If you’ve ever been spectacularly wrong about the future, take comfort: you’re in very good company. Throughout tech history, some of the best and brightest made predictions so absurd, it’s a miracle they didn’t patent the art of putting their foot in their mouth. Let’s walk through some of the grandest blunders that experts surely wish they could erase from the collective memory.
From Horses Forever to the End of the Internet
- In the latest issue of his SatPost newsletter, columnist Trung Phan confesses to his own howlers—predicting things like Bitcoin soaring to $100,000, Twitter staying public, and Canada conquering the football World Cup in 2022 (ah, eternal optimism). But, as Trung wisely notes, history is littered with predictions far more ridiculous than his.
Let’s raise a glass (of reality) to the “fake Nostradamus” crowd—people who, at pivotal moments, famously missed the point about where technology was heading.
- Take Pascal Nègre, former head of Universal Music, who declared in 2001: “Internet? Who cares, it will never work.” A spicy take—one that would age about as well as unpasteurized cheese left in a server room.
Legendary Facepalms: Cars, Computers, and Mobile Madness
- Our parade of regret begins in 1903. The president of Michigan Savings Bank advised Horace Rackham, Henry Ford’s lawyer, with sage-like confidence: “The automobile is a fad; horses are here to stay.” Yes—because who hasn’t had to navigate buggy traffic in the 2020s?
- This gem of a prediction was apparently based on spotting fewer and fewer cyclists in the local boulevard, leading our would-be oracle to conclude that cars, too, would soon fade. He refused to invest in Ford Motor Co. Five years later, the Ford Model T arrived, and let’s just say equine congestion management didn’t become a municipal priority.
- Flash forward to the mid-1970s: Ken Olsen, founder of Digital Equipment Corporation, working directly on micro-computers, boldly insisted, “There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home.” And this wasn’t scribbled on a napkin; it was in response to a proposal by one of his own colleagues to develop personal computers. Olsen passed away in 2011, hopefully having made peace with every laptop-toting commuter he ever met.
- In 1992, Intel CEO Andy Grove opined that pocket-sized mobile phones were merely a “mirage driven by greed.” According to Trung Phan, maybe that explains why Intel missed the entire mobile revolution. (Spoiler: our pockets are now mobbed by mobile gadgets, not mirages.)
The Internet: Doomed (Not)?
- Pascal Nègre could at least take comfort in sharing his doubts about the internet’s future with none other than Ethernet’s inventor, Robert Metcalfe. In 1995, Metcalfe prophesied that the internet would become “a spectacular supernova that will collapse in 1996.”
- Ten years before snagging the Nobel Prize in Economics, Paul Krugman echoed Metcalfe’s words in the journal Red Hering in 1998: “Internet growth will slow drastically, as most people have nothing to say to each other! By 2005, it will become clear that the internet’s impact on the economy has been no greater than the fax machine’s.”
- What’s especially delicious? This nugget comes from an article titled “Why Most Economist Predictions Are Wrong.” Krugman has since admitted the mistake—though he says he was being provocative. Sure, Paul. We’ll take your word for it—just as soon as the next Nobel Prize is awarded for humility.
Tech Geniuses and Their Own False Steps
- Even Steve Jobs, poster boy of visionary thinking, had his off-days. In 2003, he dismissed concepts like Deezer and Spotify, saying subscription-based music services were “a guaranteed bankruptcy. Even if you include the return of Jesus in such a system, it would not succeed,” he told Rolling Stone.
- But poetic justice had its turn: Apple’s own products weren’t safe from scorn. In 2007, Steve Ballmer, then-Microsoft CEO, told USA Today the iPhone’s launch would flop: “There’s no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share. It’s a $500 device.” He confidently predicted Apple would never surpass “2 or 3%” while Microsoft phones would take “60 or 70 or 80%” of the market.
- The cloud? Multiple experts insisted it would never take off. Looks like the forecast was foggier than they realized.
As Trung Phan wisely points out, big decision-makers are always more visible when it comes to giant errors in foresight. For every tragic forecast, many made bets on the future that did help their companies—and all of society—reach outstanding technological progress.
So, the next time your own predictions end up on the wrong side of history, know that you’re walking in the illustrious footsteps of tech’s greatest minds. No one gets it right all the time—what really matters is that we keep imagining, keep predicting, and every so often, manage to help change the world.
