Two Old School Technology Prediction Fails (Telephone & Radio)

I was reading and came across these two fantastic quotes from nay-sayers on new technology. It's easy to imagine similar thoughts being expressed about e-commerce, mobile and more recently social media. The moral is to keep an open mind and be a continuous learner, not overly relying too much of your current expertise and history to-date, otherwise you could end up in the spectacular fail club below.

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


“The wireless music box has no imaginable commercial value. Who would pay for a message sent to nobody in particular?” — David Sarnoff’s associates in response to his urgings for investment in the radio in the 1920s.