This page includes my ideas, speculations, and links to those of others as to some hopes and fears as to our future.
Go Home.
Page contents
. . . More topics to do
The Arlington Institute: http://www.arlingtoninstitute.org/ The mission of The Arlington Institute is to become a unique center of excellence for facilitating the discovery of these new ideas and approaches and to develop new understandings of how this emergent system of systems can evolve most effectively in the coming decades. We will be sophisticated generalists with broad, unencumbered perspectives about the dynamics of this epic transition. To that end we will identify, understand, monitor, and map potential big future events and develop scenarios and other new perspectives of what different global futures might in fact evolve.
In particular we will become expert in anticipating, understanding and dealing with rapid global change. We will develop sophisticated new tools that allow understanding where none before existed about fast-moving planetary crises. . . .
Things People Said Bad Predictions: http://rinkworks.com/said/predictions.shtml It's generally a bad idea to say something can't or won't be done, especially in the realm of science and technology. The following are quotations from the past that haunt their speakers today:
"I think there is a world market for maybe five computers." -- Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943.
"Where a calculator on the ENIAC is equipped with 18,000 vacuum tubes and weighs 30 tons, computers in the future may have only 1,000 vacuum tubes and weigh only 1.5 tons." -- Popular Mechanics, 1949
"I have traveled the length and breadth of this country and talked with the best people, and I can assure you that data processing is a fad that won't last out the year." -- The editor in charge of business books for Prentice Hall, 1957.
"But what...is it good for?" -- Engineer at the Advanced Computing Systems Division of IBM, 1968, commenting on the microchip.
"There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home." -- Ken Olson, president, chairman and founder of Digital Equipment Corp., 1977.
"640K ought to be enough for anybody." -- Attributed to Bill Gates, 1981, but believed to be an urban legend.
"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.
"The wireless music box has no imaginable commercial value. Who would pay for a message sent to nobody in particular?" -- David Sarnoff's associates in response to his urgings for investment in the radio in the 1920s.
"While theoretically and technically television may be feasible, commercially and financially it is an impossibility." -- Lee DeForest, inventor.
"The concept is interesting and well-formed, but in order to earn better than a 'C', the idea must be feasible." -- A Yale University management professor in response to Fred Smith's paper proposing reliable overnight delivery service. (Smith went on to found Federal Express Corp.)
"A cookie store is a bad idea. Besides, the market research reports say America likes crispy cookies, not soft and chewy cookies like you make." -- Response to Debbi Fields' idea of starting Mrs. Fields' Cookies.
"We don't like their sound, and guitar music is on the way out." -- Decca Recording Co. rejecting the Beatles, 1962.
"Radio has no future. Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible. X-rays will prove to be a hoax." -- William Thomson, Lord Kelvin English scientist, 1899.
"So we went to Atari and said, 'Hey, we've got this amazing thing, even built with some of your parts, and what do you think about funding us? Or we'll give it to you. We just want to do it. Pay our salary, we'll come work for you.' And they said, 'No.' So then we went to Hewlett-Packard, and they said, 'Hey, we don't need you. You haven't got through college yet.'" -- Apple Computer Inc. founder Steve Jobs on attempts to get Atari and HP interested in his and Steve Wozniak's personal computer.
"If I had thought about it, I wouldn't have done the experiment. The literature was full of examples that said you can't do this." -- Spencer Silver on the work that led to the unique adhesives for 3-M "Post-It" Notepads.
"It will be years -- not in my time -- before a woman will become Prime Minister." -- Margaret Thatcher, 1974. "I see no good reasons why the views given in this volume should shock the religious sensibilities of anyone." -- Charles Darwin, The Origin Of Species, 1869.
"With over 50 foreign cars already on sale here, the Japanese auto industry isn't likely to carve out a big slice of the U.S. market." -- Business Week, August 2, 1968.
"Professor Goddard does not know the relation between action and reaction and the need to have something better than a vacuum against which to react. He seems to lack the basic knowledge ladled out daily in high schools." -- 1921 New York Times editorial about Robert Goddard's revolutionary rocket work.
"You want to have consistent and uniform muscle development across all of your muscles? It can't be done. It's just a fact of life. You just have to accept inconsistent muscle development as an unalterable condition of weight training." -- Response to Arthur Jones, who solved the "unsolvable" problem by inventing Nautilus.
"Ours has been the first, and doubtless to be the last, to visit this profitless locality." -- Lt. Joseph Ives, after visiting the Grand Canyon in 1861.
"Drill for oil? You mean drill into the ground to try and find oil? You're crazy." -- Workers whom Edwin L. Drake tried to enlist to his project to drill for oil in 1859.
"Stocks have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau." -- Irving Fisher, Professor of Economics, Yale University, 1929.
"There is not the slightest indication that nuclear energy will ever be obtainable. It would mean that the atom would have to be shattered at will." -- Albert Einstein, 1932.
"The bomb will never go off. I speak as an expert in explosives." -- Admiral William Leahy, U.S. Atomic Bomb Project.
"Airplanes are interesting toys but of no military value." -- Marechal Ferdinand Foch, Professor of Strategy, Ecole Superieure de Guerre.
"There will never be a bigger plane built." -- A Boeing engineer, after the first flight of the 247, a twin engine plane that holds ten people.
"Everything that can be invented has been invented." -- Attributed to Charles H. Duell, Commissioner, U.S. Office of Patents, 1899, but known to be an urban legend.
"Louis Pasteur's theory of germs is ridiculous fiction." -- Pierre Pachet, Professor of Physiology at Toulouse, 1872.
"The abdomen, the chest, and the brain will forever be shut from the intrusion of the wise and humane surgeon." -- Sir John Eric Ericksen, British surgeon, appointed Surgeon-Extraordinary to Queen Victoria 1873.
Clifford Pickover, at Pickover.com
One of the coolest personal
sites on the Web belongs to the noted physicist Clifford
Pickover. He's an interesting and intelligent guy, to
say the least, and he has an opinion on just about everything
under the sun. What's more, he wants to hear your views, too. His
site lets you contribute your own ideas and opinions about his
thought-provoking excursions into science, ethics, philosophy,
behavior, and, well, as I said, just about everything under the
Sun! Dr.
Pickover has written numerous mind-expanding books (which you can
buy from his site), and he continues some of the provocative and
engrossing lines of thought on his Website -- art, science, God,
consciousness, the universe, extraterrestrial life, quantum
physics, mathematics, puzzles, -- something for everyone. Cliff
Pickover has one of the better minds among our six billion
relatives. I for one am glad he's chosen to share it with the Web
world.
Read the views of Cliff Pickover. http://sprott.physics.wisc.edu/pickover/home.htm
Clifford Pickover home page.
Forbes.com - Magazine Article: http://www.forbes.com/forbes/1998/1102/6210076s2_print.html Does futurism work? IN THE FEBRUARY 1980 issue of The Futurist magazine, Edward Cornish, president of the World Future Society, published 29 predictions for the coming two decades. How well did he do? Eleven auguries hit the mark. Another eight are debatably close (for example, limited marijuana legalization in California). . . .
Futurology: http://www.kheper.auz.com/future/scenarios/futurology.htm Futurology and Futures Research.
Futurology: http://www.sparkles.demon.co.uk/future.htm . . . sites in which there are discussions of the use of relevant forecasting techniques and problems, issues and challenges that might yield to the use of CPS. . . .
New Futurist: http://www.wfs.org/futurist.htm THE FUTURIST is a bi-monthly magazine published since 1967 by the World Future Society and is a principal benefit of membership, read by 30,000 members worldwide. . . . strives to serve as a neutral clearinghouse of ideas.
Halfbakery: http://www.halfbakery.com/ The place for anyone who has dreamed up a new invention or notion but doesn't know what to do next!
Hammacher Schlemmer: http://www.hammacher.com/sfi/1998semifinal.html WINNERS OF THE HAMMACHER SCHLEMMER SEARCH FOR INVENTION '98 TO BE ANNOUNCED. Hammacher Schlemmer, the nations's most respected retailer of unique and innovative consumer products . . . the nation's longest continuously published catalog . . .publishes monthly catalogs and operates retail stores in New York City, Chicago, and Beverly Hills and electronic stores on the Internet at www.hammacher.com Has pictures of some inventions.
Nick Bostrom's home page: http://www.nickbostrom.com/ . . . my work in analytic philosophy, transhumanism, the consequences of artificial intelligence . . .
"It doesn't matter what he does, he will never amount to anything." --Albert Einstein's teacher to Einstein's father, 1895.
"It would appear we have reached the limits of what it is possible to achieve with computer technology." --computer scientist John von Neumann, 1949.
Search Results for futurist thinkers frontier future science advanced futurology Chislenko: http://www.lucifer.com/~sasha/links/futurist.html Copernic Search Results: 937 document(s) on The Web.
Top 10 from The Futurist Magazine Predictions: http://www.informal.com.br/noticias/gc/n08061999095.html
New index: http://www.wfs.org/ The World Future Society.
Go Home. Go up to Page contents.
You can e-mail me at waynerp@sympatico.ca