 |
Bad Predictions
December 26, 2004 |
|
| Press
Esc or click "Stop" on your browser to
stop the music and "Refresh" to start it. |
What will computers look like fifty years from now? Don't
even try to predict that. Famous corporations and thinkers
have failed miserably, when they have tried to do this
in the past. Take a look at how people fifty years ago
saw the today's PCs.
Your home computer in 2004
The text under this 1954 picture reads: "Scientists
from the RAND Corporation have created this model to illustrate
how a "home computer" could look like in the
year 2004. However the needed technology will not be economically
feasible for the average home. Also the scientists readily
admit that the computer will require not yet invended technology
to actually work, but 50 years from now scientific progress
is expected to solve these problems. With teletype interface
and the Fortran language, the computer will be easy to
use."
Interesting, but we have to say it doesn't really look
too much like the mini-tower PC under your desk, or the
wide-screen notebook you carry around with you. Our puzzle
expert John Nunn did find one stricking similarity between
the RAND model and his son Michael's game computer, though:
both have a full-sized steering wheel. Michael's is used
to control the cars in the latest hi-res 3D car racing
game. We wonder what the RAND model's wheel was meant for.
Erratum:
The picture shown above, which was incidentally submitted
by one of our readers, unfortunately turns out to
be a fake. Actually a "fark", since it
was part of a Fark
Photoshop competition. We apologise for not spotting
the inplausibility of the story, especially since
we are frequent visitors to this very devious web
site, and have in fact linked to chess
examples in the past. However, it is good to
know that we are not
the only ones who fell for the joke. A full unraveling
of the hoax may be found at Snopes,
a site one should visit before one publishes anything
at all. Snopes does admit that predictions from several
decades ago failed to foresee that computers would
become much smaller and cheaper; that these changes
would enable nearly every business and home to have
its own computer to be used for a variety of applications,
and that those machines would be linked together
in a world-wide network. Instead, futurist scenarios
frequently presented a world of very few, very expensive
all-powerful computers the size of large buildings,
used only for divining answers to complex problems
beyond the ability of man to solve on his own. |
Before we come to John's puzzle, here for your critical
examination are a few more predictions that we feel did
not exactly hit the nail on the head.
Famous bad predictions
-
"I think there is a world market for about five
computers." – Thomas Watson, chairman of
IBM, 1943.
-
"Where a calculator on the ENIAC is equipped
with 18,000 vacuum tubes and weighs 30 tons, computers
in the future may have only 1,000 vacuum tubes and
weigh only 1.5 tons." – Popular Mechanics,
1949
-
"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, responding to
Karl V. Karlstrom (a junior editor who recommended
a manuscript about data processing), circa 1957.
-
"But what...is it good for?" – Engineer
at the Advanced Computing Systems Division of IBM,
1968, commenting on the microchip.
-
"There is no reason anyone would want a computer
in their home." – Ken Olson, president,
chairman and founder of Digital Equipment Corp., 1977.
- And from the book Bad
Predictions by Laura Lee, which records failed
forecasts and tells us what the year 2000 could have
been like – but wasn't: "For soothsayers and
trivia lovers essential reading. Man will never fly...
Electricity is a passing fad... By the year 200 there
will be no C, X or Q in our every-day alphabet –
they will be abandoned because unnecessary... In the
year 2005 we will see the extension of the pneumatic
tube system in every house, thus ensuring the immediate
delivery of mail as soon as it arrives in the city...
Mail will be delivered within hours from New York to
Australia by guided missiles."
Links
We are well acquainted with the strains the Christmas
festivities can bring – the killing and decoration
of the Tree, the killing and cooking of the Bird, the opening
of all those colorful Presents, and of course the boisterous
visits of the Relatives. So we will not put too much additional
burden on your mental energies and give you just one puzzle
to solve on this Boxing
Day.
Proof game 3: Position after
Black’s 4th move
John Nunn writes: "If you have worked your way through
the first two positions, you will have noticed that the
solutions are not just a random sequence of moves; there
is usually some key point to the problem. It may be the
lack of a tempo move, but in many cases it is something
paradoxical. Our third position provides an example. Three
black units have disappeared, captured by White’s
knight which has itself disappeared from the board. We
can conclude that all White’s moves were made by
the g1-knight and all White’s moves except the first
were captures. That gives us the sequence 1 Nf3 e5 2 Nxe5.
But then there doesn’t seem to be enough time to
take the d-pawn and the g8-knight without disturbing Black’s
position."
We will publish the solution of this problem at the bottom
of the page in a day or two. Once again we urge you to
print out the position and
then try to solve it in the circle of your family and friends.
And be warned: from tomorrow the problems become more numerous,
more diverse, and harder.
Frederic Friedel
|
