The Worst Technology Predictions

T3 The Gadget website has a posting identifying what its authors believe are the ten worst technology forecasts of all time.

Emailer inventor Sir Alan Sugar in an interview with the Daily Telegraph in 2005 said

"Next Christmas the iPod will be dead, finished, gone, kaput."

According to The Telegraph, in the three years since he made that prediction there have been 174 iPods sold.

My vote for the worst prediction of the lot was that of William Thompson, Lord Kelvin, President of the Royal Society, who said in 1883.

"X-rays will prove to be a hoax"

Kelvin, after whom the Kelvin scale of temperature was named, was one of the world's greatest scientists. The gap between his brilliance and fame and his predictive accuracy is truly enormous.

It may be a very good idea to keep these examples in mind when considering the accuracy of technological forecasts, even when they are made by real experts!