Some wrong Technology Predicitions ....

Discussion in 'The Lounge - Off Topic' started by TheITCrowd, Jul 17, 2011.

  1. TheITCrowd

    TheITCrowd Kilobyte Poster

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    Bill Gates, Microsoft founder, said in 1981 that no one would need more than 637kb of memory for a personal computer and 640 ought to be enough for anybody

    "Next Christmas the iPod will be dead, finished, gone, kaput," said Sir Alan Sugar, British entrepreneur, 2005

    Founder of mainframe-producer Digital Equipment Corp., Ken Olsen, assured in 1977 there was no reason anyone would want a computer in his home

    Sir William Preece, chief engineer at the British Post Office, announced in 1878 that the Americans had the need of the telephone, but they didn’t because they had plenty of messenger boys

    Charles Duell, commissioner for the U.S. Patent Office, said in 1899 that everything that could be invented had already been invented

    Article Source: Top Ten Wrong Technology Predictions of All Time
     

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  2. steve_p1981

    steve_p1981 Byte Poster

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    i thought the millenium bug theory was a good one too. don't actually know if any thing was affected but i doubt it.
     
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  3. dmarsh
    Honorary Member 500 Likes Award

    dmarsh Petabyte Poster

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    Was mainly a COBOL issue and there were libs that were pretty much drop in replacements that just stored the date in a different compressed format.
     
  4. Shinigami

    Shinigami Megabyte Poster

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    Apparently, the first one regarding BG is incorrect. He never said this, it was just a rumor mill which grew out of some miswording/quoting of his.

    QUESTION: "I read in a newspaper that in l981 you said '640K of memory should be enough for anybody.' What did you mean when you said this?"

    ANSWER: "I've said some stupid things and some wrong things, but not that. No one involved in computers would ever say that a certain amount of memory is enough for all time."
     
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  5. dmarsh
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    dmarsh Petabyte Poster

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    I like the fact he released a totally updated 'The Road Ahead' since he missed mentioning the internet in the first one...

    64k of logical memory Is what you get with a 16bit address space, this was the norm in 1981. The step upto a 20 bit address space was huge for home computers in 1981, the XT only shipped with 128kb, to get 640kb you needed an expansion card. Its quite possible someone from MS would have made some marketing statement along those lines...
     
    Last edited: Jul 17, 2011
  6. Afroninja

    Afroninja Bit Poster

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    Shame Sugar wasnt correct :)
     
  7. Rover977

    Rover977 Byte Poster

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    A few years back I recall the proprieter of a local computer store, otherwise a very reputable store, astonished me by saying NOBODY's ever going to need a drive 'that size' (500GB). I filled one up no problem at all and am well on the way to filling up a second one. Its interesting how hard it is to make predictions in technology, eg the dot com boom fooled so many major investors, and yet some things like Facebook or Twitter just take off spectacularly, and some unexpected things can generate huge revenues, like search terms sold by Google.
     
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  8. martincrow

    martincrow Bit Poster

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    Technology is a world of imaginations not predictions, technology can do what you imagine. And nothing is impossible as the boom in computer and technology is covering many impossible things.
     

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