Two selections from the Top 87 Bad Predictions about the Future from Zspare.com.
"Such startling announcements as these should be deprecated as being unworthy of science and mischievous to its true progress." Sir William Siemens, on Edison's light bulb, 1880.
"The phonograph has no commercial value at all." Thomas Edison, American inventor, 1880s.
It's interesting to see how ultimately successful inventions had to run the gauntlet of strong scepticism from senior figures in the scientific or business community. Of course, in retrospect, these sceptics look ridiculous but they didn't back then. It's also worth bearing in mind that many inventions and idea deserve to be written off and need to be filtered out.
The challenge is keep the scepticism healthy: don't kill ideas before they've had a chance to grow nor pour resources into ideas that aren't going anywhere.
Sunday, October 28, 2007
Edison right and wrong
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