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Technology opinions that are hilarious in hindsight

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cfive Since: Jan, 2001
#1: Jun 17th 2012 at 7:15:44 PM

So, I was searching on the internet and found this hilarious circa-2001 rant on why VHS tapes are superior to dvd: http://www.adequacy.org/stories/2001.8.24.112921.289.html

I'm in awe at how funny these sorts of things can be a decade later.

Also, Zip disks are going to overtake floppies any day now, trust me on this.

edited 17th Jun '12 7:26:40 PM by cfive

Muzozavr Since: Jan, 2001
#2: Jun 17th 2012 at 7:53:23 PM

Sadly, the place was a satirical/troll site ala The Onion.

ERROR: Signature not loaded
cfive Since: Jan, 2001
#3: Jun 17th 2012 at 8:06:35 PM

Darn. I probably should've realized that when I saw that the person who wrote that article also wrote Dealing With Nazism in the Workplace. Poe's Law strikes agian. But on the plus side, Poe's Law also awes me, so I still get some ammount of awe from this. Although it's not unlikely that at least a few people at the time had similar opinions for real.

edited 17th Jun '12 8:06:50 PM by cfive

Malph (4 Score & 7 Years Ago)
#4: Jun 17th 2012 at 10:58:14 PM

Regardless of your example being satire, I'm sure you can find legitimate cases of this somewhere.

edited 17th Jun '12 10:58:35 PM by Malph

Carciofus Is that cake frosting? from Alpha Tucanae I Since: May, 2010
Is that cake frosting?
#5: Jun 17th 2012 at 11:42:33 PM

I was alive — if young — when people started talking about having computers in every household, and about computers that are always connected to the news and to other computers and so on. And I remember saying, with all the wisdom of my eight years or so, that this was a stupid idea: I mean, who could possibly have any use for that?

edited 17th Jun '12 11:43:29 PM by Carciofus

But they seem to know where they are going, the ones who walk away from Omelas.
Medinoc from France (Before Recorded History)
#6: Jun 18th 2012 at 3:08:12 AM

[up]Then there's the famous quote about the world having a market for five computers (though I have no idea if anyone actually said that).

"And as long as a sack of shit is not a good thing to be, chivalry will never die."
Nohbody "In distress", my ass. from Somewhere in Dixie Since: Jan, 2001 Relationship Status: Mu
"In distress", my ass.
#7: Jun 18th 2012 at 5:44:56 AM

^ According to The Other Wiki, it's a misquote regularly attributed to Thomas Watson, from IBM.

Not that there isn't a shortage of exceedingly short-sighted or sufficiently unimaginative comments about the advance of technology, mind you, but that ain't one of them.

All your safe space are belong to Trump
#8: Jun 18th 2012 at 8:19:40 AM

Walt Disney's collaborative documentaries with Wernher von Braun had a rather amusing description of an orbiting space station, including an explanation of how the enormous outer rim of the spinning gravity generator will provide space for all the "calculating engines" required to keep the craft flying, with a diagram showing whole rooms full of rotating tape and coiled wires. They failed to anticipate miniaturized electronics.

<><
Wicked223 from Death Star in the forest Since: Apr, 2009
#9: Jun 18th 2012 at 9:15:55 AM

A lot of people failed to anticipate miniaturized electronics, didn't they?

You can't even write racist abuse in excrement on somebody's car without the politically correct brigade jumping down your throat!
Nohbody "In distress", my ass. from Somewhere in Dixie Since: Jan, 2001 Relationship Status: Mu
"In distress", my ass.
#10: Jun 18th 2012 at 4:36:59 PM

Yeah, that's a pretty common failure, even with people you'd think of as being incredibly far from stupid like Isaac Asimov or Robert Heinlein.

All your safe space are belong to Trump
cfive Since: Jan, 2001
#11: Jun 19th 2012 at 10:17:51 AM

I think Plan Nine From Outer Space sums it up pretty well:

"We once laughed at the horseless carriage, the aeroplane, the telephone, the electric light, vitamins, radio, and even television! And now some of us laugh at outer space. God help us... in the future."

Criswell was a visionary.

theoneguy theoneguy Since: Sep, 2010
theoneguy
#12: Jun 19th 2012 at 1:16:16 PM

The real question is what are we laughing at now that will be everywhere in twenty years?

edited 19th Jun '12 1:16:33 PM by theoneguy

Wicked223 from Death Star in the forest Since: Apr, 2009
#13: Jun 19th 2012 at 4:18:27 PM

Green energy?

You can't even write racist abuse in excrement on somebody's car without the politically correct brigade jumping down your throat!
cfive Since: Jan, 2001
#14: Jun 19th 2012 at 4:32:08 PM

[up] I admit to being guilty of this even though it will probably be the way of the future.

Aryn Shipper of Spacetime from The place with states. Since: Jun, 2009
Shipper of Spacetime
#15: Jun 19th 2012 at 9:07:56 PM

Probably something a bit more specific than green energy. Some form of green energy that sounds impractical or like it shouldn't exist in the first place.

Unusually and exceedingly peculiar and altogether quite impossible to describe.
Bur from Flyover Country (Living Relic) Relationship Status: Having tea with Cthulhu
#16: Jun 19th 2012 at 9:36:17 PM

Efficient solar panels? I think those are still in the "pretty ludicrous" stage since the very besty best of them are somewhere around a 20% conversion rate.

Hexagone i am so high right now from The Absolution Since: Jan, 2012
i am so high right now
#17: Jun 20th 2012 at 10:33:15 PM

Probably something a bit more specific than green energy. Some form of green energy that sounds impractical or like it shouldn't exist in the first place.

Calling it now, algae cells.

the cat got skinned again!
#19: Jun 22nd 2012 at 12:08:35 PM

Then there's the other side of the coin: what things do we take for granted will be developed in the next 50 years that will actually not even be remotely close then? In the 40s a lot of people were thinking that interplanetary travel would be a commonplace thing by the 21st century.

<><
Aondeug Oh My from Our Dreams Since: Jun, 2009
Oh My
#20: Jun 22nd 2012 at 12:09:56 PM

MY HAVING LESBIAN BABIES IN THE NEXT TEN YEARS.

edited 22nd Jun '12 12:10:03 PM by Aondeug

If someone wants to accuse us of eating coconut shells, then that's their business. We know what we're doing. - Achaan Chah
Bur from Flyover Country (Living Relic) Relationship Status: Having tea with Cthulhu
Aondeug Oh My from Our Dreams Since: Jun, 2009
Oh My
#22: Jun 22nd 2012 at 3:56:28 PM

What? No.

I'm gay as fuck. Can't have a baby properly with her.

I doubt we'll advance far enough fast enough for it to be viable and allowed in the public.

If someone wants to accuse us of eating coconut shells, then that's their business. We know what we're doing. - Achaan Chah
Mukora Uniocular from a place Since: Jan, 2010 Relationship Status: I made a point to burn all of the photographs
Uniocular
#23: Jul 8th 2012 at 8:09:28 AM

@Grizzly: It's probably still interplanetary travel.

"It's so hard to be humble, knowing how great I am."
Pykrete NOT THE BEES from Viridian Forest Since: Sep, 2009
NOT THE BEES
#24: Jul 10th 2012 at 10:47:14 PM

I get the feeling green energy will be less of a sudden amazing advance, and more "do this now at whatever efficiency you happen to have or we're all fucked."

Interplanetary travel...thinking that's a harder no than it's ever been. Most of these amazing things that nobody expected were stuff that we just didn't really have any concept of application and/or precision manufacturing. With large-scale space travel, we have a very good idea of exactly what physical energy constraints make it not worth the trouble regardless of implementation.

edited 10th Jul '12 10:50:08 PM by Pykrete

RJSavoy Reymmã from Edinburgh Since: Apr, 2011 Relationship Status: I'm just a poor boy, nobody loves me
Reymmã
#25: Jul 11th 2012 at 11:46:21 AM

When people sixty years ago imagined space travel, they took the travel of their time (a mix of sea and air) and extended it. They didn't see how computers would change us because that was a true unprecedented paradigm shift.

People did the see the Internet coming (read Arthur Clarke's The Fountains of Paradise) but not Internet culture. Which is perhaps all the better for their sanity.

On a general note: there was a feeling in the late nineteenth century that science had pinned down all the major principles of physics, and from then on the remaining discoveries would be mostly clarifying laws working only at the sub-atomic level and explaining oddities with the speed of light. Within a few decades, studying light led to relativity and the sub-atomic led to quantum mechanics, giving a whole new overlay to physics.

A blog that gets updated on a geological timescale.
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