Shortsighted Opinions Through the Years

You can’t really BLAME people for being shortsighted. We’re all shortsighted in one way or another. But you can LAUGH at the poor shortsighted sap who wrote: “Can’t sing. Can’t act. Slightly bald. Can dance a little” on the notes for Fred Astaire’s first screen test in the 1920s. Like: whoops!!! Everyone wants to be the one who knows BEFOREHAND that something is going to be huge. Or to recognize at the very moment it’s happening: This is going to be HUGE. NO ONE wants to be the one who has NO imagination or faith when faced with something new. Or … you just don’t want to be flat out WRONG about something.

I came across this wonderfully entertaining collection of quotes all in this theme.

I think a lot of this is just evidence of people who are afraid of change … who don’t want to believe that things are changing right before their eyes … They feel threatened by the change, they can’t get their minds around what their lives would be like if … such and such happened … It’s hard to know right in the moment what will take off.

I remember when I was bummed out about the advent of CD!!! I did not embrace the new technology. I resisted. I was still a cassette-tape girl … and I felt like: Oh God … no … what is this CD nonsense?? Why won’t it just GO AWAY??

“The information superhighway is a dirt road that won’t be paved over until 2025.” — Sumner Redstone, CEO of Viacom/Blockbuster.

“Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?” –H.M. Warner, Warner Brothers, 1927

“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 Western Union memo, 1876

“I think there is a world market for maybe five computers.” — IBM chairman Thomas Watson, 1943

“There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home.” — Ken Olson, founder, chairman & president of DEC, 1977

“Computers in the future may weigh no more than 1.5 tons.” –Popular Mechanics, forecasting the relentless march of science, 1949

“Computer games don’t affect kids; I mean if Pac-Man affected us as kids, we’d all be running around in darkened rooms, munching magic pills and listening to repetitive electronic music.” – Kristin Wilson, Nintendo, Inc., 1989.

“A rocket will never be able to leave the earth’s atmosphere.” —The New York Times, 1936

“The only thing I’d rather own than Windows is English. Then I’d be able to charge you an upgrade fee every time I add new letters like N and T.” —Scott McNealy, chairman of Sun Microsystems, Inc.

“I have traveled the length and breadth of this country and talked with the best people, and I can assure you that data processing is a fad that won’t last out the year.” —The editor in charge of business books for Prentice Hall, 1957

“But what … is it good for?” —Engineer at the Advanced Computing Systems Division of IBM, 1968, commenting on the microchip.

“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.

“There is no likelihood man can ever tap the power of the atom.” —Nobel Prize-winning physicist Robert Milliken, 1923

“If I had thought about it, I wouldn’t have done the experiment. The literature was full of examples that said you can’t do this.” —Spencer Silver on the work that led to the unique adhesives for 3-M “Post-It” Notepads.

“So we went to Atari and said, ‘Hey, we’ve got this amazing thing, even built with some of your parts, and what do you think about funding us? Or we’ll give it to you. We just want to do it. Pay our salary, we’ll come work for you.’ And they said, ‘No.’ So then we went to Hewlett-Packard, and they said, ‘Hey, we don’t need you. You haven’t got through college yet.'” —Apple Computer Inc. founder Steve Jobs on attempts to get Atari and H-P interested in his and Steve Wozniak’s personal computer.

“Television won’t last because people will soon get tired of staring at a plywood box every night.” —Producer Darryl Zanuck, 20th Century Fox, 1946

“Drill for oil? You mean drill into the ground to try and find oil? You’re crazy!”
Drillers who Edwin L. Drake tried to enlist to his project to drill for oil in 1859

“Well-informed people know it is impossible to transmit the voice over wires and that were it possible to do so, the thing would be of no practical value.”
Boston Post, 1865

“Stocks have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau.” —Irving Fisher, Professor of Economics, Yale University, 1929.

“Louis Pasteur’s theory of germs is ridiculous fiction.” —Pierre Pachet, Professor of Physiology at Toulouse, 1872

“The abdomen, the chest, and the brain will forever be shut from the intrusion of the wise and humane surgeon.” —Sir John Eric Ericksen, British surgeon, appointed Surgeon-Extraordinary to Queen Victoria 1873.

“By 2000, politics will simply fade away. We will not see any political parties.” —Visionary and inventor R. Buckminster Fuller, 1966

“You ain’t going nowhere, son. You ought to go back to driving a truck.” —The Grand Ole Opry’s Jim Denny to Elvis Presley, 1954

“Good morning, doctors. I have taken the liberty of removing Windows 95 from my hard drive.” —The winning entry in a “What were HAL’s first words” contest judged by 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY creator Arthur C. Clarke

“The concept is interesting and well-formed, but in order to earn better than a ‘C’, the idea must be feasible.” —A Yale University management professor in response to student Fred Smith’s paper proposing reliable overnight delivery service (Smith went on to found Federal Express Corp.)

“That rainbow song’s no good. Take it out.” – MGM memo after first showing of The Wizard Of Oz

“You’d better learn secretarial skills or else get married.” – Modeling agency, rejecting Marilyn Monroe in 1944

“Radio has no future.” “X-rays are clearly a hoax”. “The aeroplane is scientifically impossible.” – Royal Society president Lord Kelvin, 1897-9.

“Forget it. No Civil War picture ever made a nickel.” —MGM executive, advising against investing in Gone With The Wind

“Television won’t matter in your lifetime or mine.” – Radio Times editor Rex Lambert, 1936

“And for the tourist who really wants to get away from it all, safaris in Vietnam.”
Newsweek magazine, predicting popular holidays for the late 1960s

(found via The Freeman Institute)

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22 Responses to Shortsighted Opinions Through the Years

  1. Rob says:

    About FEDEX: I remember my grandfather asking me, “Who’s going to pay $6.50 to send a letter overnight?” when their commercials started hitting the airways.

  2. red says:

    Rob – hahahaha Exactly!!

  3. red says:

    The one about “the rainbow sing” kills me – hahahahahaha

  4. Cullen says:

    Wow. Poor Lord Kelvin.

  5. red says:

    hahahaha

    He’s just a big ol’ “NO”, isn’t he???

  6. Emily says:

    “I’m just glad it’ll be Clark Gable who’s falling on his face and not Gary Cooper.” – Gary Cooper, after turning down the leading role in Gone With the Wind.

    I also remember some quote from an executive at Decca Records telling the Beatles that the guitar is on the way out and their music probably isn’t going to go anywhere. Hahahaha.

  7. red says:

    hahahahaha “the guitar is on the way out” hahahaha

    George Raft, who was pretty damn famous in the 30s as a tough-guy gangster – is one of the most notorious short-sighted dudes in Hollywood history. I think he turned down Maltese Falcon, Casablanca – and a ton of other films which were not only good films but turned out to be classics. hahahaha

    Of course if George Raft had made them, maybe they wouldn’t have been classics.

    Bogart was always grateful to George Raft for having such terrible taste in scripts. If he had had better taste – Bogart might not have had a career!!

  8. Bryan says:

    Great quotations!

    I’ve recently been reading interviews with the visionary computer scientist Alan Kay, and he often discusses shortsightedness and resistance to change within the computer industry, one place where you might think change would be most welcome.

    Here is a great interview, for anyone who is interested in this sort of thing.

  9. Doug Sundseth says:

    A few more:

    “Atomic energy might be as good as our present-day explosives, but it is unlikely to produce anything very much more dangerous.”

    — Winston Churchill, British Prime Minister, 1939

    “Taking the best left-handed pitcher in baseball and converting him into a right fielder is one of the dumbest things I ever heard.”

    — Tris Speaker, baseball expert, talking about Babe Ruth, 1919

    “No one will pay good money to get from Berlin to Potsdam in one hour when he can ride his horse there in one day for free.”

    — King William I of Prussia, on hearing of the invention of trains, 1864

    From http://www.permanent.com/quotes.htm

  10. red says:

    Doug – that’s a wonderful site – thanks for linking to it – I’ll have fun looking thru all of that.

  11. And then there’s this one:

    “640K should be enough memory for anyone”
    -Bill Gates

  12. Jen says:

    The one about Pac-Man is hilarious. Darkened rooms, magic pills, and repetitive electronic music…that never happened.

  13. red says:

    I know – hahahahaha I love that one too.

  14. Patrick says:

    Darkened rooms, magic pills, and repetitive electronic music…

    Sounds like a night in West Hollywood.

  15. Beth says:

    //”The only thing I’d rather own than Windows is English. Then I’d be able to charge you an upgrade fee every time I add new letters like N and T.” –Scott McNealy, chairman of Sun Microsystems, Inc.//

    I think McNealy has a point. I’m being gnitpicky but I think this is a criticism of Windows rather than a prediction it won’t be successful. And McNealy is criticizing it because Sun invented Java and believes in “open source” computer operating systems and blah blah I know nobody wants to hear it…I’m just starting to breathe eat and sleep my job. Carry on.

  16. Beth says:

    Here, something to make up for my last post: the President of McNealy’s company. Revel in his ponytail.

    http://photos.sun.com/page/135

  17. dorkafork says:

    Didn’t somebody say of pre-fame Cary Grant that his neck was too big?

  18. red says:

    dorkafork – yeah – it was another screen test situation – and I think they said something like:

    “Neck too big. Weird accent.”

    Or something equally as baffled.

  19. Bryan says:

    Beth,

    Have you ever been to the JavaOne conference? The Microsoft-bashing that goes on there is hilarious, and a good percentage of it is from McNealy himself.

    I’d better stop myself before I get into my collection of Bill Gates jokes.

  20. I think the Buckminster Fuller quote is one of the stupidest (in retrospect) and definitely the saddest. Political parties haven’t gone away, they’ve gotten more and more polarized. I’ve seen online discussions where Pres. Bush is described as the Democrats’ enemy and nobody raises an eyebrow (metaphorically speaking), and that really disturbs me. I had certain very unflattering opinions about his predecessor, but I certainly never thought of him as my enemy and I never heard him discusses as such. I wouldn’t be surprised, though, if a Democrat is elected next, to see him/her described that way.

  21. Marti says:

    I think a couple of these need context. Back when computers were invented, (quotes 4 and 5) the computer was still a massive device that took up an entire building floor, was enormously heavy, and did only basic functions compared to what we have now. The computer needed to be constructed into a building since it was far too large to be moved in fully assembled. For the technology of the day, those quotes were completely accurate. How are any of us to know what technology will have for us in 20 or 50 years? I’m sure the advances of today will look shamefully simple.

  22. Marti, I think the point is that no one should expect that the technology of today will go on forever. Science fiction writers have always done a great job of dropping assumptions and imagining things that sometimes come to pass. Here is a science fiction story published in 1946 in which the author, Murray Leinster, describes a fanciful technology that’s amazingly like modern-day PCs and the internet.

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