If there is one unshakable truth about people (including us) who make sweeping predictions about the future, it is that more often than not we’re dead wrong. The problem with prophecy is that any look down the rabbit hole that goes beyond the immediate future is fraught with the kind of uncertainties that would humble even the most hardened pundit.

To prove this point out, lets take a look at some of the more outrageous prognostications ever to have the misfortune of being written into the annals of public consciousness.

The Future Is Now

Theoretically, television may be feasible, but I consider it an impossibility–a development which we should waste little time dreaming about. – Lee de Forest, 1926, inventor of the cathode ray tube

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, 1958

it’s good enough for our transatlantic friends … but unworthy of the attention of practical or scientific men. –in reference to Edison’s light bulb, 1878.

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, March 1949.

This ‘telephone’ has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication. The device is inherently of no value to us. –An internal memo from Western Union, 1876

The Americans are good about making fancy cars and refrigerators, but that doesn’t mean they are any good at making aircraft. They are bluffing. They are excellent at bluffing. –Hermann Goering, Commander of the Luftwaffe, 1942.

Do you have a favorite? If so, post it here.

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