De futurologische mythe
29 augustus 2017Een belangrijk uitgangspunt bij het organiseren van wendbaarheid is het omarmen van de onvoorspelbaarheid van de toekomst. Het niet kunnen voorspellen – anders dan met een glazen bol – van de toekomst lijkt een vanzelfsprekendheid. Toch steken veel organisaties, vooral wanneer de onzekerheid toeneemt, meer aandacht en energie in het voorspellen van de toekomst. Door scenarios te bouwen, strategische planningen te maken en door het inhuren van trendwatchers, futurologen en wat al niet meer. Het overzicht hieronder is bedoeld voor vermaak en een oproep om futurulogen (en misschien ook trendwatchers die zich aan voorspellingen wagen) met een snufje zout te nemen.
Top 10 van geflopte technologie voorspellingen:
- “There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home.” — Ken Olson, president, chairman and founder of Digital Equipment Corp. (DEC), maker of big business mainframe computers, arguing against the PC in 1977.
- “We will never make a 32 bit operating system.” — Bill Gates
- “Lee DeForest has said in many newspapers and over his signature that it would be possible to transmit the human voice across the Atlantic before many years. Based on these absurd and deliberately misleading statements, the misguided public … has been persuaded to purchase stock in his company …” — a U.S. District Attorney, prosecuting American inventor Lee DeForest for selling stock fraudulently through the mail for his Radio Telephone Company in 1913.
- “There is practically no chance communications space satellites will be used to provide better telephone, telegraph, television, or radio service inside the United States.” — T. Craven, FCC Commissioner, in 1961 (the first commercial communications satellite went into service in 1965).
- “To place a man in a multi-stage rocket and project him into the controlling gravitational field of the moon where the passengers can make scientific observations, perhaps land alive, and then return to earth – all that constitutes a wild dream worthy of Jules Verne. I am bold enough to say that such a man-made voyage will never occur regardless of all future advances.” — Lee DeForest, American radio pioneer and inventor of the vacuum tube, in 1926
- “A rocket will never be able to leave the Earth’s atmosphere.” — New York Times, 1936.
- “Flight by machines heavier than air is unpractical (sic) and insignificant, if not utterly impossible.” – Simon Newcomb; The Wright Brothers flew at Kittyhawk 18 months later.
- “Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible.” — Lord Kelvin, British mathematician and physicist, president of the British Royal Society, 1895.
- “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
- “Nuclear-powered vacuum cleaners will probably be a reality in 10 years.” -– Alex Lewyt, president of vacuum cleaner company Lewyt Corp., in the New York Times in 1955.
Totale top 30 lijst: Top 30 Failed Technology Predictions
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