Week 3 Blog #1: The Logic Behind the Predictions

The Logic Behind My Top 5 From Professor Lavian's List 

1.    "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 believe this memo highlights why you should never come to a conclusion so quickly when something is initially produced. It’s always easy to dismiss a product when it is first produced, but this is the wrong approach whenever observing something radically new because of the simple fact that you never know what the future holds for this product. There may be flaws in a product, but to call it of “no value” so quickly highlights a certain level of ignorance that no entrepreneurial mind should hold.

2.  "Everyone acquainted with the subject will recognize it as a conspicuous failure." - Henry Morton, president of the Stevens Institute of Technology, on Edison's light bulb, 1880.

I believe that Mr. Morton simply could not see the potential for Edison’s light bulb. Initially with the light bulb, there were many technical difficulties in getting the entire program started but the potential was so obvious. That is what bothers me with Mr. Morton’s quote. The human race had struggled so long to find light in darkness and the fact that Edison’s light bulb held the solution to it all confuses me as to why Mr. Morton did not see how this invention addressed a fundamental problem that had existed for so many years.

3.  "The horse is here to stay but the automobile is only a novelty - a fad." - The president of the Michigan Savings Bank advising Henry Ford's lawyer not to invest in the Ford Motor Co., 1903"

At that in point in time, the idea of the automobile was so radical, it somewhat makes sense for someone to doubt its potential. The world had relied on natural beings so long for transportation that inventions such as the railroad and eventually the automobile were deemed as simply temporary novelties. The automobile in particular because of its limited capacity in terms of carrying people and goods when compared to trains. However, its undeniably more practical and efficient uses when compared to the horse should have made it clear to this gentlemen how irrational his statement sounded.

4.  "If excessive smoking actually plays a role in the production of lung cancer, it seems to be a minor one." - W.C. Heuper, National Cancer Institute, 1954.

This quote captures the growth of scientific knowledge in such a short period of time. The fact we did not have the medical technologies that we do today and people for centuries had smoked excessively led to the belief that smoking was not whatsoever harmful. This quote highlights how far we have come as a society in terms of healthcare and how far we still need to go to make sure we don’t come to improper assumptions such as the ones we made in the past.

5.  "No, it will make war impossible." - Hiram Maxim, inventor of the machine gun, in response to the question.

The reason behind this selection was because of the tragic irony behind this statement, the fact that the inventor of the machine gun, Hiram Maxim, actually increased the deadliness of war rather than making it simply impossible. Since the invention of the machine gun, war has remained a constant, but the fatalities surrounding it have worsened. The irony behind this statement is what makes it so compelling and ludicrous.

The Logic Behind My Own Top 5

1.  “We will never make a 32 bit operating system.” - Bill Gates, 1989

I thought this statement was somewhat ridiculous as Bill Gates was leading the computer revolution at the time and the fact that the advance from the 8-bit to the 16-bit had just been made so it seemed subsequent developments were only logical. The 32-bit operating system was inevitable so for Mr. Gates to proclaim that the technology could not evolve further did not make much sense at the time.

2.  “Computers in the future may weigh no more than 1.5 tons.” – Popular Mechanics, 1949.

Since the first general-purpose electronic computer, the ENIAC, which was completed in 1947 weighed almost 30 tons at the time, it made sense for the magazine to predict 1.5 tons would be the greatest amount that future computers would weigh. While that may have been a bit too generous of a margin, Popular Mechanics had the insight to see computers would be consistently developed and tinkered with to be more efficient in the future.

3.  “Home Taping Is Killing Music” - A 1980s campaign by the BPI claiming that people recording music off the radio onto cassette would destroy the music industry.

In this instance I think the BPI was frightened that the influence of the radio would die with the growth of the cassette. Such a prediction, while a bit extreme, does make a good case in the sense that the role of the radio has diminished as the cassette has evolved into the digital age with the streaming of music. However, rather than killing music, the cassette elevated music to levels never seen before and jumpstarted the digitization of the music industry as it is today.

4.  “Stocks have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau” - Irving Fisher, economics professor at Yale University, September 1929

Professor Fisher unfortunately became so enamored with the continuous growth of the American economy that he forgot one of the most basic elements taught by economics: that the economy operates in a cycle. What comes up must come down and the stock market crash highlighted this in an extreme way. Furthermore, to claim that there is a plateau also suggests Professor Fisher did not believe in the economy to expand even further in greater years which is somewhat strange as the economy consistently reaches greater and greater heights as technology and society develop through the years as proven by precedent.

5.  “Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?” - Harry M. Warner, co-founder of Warner Brothers, 1926.

      

I find Mr. Warner’s statement to be quite puzzling, as I don’t understand why he did not see the potential in expanding movie production with speech. Such technology at the time simply sounded too radical, but the practicality behind it and how it would revolutionize and make movies so much more influential makes me confused as to why Mr. Warner would not want actors to talk. Speech, while radical at the time, had potential to completely change the entire filmmaking and producing atmosphere and it has.