October 26, 2007 12:11 pm
My prediction for the year 2000: Your personal telephone will be small enough to carry in your handbag. Your house telephone will record messages, answer simple inquiries, and transmit vision.
Here, as a link, I offer Bad Predictions for the Future:
http://www.2spare.com/item_50221.aspx
My personal favorite from the list:
- “Dear Mr. President: The canal system of this country is being threatened by a new form of transportation known as ‘railroads’ … As you may well know, Mr. President, ‘railroad’ carriages are pulled at the enormous speed of 15 miles per hour by ‘engines’ which, in addition to endangering life and limb of passengers, roar and snort their way through the countryside, setting fire to crops, scaring the livestock and frightening women and children. The Almighty certainly never intended that people should travel at such breakneck speed. (Martin Van Buren, Governor of New York, 1830).
- “What can be more palpably absurd than the prospect held out of locomotives traveling twice as fast as stagecoaches?” The Quarterly Review, March edition, 1825.
- “Rail travel at high speed is not possible, because passengers, unable to breathe, would die of asphyxia.” Dr Dionysys Larder (1793-1859), professor of Natural Philosophy and Astronomy, University College London.
About John C Wright
John C. Wright is a practicing philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, and a published author of science fiction. Once a Houyhnhnm, he was expelled from the august ranks of purely rational beings when he fell in love; but retains an honorary title.
October 26, 2007 @ 12:11 pm
