^^ About those predictions...
They are kind of fun to laugh at, but while reading, I couldn't help but think that it was rather disingenuous to laugh so much. For example:
"Stocks have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau."
-- Irving Fisher, Professor of Economics, Yale University , 1929.
Well, is that in 1929 dollars? The US dollar has lost over 96% of its value since 1913 or so. And can the stocks be compared adequately? I think that context makes that a bit more reasonable than say Bill Gates' 640K comment, where he didn't account for porn.
I'm curious about what he meant there though, as I can imagine scenarios where that would be true, and others where it's just silly.
"Airplanes are interesting toys but of no military value,"
-- Marechal Ferdinand Foch, Professor of Strategy, Ecole Superieure de Guerre , France .
Air power was only of real military value arguably by the Vietnam era, but only tactically by the first Gulf War. Proof? 75% of all casualties on D-Day were from artillery. Air power had no real strategic effect in WWII (German factories were up and running very quickly after being bombed). (I know someone is going to not like this argument -- please just go read up on the effects of air power in WWII as it's been covered by people much better than me at explaining it.) The primary purpose of air power then was for terror, which the Germans improved with the Stukkas. You can look at military analysis of things like the Crocodile flame thrower where they perfectly well state that the purpose of the weapon is for terror. Fear is a great weapon.
I don't know when he said that, but he died in 1929, so it really was true then.
But, those quotes were certainly entertaining!
I like this one:
"Computers in the future may weigh no more than 1.5 tons."
-- Popular Mechanics, forecasting the relentless march of science, 1949
Hey! It's true~!
If I may throw out a quick one for today... Adherents to the 2nd law of thermodynamics...
https://en.wikipedia...aw_of_thermodynamicsThe second law of thermodynamics states that the entropy of an isolated system never decreases, because isolated systems spontaneously evolve towards thermodynamic equilibrium -- the state of maximum entropy.
From some reading I've been doing, that only applies to flat space-time, and not to curved space-time. It may well be added to that list at some point in the future.
We'll see.
Oh yeah... And this:
"We don't like their sound, and guitar music is on the way out,"
-- Decca Recording Co. rejecting the Beatles, 1962.
Pfft~! Anyone who hates guitars is just WRONG~! (See my sig.
) (Total bias there!)
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-Ath (December 12, 2012, 04:28 AM)
