Ten Predictions Sourced from Class and the Internet

Predictions on Art and Social Progresses

Musicians, writers, politicians and many other public figures make predictions all the time. Musicians make prediction when they try to decide on the theme, the music and even the dressing style for the next album. Similarly, writers make prediction that range from carefully selecting story, characters, and the name for their work. Politicians also make prediction all the times, among which the most obvious maybe their election platforms. In all these three cases, public figures try to predict the next “BIG THING” that will be accepted, supported, and even enthusiastically loved by the public. However, not all predictions are accurate. In fact, most are probably not. To name a few:   

“We don’t like their sound, and guitar music is on the way out”- Decca recording company on declining to sign the Beatles, 1962
 “Children just aren’t interested in witches and wizards anymore.” –Anonymous publishing executive writing to J.K Rowling, 1996
 “It will be years- not in my time-before a woman will become Prime Minister” -Magaret Thatcher, future Prime Minister, 1969

These predictions all turn out to be false: Beatle is now widely regard as the greatest and most influential act of the rock era. They are collectively included in Times magazine’s compilation of the twentieth’s century’s 100 most influential people and they are the best selling band in the history. Harry Potter series written by J.K. Rowling have gained immense popularity, critical acclaim, and commercial success worldwide. And it turns out Magaret Thatcher’s prediction was not only falsified, and it was falsified by herself.

Decca recording company, publishing executive, and Magaret Thatcher are not just random people lacking knowledge in the area that they predicted; instead, they are highly informed, intelligent, and have achieved successes in their respective areas. So what went wrong? Their false predictions reflect fundamental difficulties in making predictions for popular trend and/or social progress—prediction needs to allow room for rapidly changing social context and that trends do not replicate.

Decca recording company dismissed Beatle because guitar was not popular in the 60s; publishing executive disregarded Harry Potter because many books on witches and wizards in the late 90s fall in oblivion; Thatcher did not think any woman could be a Prime Minister because she was stumbled with obstacles in the political world for her identity as a female. In these cases, they made predictions based on their social context. But what they have neglected is the rapid pace at which social context can change, and the change is not necessarily linear. Additionally, trends also are difficult to predict because they do not duplicated themselves. Superb musicians, writers, and politicians achieve success by bringing to the public something different and things maybe even previously overlooked. All in all, these predictions turn out to be false because they were trying to predict the unpredictable.

 

Predictions on Technological Advancement

Another group of people that are constantly making predictions, and a lot of times wrong predictions, are scientists and corporate executives investing on new technologies. However, they face different set of difficulties when making predictions. The first set difficulties, and perhaps the more obvious one, is environmental constraints. In other words, they make predictions based on given technological limits. Following predictions illustrate the impact of this constraint.  

“X-rays will prove to be a hoax.” -Lord Kelvin, president of the royal society, 1883
“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
“I predict the Internet in 1996 [will] catastrophically collapse.” -Robert Metcalfe, coinventor of the Internet, 1995.
“All the machines that could be invented have been invented. We could just close this office.” – a patent officer in early 1900s.

These predictions all turn out to be false. Today, X-rays has wide medical applications that range from Computed tomography to Radiotherapy. Mobile and fixed-line telephone subscribers are estimated to exceed 6 billion in 2009. Internet did not collapse, and it transformed the business with platform economy, cloud computing, and ICT-enabled manufacturing. Finally, the patent office certainly remains in office today with the increased and still increasing demand for patent filings.  Lord Kelvin, Western Union, Robert Metcalfe, and patent officer made the false predictions because technological inventions can be reconfigured by many technological advancements and it is difficult to predict the future of a product when the incremental improvements of the product are yet to be invented. 

The second difficulty, more subtle but nonetheless very important, that limits scientists’ and executives’ ability to predict the future is that demands can be created.

“There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in his home.” -Ken Olson, president, chairman and founder of digital Equipment Corporation, in a talk given to a 1977 World Future Society meeting in Boston

“I think there is a world market for maybe five computers.”-Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM 1943

“Search Engines? Aren’t they all dead?”-James Altucher, Venture Capitalist late 2000s

Once again, all the above predictions turn out to be false. People use computer for communication with each other, for the purpose of study, for entertainment, and as well as business purpose. Personal computers are the icons of the Information Age. Google, a search engine company, became a multinational, publicly traded organization in just few years. These examples demonstrate the second set of difficulty in making predictions. A world without computers or Google may be unimaginable from today’s perspective. But imagine a world that has never had computers or Google, people can still communicate via phones, study and find information with the help of librarians, enjoy more outdoor activities instead of video games, and manage businesses without digitalization. The point is, computers and Google have created a vast range of demands that we previously did not need. This is why the above predictions turn out to be false. The predictors could not have possibly seen the needs of computer or Google until these new technologies have created the needs.