excellent. However, the excitement of a few years ago is dwinding. Don't get me wrong, Linux is excellent, but now that we've got a really good free *nix, the fun of developing a really good free *nix isn't there.
GNU/Hurd - maybe oneday this will become interesting
Windows - I hate Windows, but at least the launch of 95 was interesting. The lack of initial enthusiasm for 98 was interesting. After that, it got boring. Now, it's just more and more waffle about DRM. It's *boring*.
The only things I can see on the horizon that might be interesting are:
* IPV6
* Linux on non-i386 platforms.
Slashdot, where semi-literacy is prized above all
...is those pesky users and their fickle minds. For instance, who would have thought that most people actually don't *want* video phones or flying cars or talking computers? Or at least, they don't want them enough to drive the technical development of these things, since standard phones, autos, and Windows seem to do the job well enough.
.Net web services demo! It will show you the current news and weather! OVER THE INTERNET! Oh, just install this 300MB library+runtime first. Ok, now install my 30MB client app. Oh, yeah, that didn't refresh properly, did it? Exit out and restart. Dang. [this is better than a browser how?]), and for most in-house developers it will be just another call to use instead of dlopen() to open shared routine. And until the Net becomes totally ubiquitous and telecom-reliable, I don't see many shrink-wrap developers linking in lots of remote Web Services on the fly, when most of that functionality can be placed locally during the install.
In other words, just because a technology looks like it's the "right" way to progress next, doesn't mean the market will allow it to move along.
I think we'll see this with Web Services (noted in the artcle as the current Next Big Thing). At it's core it's simply a formalization of how CGI developers have been working for years, yet most people and developers still prefer to use a generic web browser to diseminate most information, vs. using a custom client and a web service. Why? Because developers don't want to support another client program, and users don't want to download another one when they can just enter www.weather.com/my-zip-code to get the current weather forecast. I don't think it's been the lack of a formal parameter/return value standard that has held this idea back.
Don't get me wrong, I think Web Services are a nice tool, but unfortunately I see it as a problem looking for a solution. For most end-users it will mostly be a poor substitute for a URL (wait until your co-worker comes in to show you his spiffy new
What's he talking about? I talk to computers all the time, especially Windows machines. "What the hell do you mean the zip drive can't be found?! It's right there!"
Worst prediction: People would be talking to computers....Mr. Negroponte would welcome a breakthrough. "I've been wrong for a long time," he says. Isn't there a program called something like ViaVoice? Doesn't Office XP come with Voice Reconigtion? Doesn't Mac OS 9 (I believe) have voice passwords? Don't people use it? I don't think this is a worst prediction. Yes, the reconigtion program isn't that great, but it is getting better and better. Where has this guy been living (and what computer has he been using) to say that he is wrong?
O, and btw, don't we all talk to computers even if we don't have voice reconigtion? "Come on, you can do it", "Stupid Windows", "Good job", "You stupid dimwit" are just some examples. This would be concidered talking to a computer. In light of that, talking to computers is done everyday almost by every person.
Most futurists follow the same "30-year rule" that science fiction writers follow: If you want to predict a sweeping change that will revolutionize everything, place it about 30 years in the future. If you doubt this, just look at virtually every mainstream sci-fi flick that takes place in the future. This might have started with George Orwell's "1984", first published in 1954.
I think people tend to come up with 30 years because (a) it sounds far away enough for anything to happen, and (b) it's soon enough that they might be alive to see it.
[obPrediction: by 2032, Slashdot will have its own TV show]
It's Slashdot's evil twin... SlashNOT
"Macintosh OS X is a new operating system."
Mmph! Just tell that to the guys who spent all their time and energy writing *BSD, only to have Steve "I am not a thieving maggot" Jobs use them and lose them, kinda like Wozniak. They never saw a damned dime for any of it.
While the concept of any civilian being able to fly is an intriging one, it does pose certain problems.
Most drivers are of the opinion that 95% of other drivers should not be driving. At least that is the way it seems to myself when my friends who do drive choose to vent their spleens on the subject.
Do you really want that Drunken idiot who cut you off flying around? The hazards for office buildings and high rise apartments alone are staggering. I do not like the idea of having some 16 year old DUI parking his Hovercar in my apartment living room.
END COMMUNICATION
Make a subject where the users can enter their predictions about the future - then we return in ten years and check it out :)
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
This sounds like a good time to sort out an old (possibly apocryphal) quote I heard, it was allegedly attributed to Issac Asimov. He said something to the effect that "any time an expert says something is absolutely impossible, it is certain to happen, eventually. Any time an expert says something is possible, it will happen sooner than anyone expected."
Now I'm sure I've mangled that, Asimov could spin a phrase much better than that. But it does sound like Asimov, an ironic skepticism against skeptics, disbelief in pundits, and a belief that we are most infallible when we claim things are impossible.
"Telecom could invert itself and become a bottom-up phenomenon," is a deliciously subversive idea. Like the local currency systems - LETS and whatever comes after major labor music distribution this promises to really shake things up in a good way (read: shaft the bad guys) and is also right around the corner.
Then I'll get a cell phone
Physics is like sex: sure, it may give some practical results, but that's not why we do it.
Here's one possible layout for the next 20 years. A couple are coming true early, like Linux AOL!
People always overrate the future, its the one constant..
"The future looked much better in the olden days." -- Grandfather
"I have opinions of my own, strong opinions, but I don't always agree with them." -- George H. W. Bush
Glover Ferguson, Chief scientist, Accenture;
I predict that Mr. Ferguson might need to find a new job before too long.
I only see technological developments resulting in more an more human misery for the majority of humanity.
Humanity is becoming more and more disconected from the natural environment we evolved in the more we try to modify that environment.
Biotechnological "advances" will result in the extinction of the human speces in 100 years or so.
What, they couldn't find even one woman to ask?
When doing something that is a list of things in html, try making the headings a little more distinct.
Chances are pretty good that people will want to skip over the boring ones.
Maybe a bold tag around the words "Worst Prediction:"
This was interesting reading, too bad it looked like shit.
I've been talking to my computers (In the form of yelling horrible obscenities) for as long as I can remember, and I swear they can understand me. They always seem to crash worse once I start yelling.
You mean Arthur C Clarke's First Law - "When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong."
Do at least try to attribute the correct author!
People should not be afraid of their governments - Governments should be afraid of their people.
When it comes to making predictions regarding technology, it is typically much safer to predict the possibility of something than the impossibility of it. Human ingenuity is truly amazing.
Perhaps that's what makes all these old predictions about talking, thinking computers so intriguing. Computers have advanced in so many ways as people have boldly predicted (perhaps the most astounding of which is that Moore's Law continues to hold true), yet AI has accomplished very little. And unfortunately, speech recognition and AI (which might be the same) are probably the most important for making computers truly useful for the ordinary end users that don't have to time to learn complex interfaces.
This sig is false.
Social Contract? I don't remember signing any Social Contract!
There seems to be a common agreement on having overrated the ability of machines to talk back to users
This is a strong point. Now I don't have to worry about getting yelled at by my girlfriend and my computer, which the two combined occupy 95% of my time.
"You moron! Windows XP is SO not my look!"
"The internet will collapse in 1996." -Bob Metcalf, Ethernet inventor and 3Com founder.
Linux is only free if your time has no value. Windows is only free if you threaten to use Linux.
... that some overzealous Microsoft basher is soon about to quote Bill Gates on the 640k limit, even tough it has been shown recently that he never uttered these words.
"I think there is a world market for maybe five computers." -- Thomas Watson Senior, Chairman of IBM, 1943
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
A subculture of people who refuse to take part in these "biotechnological advances" who will be shunned by those who did take part in some dramatically huge advancement.
"Surround sound is going to be increasingly important in future offices"
Actually, the article is FULL of horrid predictions IMHO. Especially the office being dark and hushed? So we'll get eye strain? Great idea!
Like Microsoft collapsing in 6 months back in 2000, and more recently, Windows becoming obsolete with the advent of the new $299 Linux boxes from WalMart.
+5:offtopic,but anti-American
I'm not the original author, but if he's like me, he has problems to remember names.
I got an excellent memory for proverbs, witty things etc. -- and numbers.
I'm lousy at remembering names.
It's not easy for everybody, ok?
Pronounced Ma Whore.
I predict that in 10 years /. has been ranamed to ./ and focuses on local news on each continent.
I predict that in 10 years weblinks have become illegal because
a) they are almost invariably a copyright violation
b) they can be used to direct slashdot DDoS attacks
I predict that in 10 years we have moved on and slashdot is being read by another generation of pimple faced nerds.
"I have opinions of my own, strong opinions, but I don't always agree with them." -- George H. W. Bush
"The Internet will ultimately be more about information than transactions."
Heh...I don't think this is much of a prediction as this has always constituted the Internet as I've known it.
While it's true that they often overrate the future, more often than not, they underrate it.
Look at all the cheezy sci-fi films of the 30s. You'll see:
* computers are huge monstrosities that need flashing lights and tape
* computers are all voice activated because people obviously couldn't adapt to typing and reading
* essential stuff like the microwave and internet don't exist
* "food pills" are the solution to the "how to simplify your housework" problem, and not mass production of prepackaged food.
This site run by Zack Exley began offering a a subscription for "The Great Crash Will Burst Your Bubble in 200X" t-shirts every year until the stock market crashed for $35.
He shouldn't have stopped printing them and offering that deal -- the crash will happen very, very soon if we attack Iraq.
Clarke's 1st Law
When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.
Clarke's 2nd Law
The only way to discover the limits of the possible is to go beyond them into the impossible.
Clarke's 3rd Law
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
"These laws they're passing won't even compile anymore, let alone execute." - anon
I wonder if Microsoft's Vision of the Future Workpace qualified in time for this competition... Just remember that...
"Surround sound is going to be increasingly important in future offices," says group marketing manager Tom Gruver in leading a tour of the new facility.
I'm just waiting for those days where I come into the office and the person in the next cube is BLASTING DVD movies in their full 5.1 surround sound glory for everyone in the entire office (and possibly for everyone in a 1/2 mile radius) to hear... Those will be the days...
-Valen
I wish the article had presented a bit more background on these guys predictions than "Here's the worst, here's the best, here's the current". That really doesn't let me gauge whether these guys are making good predictions or not.
/.? For the past week I've had a timeout on about 1 in three connections to /., both from work and from home.
Consider Slashdot posts: You might say that my highest rated post is 5, my lowest -1, and my most recent is 3. But, does that give you any real feel for whether you want to read my posts? Now, if you said that my mean post value was 3.5, my mode was 4, and that only 10% of my posts are rated less than 2 (NOTE: all figures are made up - I don't keep that close track on my moderations) then you might be able to judge better.
Simillarly, when judging someone's ability to predict where things are going, I'd like to know what their ratio of hits to misses are. If somebody is right no more often than they are wrong, then I can weight their prediction accordingly.
That's one of the problems I had with Tomorrowland at Disney - it's nothing but a bunch of predictions from the past. I'd rather they have done a "Yesterday's Tomorrow" - for every decade show what people thought the future was going to look like, along with a reality check. Show the things they got wrong (flying cars), the things they got right (television), and the things they completely missed (computers).
OT: is anybody else having problems getting to
www.eFax.com are spammers
From Alan Nugent, Chief technology officer, Novell
"Like Mr. Negroponte, Mr. Nugent thought people would be conversing with their computers years ago. He also thought computers would be able to emulate human thought. He says IBM's champion chess-playing computer is evidence of the progress that has been made, but the field still falls short of early expectations."
IBM's chess-playing computer was just a massive parallel search assisted by human generated heuristics. It was not progress into emulating human thought. The only thing it progressed was building a computer to play chess.
If this guys is Novell's CTO, that explains Novell's problems.
I agree with you on some other things that could become interesting. IPV6 could allow IP addresses everywhere, which will probably be taken advantage of. It also supports packet prioritization, which would be very good for VoIP and related technologies.
Linux already runs on several non-i386 processors, and it is commonly used on these in, for example, embedded systems. Embedded systems, I think, are quite exciting. And Linux (or one of the *BSD's) will probably be the kernel of choice for those, since the idea of putting an OS on one of those is to allow the device to be programmed easily and not be noticed by the user. From that perspective, Linux is obviously superior to any harder-to-develop-for OS that you have to pay for, like Windows.
I'm still excited about the future. Are you?
I think Lester Thurow was wrong on Japan because their economic collapse showed that Japan's cultural norms could not accommodate the changes necessary to improve their economic systems.
Look at South Korea--after the horrid experience of the Asian financial crisis of 1997-1999 this country was willing to take drastic steps to improve its economic system; as a result the country is doing quite well indeed.
Here in the USA, the fact we're more than willing to make changes in our economic system to correct problems show why the USA will do well economically.
Each of them predict an outcome, while the coin is in the air.
10 of them are correct in that their predictions of either heads or tails came true. And they believe that their high level of intelligence led them to the correct conclusion.
These 10 geniuses are given HUGE book contracts for their obvious ability to tell the future.
Millions of other monkeys soon believe in SUPER 10s abilities and send these geniuses millions of dollars.
Things are looking good.
5 years pass. Another flipping of the coins is called for and the original SUPER 10 attempt to repeat their original success.
But NONE of them succeed. In fact only 7 monkeys predict the correct outcome of their coin toss.
The original SUPER 10 retire to the Caymon Islands.
"There is no reason that any normal person would want a personal computer"
- The CEO of DEC (the name escapes me)
Thurow is an economist, not a scientist or engineer, which is why his predictions about biotech are particularly bad. The science is on the edge of a lot of new understanding and breakthroughs, but that will only put us up against the really interesting and hard problems. As if we would be able to find genes that more or less directly influence something as subtle as IQ.
I find the predictions about the future importance of web services and the junk about "insight" to be particularly inane. On the first, nobody should forget that GM and Ford are still about the only companies that represent a percentage of the U.S. economy. Manufacture of physical goods (and commodities production, etc.) will continue to be the drivers of economies.
In my opinion, the most important trend is a favorite of this forum. The growth factors that have been working for Free software are fundamentally exponential, even if the constant factor is small. If it isn't killed off by legal/social influence of current big players, and I don't think this is likely if it is even possible, then the exponential term will eventually dominate.
When this plays out, the companies that make their reputations by being the best at efficiently building and servicing products that are mostly designed in the "Creative Commons". People will pay for quality in goods and services, and there will always be value in good execution. Customers do not value "insight" as described in one prediction. They find this sort of thing invasive and manipulative, and you won't be able to keep it secret.
It was when I was chasing down some secondary links from the GNUradio interview that I came across the stuff about the value of a network increasing at greater than linear rates. You get O(N) for broadcast networks, O(N^2) in peer to peer networks, but the exponential (O(2^N)) comes in when you have group forming networks (GFN).
When you think about it, this is what drives the GPL software phenominon. Every project fork or new initiative forms a new group or groups in the network, and every project is a nucleus for new group formation. The only way this could be stopped is to destroy to possibility of the group forming that leads to the exponential growth. While this might be possible, our robust institutions that support free speech make this very difficult if not impossible.
So my prediction is that Linux on the desktop will overtake Windows in the next ten years, and the RIAa and MPAA will finally lose out to the best interests of the actual artists they claim to support. Also, derivitives of GNUradio will be core technology in establishing cooperative wireless mesh networks. This is the only prediction of any of the pundits in the article that will come true.
Flying phones
Video cars
in the next - well - real soon...
Cake or Death? Cake Please!
It is interesting to notice that when they got it right it was for relatively vague predictions (like Negroponte's) or short-time ones (Thurow's;) whereas those specific, momentous ones they got wrong always.
Once more, it is interesting how AI practitioners insist on the inminency of human-intelligent computers, against all evidence that the AI community has NO CLUE about how to develop such systems.
who only does it for money - so he can put himself through college.
First off: you don't use your computer for anything intensive, do you? I use it for 3d modeling and animation, and boy-oh-boy do I need the extra cpu-power, the extra ram, that superduper new gfx card. At least, if I want to move the objects at anything but frame-by-frame on my monitor.
As for the HD...yeah, I photoshop my own textures. You bet that I need that HD-space for something else than divx'.
And all this certainly comes in handy when I have to do some finite-element analysis for school (or any other simulation for that matter).
Added bonus: I can play computer games with realistic graphics on it, too!
Now, secondly; there is more to life than the computer itself. Read the very last line of the article...damn if that's not true, and maybe the most important piece of the whole chebang (sp?). Also, the bottom-up telephone system...that got me thinking bigtime. I like that idea.
Oh, and just to prove I can't count, here's number three; you want new stuff? There's whole area's of the universe not understood yet, where breakthroughs are coming (just you wait). Just a couple are: the nature of time (we still have no clue!), human nature in mind and body (what is the mind?, the soul? and what about huge breakthroughs in understanding becoming possible by biochips?). There's loads more, all only coming within reach because technology is making it possible for us to simulate/look at/describe these systems and phenomena.
Trust me, we don't know nothing yet.
-- Waht? Tehr's a preveiw buottn?
>Why do you think style sheets make web pages unreadable?
t tp://www.nvidia.comp ://www.wiseeye.com/
You wouldn't be a young fellow with an expensive monitor would you?
>Do you even know what style sheets are?
Of course, how else would i know they are the bane of the WWW today:
Because most webdesigners use absolute font size, which means you can't resize it in browsers. Ie, you are stuck with a font size which is often too small (it is for me most of the time).
Jakob Nielsen (who you should know if you are a regular slashdot reader, if not search the slashdot archives), the man CNN calls "Web usability guru" (ironically they do it wrong as well), will tell you why Stylesheets "reduced readability of an increasing number of websites" - He will also tell you how to do it right. - Basically doing it right is to specify percentage weights so that the stylesheets DO cascade, instead of taking over.
Some sites who do it wrong:
http://www.cnn.com
http://www.microsoft.com
h
http://www.asus.com.tw/
htt
http://www.syfyportal.com/
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
...to his statement. Let's face it, the signal to noise ratio of usefull info on the net has dropped significantly the past years.
But that's changing again, thank [diety-of-choise] and places like MIT putting their content online.
-- Waht? Tehr's a preveiw buottn?
He hires (bunches of) them to work for money
and of course - there's the satisfaction that your work is the foundation of something wonderful.
Cake or Death? Cake Please!
Though not young, I do have an expensive monitor (dual 21", both @ 1600x1200.) Still, I have the same problem you do. Fonts are often too small to be legible. Mozilla lets you easly adjust the font size, even for the sites you mention. It's a life saver (or eyeball saver at least) for me.
So it's not style sheets you have a problem with then, it's idiot web designers.
It's arguably easier to make crappy pages with absolute font sizes and resolution dependant features without stylesheets than with. At least with stylesheets, the "programmer" (I use the term loosely) can fix the problem in one place instead of having to change it throughout the site.
Sure, there are a lot of shitty sites out there, and a lot of terrible "web designers"... but stylesheets are not the problem.
Since this is offtopic, I'll start a journal entry for this, if you want to reply, reply to the journal.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
More Olsen (from scripophily.net):
However, the 1990s were an entirely new decade for the company. Digital was slow to comprehend the growing importance of UNIX. "UNIX is snake oil," declared CEO Olsen, one of the many factors that led to his departure. (He was replaced in 1992 by Robert Palmer.) The company was also late getting into the open systems PC market, and encroaching technology threatened the company's viability. It reported its first quarterly loss ever in 1990 and a net loss for fiscal 1991. Palmer undertook numerous restructurings, massive layoffs (more than 60,000 people), and plant closings in an effort to remain competitive.
Cake or Death? Cake Please!
Peter Cochrane
Director, ConceptLabs; former chief technologist, British Telecommunications PLC
Worst prediction: Voice over Internet protocol technology would fall flat.
Mr. Cochrane says 10 years ago he was extremely skeptical of the voice over Internet protocol systems that let people make voice telephone calls over data networks. He thought the networks couldn't handle it. Now he concedes that it's been successful at least on single data networks, like those used within a company.
Shouldn't he be working on a warp drive instead of making these stupid predictions?!?
Live web cams
I think I said 95% of users have long had adequate computing power on their desktop. You obviously are part of the other 5% :-). Seriously, though, 3d modelling is not a standard requirement, (otherwise it would have been built in to the latest version of Windows :-) ).
Yeah, there is more to life than computers, but nothing is advancing on that front either - everytime I go out, I see litter all over the place, for example, which could be solved with today's technology. Also, pollution - that could be solved, easily by just not using fossil fuels, and actually getting our act together to improve things, but no, we're just dragging out feet.
As for stuff like understanding how time works, well I don't see that being solved any time, (pun intended), soon.
Actually, we under-rate techno advances ... my father grew up on a farm without electricity, and nobody had anti-biotics. Pretty basic, huh, and that's just ~100 years. Other hand, as for literary and political values, those -it's true- have not improved much since Thucydides, and do not seem capable of improvement. To live & die a prudent, free, aware man will always hold the highest place.
you just hit on the strategy and thinking of modern business when it gets any larger than about, say 2000 employees. Substitute the Super 10 as mid level management and the worshiping short sighted monkeys as upper management. Meanwhile the engineers still can't get management to do the simplest aspect of their jobs (to which they were hired) and actually manage the project, share information and coordinate effort. Soon, the engineers leave and the company has a 20:1 ratio of management to implementers.
Heh. Does anybody else imagine hearing "In the yeeeeearrr 2000... *slightly higher pitched* in the yeeearr 2000!" before each of these predictions?
Maybe I just watch too much Conan.
I think by "mahor" you mean "major". Maybe some of the editors should write their submissions in MS Word or one of its equivalents before posting it to the masses.
Look at many sci-fi novels about post apocolyptic futures where a society treats our technology as artifacts. They don't understand how to use them really, or how they work. They merely press the 'go' button and depend on the machine's result. As these machines inevitably break down, no one can repair them. However, the trully sad part is that instead of adapting to this and either learning to live without them or even better trying to understand the mechanics they just huddle closer to the remaining technologies like crack addicts undergoing rehab.
The result is that they would have been better off starting from scratch or putting resources into understanding WHY those technologies are so neat. In the US, we are lapsing into a state of complacency where instead of putting innovation and determination up on the pedastal as the ultimate achievements we put forms, papers, meetings and rhetorical repetition of policy and buzz. The end result are empty headed managers that instead of just not doing their job (that is one 'unit' of waste and inefficiency) they actively reverse the productivity of the group (relative to if they had struck out on their own) to which is a second 'unit' of waste and inefficiency.
I have known some very talented facilitators that if they didn't know something they insured they placed around them someone that did. They could create opportunity from any chaos and motivated by sheer tenacity and drive where any skill lacked until they refined and LEARNED how to do it best. Now I find that instead of Learning, there is only lip service given in fancy buzz phrases. Someone wears a tie as if to say, "I have business sense, am motivated to work and am a member of a team," yet is as a monkey in a suit. Entertaining from afar and behind glass, is that monkey but be careful of him up close as he has a tendency to lash out, throw poop and trash all the tools needed to be productive.
Superficial is the watchword today and until people wake up and pull their heads out of their asses, we will continue to be victims of circumstance instead of masters of our destiny.
in 1943, there probably was a market for about five computers.
:)
But then people saw these things, came up with new ideas for them, and the market grew.
In the next 30 years:
Personal transportation will be more efficent and quite possibly cheaper
Processors will become much much faster they are are today. It is likely that processor powered devices may become smaller.
There will be people in the general public interested in space travel.
Most of the world will use the Internet. Some may even use it for pornography.
Now where are my bags of money?
The Internet is generally stupid
Well, how is it bad????
Lester Thurow ought to be thrown on the ash-heap of history along with the Soviet Union.
Lester Thurow:
Best from the past: Predictions on the U.S. economic outlook for 1965.
Mr. Thurow says in late 1964 he correctly predicted the U.S. economic performance for the following year, including such indicators as employment, inflation and economic growth rates. At the time, he was working for President Lyndon Johnson's Council of Economic Advisers and helped write its annual report. Mr. Thurow says his accomplishment would be impossible today, given the influence of so many international elements on the domestic U.S. economy.
Gee, I wonder if he predicted hyperinflation and huge deficits, too? Another example of how Johnson's administration had even more assholes than Nixon's. BTW Professor Thurow, once Japan's brilliantly managed economy recovers, are they going to take over the world?
Just over a century ago he said:
-WolfWithoutAClause
"Gravity is only a theory, not a fact!"I haven't had any problems from work (I work Sat-Wed, noon-8:30, eastern) connecting, but when I check from home (11 pm, eastern) I've been having problems on occasion. Not nearly as often as you, though.
I sing the doggie electric!
one quote for you:
Everything has already been invented.
-- Chief of the US Patent Office, 1899
chances are that the last upgrade was just for the sake of it, not because we really needed a faster processor
I think chances are the last upgrade was to make Windows XP feel usable.
Bill Gates' #1 Prediction (1995)
"If a new computer or a software upgrade costs more than it's worth to you, don't buy it. After all, you don't have to upgrade. Software will run forever, and computer hardware will work as long as it is kept in good repair.
"Upgrading is often smart, because the quality of your tools--whether shovels, snow skis, or software--can have a big impact on your effectiveness and enjoyment. Upgrades can be worthwhile. Right now Microsoft is investing heavily to suggest that people upgrade their operating systems, but the world won't end for people who don't. "
Another quote: "Microsoft is always searching for the new thing that is coming along, whether it is in a research lab or at another company. "
And: "I gave a great deal of personal thought to the Internet back then and even wrote a memo on it. But we were cautious because the Internet had drawbacks - including capacity and security limitations -compared to what was possible using alternate approaches (...) As it happened, the lightning struck early. The public got a taste of interactivity on the Internet's World Wide Web and said, "We're not waiting for a better solution! Let's go!" (What better solution were they planning? Oh, MS passport??)
"I don't use a Mac. I use a Windows-based laptop computer with docking stations at home and work. The Apple Macintosh is a fine system, though. Microsoft has invested heavily in developing software for it since before the first Mac was released back in 1984. Microsoft is doing as much Macintosh software development now as at any time in the past. "
"I used to button my top button, and it took me a while to figure out that wasn't cool. So you'd better watch out for that one. "
"At any given moment, my company typically has as many customers playing our games online (at www.zone.com) as it has people using our online service. We don't know how to make money with online games yet, but we'll figure it out someday. " (1998)
"I didn't have any teachers I disliked, or who were unfairly critical of me. Actually, I've always wanted to go back and see a few of my teachers who put a lot of energy into working with me and who encouraged me. But there's a world of good things I don't have time for. I'll probably be old by the time I get around to it."
Also, I read on Bill Gates OWN HOMEPAGE that he denies ever saying the 640k comment he's credited to have spoken.
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