July 24, 1996
Some people wonder why I'm suspicious of experts. People might think, “Williams is too cynical.” Let's investigate a few experts and their monumental predictive blunders. In 1949, Popular Mechanics opined, “Computers in the future may weigh no more than 1.5 tons.”
With my IBM Thinkpad weighing about 4 pounds, Popular Mechanics was at least technically right. But how about Thomas Watson, the chairman of IBM? In 1943, he predicted, “I think there is a world market for maybe five computers.” Then there was Ken Olsen, chairman and founder of Digital Equipment Corporation, who said, “There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home.”
Computer experts don't have a monopoly on wrong predictions. In 1899, Charles H. Duell, commissioner of the U.S. Office of Patents, proposed closing the agency because “Everything that can be invented has been invented.”
Duell knew for sure airplanes would not be invented, because, in 1895, Lord Kelvin, noted physicist and president of the prestigious Royal Society, said, “Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible.” After airplanes were finally invented, Marechal Ferdinand Foch, Professor of Strategy at Ecole Superieure de Guerre, said “Airplanes are interesting toys but of no military value.”
A 1921 New York Times editorial had a great prediction about Goddard's research on rocketry: “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.” The New York Times editor might have been influenced by another expert, Lee De Forest, inventor of the vacuum tube and father of television, who said, “Man will never reach the moon regardless of all future scientific advances.”
No socioeconomic class has a monopoly on bad predictions. “This fellow Charles Lindbergh will never make it. He's doomed.” That was millionaire aviation enthusiast Harry Guggenheim's prediction about Lindbergh's chances for success in man's first solo trans-Atlantic flight.
Back in 1859, when Edwin Drake was trying to enlist drillers to his oil-drilling project, some of them said, “Drill for oil? You mean drill into the ground to try and find oil? You're crazy.” In 1876, a Western Union internal memo said, “This ‘telephone’ has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication. The device is inherently of no value to us.” Then there are economists. In 1929, Irving Fisher, professor of economics at Yale University, said, “Stocks have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau.”
“I'm just glad it'll be Clark Gable who's falling on his face and not Gary Cooper.” That's what Gary Cooper said when he decided not to accept the leading role in “Gone with the Wind.” In 1962, there was another entertainment industry rejection: “We don't like their sound, and guitar music is on the way out.” That was Decca Recording Company turning down the Beatles.
History has shown that mankind makes grossly erroneous predictions, but to err is human. Mankind tends to survive errors and erroneous predictions, as history has aptly demonstrated. We have home computers, we have telephones, and we enjoy Beatles’ music.
We survived because the “experts” making false predictions had no power to impose their vision of the future on others. Those who had another vision of the future were free to go about their business of inventing the “uninventable” and developing the “undevelopable.”
For this reason alone we should not allow experts, no matter how smart they are—or think they are—to control any aspect of our lives.