WEBVTT - Bad Predictions in Tech 0:00:04.440 --> 0:00:12.280 Welcome to Tech Stuff, a production from iHeartRadio. Hey there, 0:00:12.320 --> 0:00:15.800 and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. 0:00:15.800 --> 0:00:20.120 I'm an executive producer with iHeartRadio. And how the tech 0:00:20.280 --> 0:00:25.440 are you? You know, Predicting the future is really hard, 0:00:25.680 --> 0:00:28.120 even though that's where we're going to spend the rest 0:00:28.160 --> 0:00:31.080 of our lives. Thank you, Plan nine from outer Space. 0:00:31.440 --> 0:00:34.839 So I used to start every year off with a 0:00:34.960 --> 0:00:39.159 big tech predictions episode, and I would sit down and 0:00:39.200 --> 0:00:43.280 try and guess what could unfold in the following year. 0:00:43.800 --> 0:00:47.519 And I think I had a pretty dismal average on 0:00:47.560 --> 0:00:52.159 those predictions. Some years I was like, you know, mostly correct, 0:00:52.479 --> 0:00:54.920 but in a very lame way, and a lot of 0:00:54.920 --> 0:00:56.880 times I felt like it was because the predictions I 0:00:56.920 --> 0:00:59.560 made were very, very safe ones, so I was never 0:00:59.600 --> 0:01:03.120 particularly happy with them. Some of the time I would 0:01:03.160 --> 0:01:08.280 get big predictions partly right, very very rarely, I would 0:01:08.280 --> 0:01:11.080 get one right on the money, but it wouldn't again 0:01:11.160 --> 0:01:14.360 be impressive because the writing would already be on the 0:01:14.360 --> 0:01:17.160 wall right, like saying that a company is going to 0:01:17.200 --> 0:01:19.840 go out of business when the company is currently like 0:01:20.080 --> 0:01:23.200 massively struggling, not a big prediction. So yeah, most of 0:01:23.240 --> 0:01:25.160 the time I was off the mark, and sometimes by 0:01:25.240 --> 0:01:28.960 a significant margin. However, I have learned I should not 0:01:29.160 --> 0:01:32.039 beat myself up over that, because, as it turns out, 0:01:32.080 --> 0:01:37.120 a lot of people have made really bad tech predictions 0:01:37.360 --> 0:01:40.360 over the years. Some of those folks were or are 0:01:41.440 --> 0:01:44.959 way way smarter than I am. So today we're going 0:01:45.000 --> 0:01:50.080 to talk about a few predictions that were notably incorrect. Now, 0:01:50.200 --> 0:01:53.480 let us first remind ourselves, and I'm going to touch 0:01:53.480 --> 0:01:55.760 on this a couple times in this episode, that often 0:01:56.400 --> 0:01:59.640 we end up being wrong in our predictions because we 0:01:59.680 --> 0:02:03.920 are rejecting from what we know is possible today, right, 0:02:04.400 --> 0:02:08.040 And that's understandable. But obviously you can't bring into the 0:02:08.080 --> 0:02:12.440 picture anything like breakthroughs in fields that make the previously 0:02:12.520 --> 0:02:17.520 impossible now possible, or on the flip side, we can't 0:02:17.560 --> 0:02:21.200 imagine the hurdles will encounter that will slow or stop 0:02:21.280 --> 0:02:26.760 our progress toward a lofty goal. See also driverless cars, 0:02:26.800 --> 0:02:29.440 which have proven to be much more complicated than most 0:02:29.480 --> 0:02:33.040 folks believed a decade ago. Or if you want to 0:02:33.040 --> 0:02:36.880 be really cynical, you can take things like farahanos and say, well, 0:02:36.919 --> 0:02:40.000 of course people believed it was possible, even though it 0:02:40.040 --> 0:02:44.000 would later turn out that no the technology was not 0:02:44.160 --> 0:02:48.480 possible or not practical, all right. So we are also 0:02:49.120 --> 0:02:54.760 really good at misattributing statements to folks. So several of 0:02:54.800 --> 0:02:58.000 the claims that I'm going to talk about today did 0:02:58.080 --> 0:03:01.440 not come from the peer people who often will see 0:03:01.440 --> 0:03:05.160 their names attached to those statements, and this is a 0:03:05.160 --> 0:03:07.840 real problem. As I was researching this episode, I would 0:03:07.840 --> 0:03:10.880 come across a prediction and I'd think, Wow, do they 0:03:10.960 --> 0:03:13.640 really say that? Then I would do some more research, 0:03:13.680 --> 0:03:15.360 and I would start digging in, and I would start 0:03:15.400 --> 0:03:19.880 looking for the history of a particular statement and ultimately 0:03:19.919 --> 0:03:23.680 find out that the person who was doing the supposed 0:03:23.720 --> 0:03:27.480 prognostication never actually said the ding dang darned thing in 0:03:27.520 --> 0:03:32.240 the first place. Sometimes someone else said it and actually 0:03:32.320 --> 0:03:37.520 was trying to predict it. Sometimes the prediction just appeared 0:03:37.520 --> 0:03:39.840 to be an invention meant to make a famous person 0:03:39.920 --> 0:03:42.840 seem foolish. So we'll talk about a few of those 0:03:43.080 --> 0:03:46.160 two in this episode. Now. To kick us off, I 0:03:46.160 --> 0:03:50.000 thought I would talk about a very likely apocryphal story. 0:03:50.080 --> 0:03:53.720 In fact, I'll just say I think this one is fake. 0:03:54.880 --> 0:03:58.720 The person who allegedly made the prediction would later deny 0:03:59.160 --> 0:04:03.080 that it ever happened. Frequently, and there's no reason to 0:04:03.240 --> 0:04:08.120 disbelieve this person. So this relates to Bill Gates, the 0:04:08.160 --> 0:04:13.320 co founder of Microsoft. Now, according to the story, supposedly 0:04:14.080 --> 0:04:17.479 back in the early eighties, Bill Gates proclaimed that six 0:04:17.600 --> 0:04:21.120 hundred and forty kilobytes of memory quote ought to be 0:04:21.320 --> 0:04:25.720 enough for anybody. End quote. Now this line pops up 0:04:25.800 --> 0:04:29.320 again and again if you start looking for examples of 0:04:29.360 --> 0:04:33.360 people who are making bad predictions or outright dumb statements 0:04:33.440 --> 0:04:37.640 about technology, and you know, there's this delicious irony, this 0:04:37.720 --> 0:04:41.920 person who is really influential in the text space making 0:04:42.120 --> 0:04:47.039 an outright incorrect statement or prediction. So, if you're not aware, 0:04:47.080 --> 0:04:50.680 six hundred and forty kilobytes was a decent amount of 0:04:50.720 --> 0:04:53.960 memory back in nineteen eighty one when this story supposedly 0:04:54.000 --> 0:04:58.520 took place. But it's a minuscule amount of memory these days, 0:04:58.560 --> 0:05:02.799 like not even worth talking about. Like you know, computers today, 0:05:03.000 --> 0:05:04.839 if you if you've got a computer that is on 0:05:04.880 --> 0:05:07.800 the low side, you're still talking something like two gigabytes 0:05:07.839 --> 0:05:11.640 of memory, maybe up to sixty four gigabytes, and then 0:05:11.720 --> 0:05:15.000 you could maybe expanded up to one hundred twenty eight gigabytes. 0:05:15.440 --> 0:05:17.960 If you've got a sixty four bit system. So remember 0:05:18.160 --> 0:05:22.080 a kilobyte is one thousand bytes. Okay, well, really we 0:05:22.120 --> 0:05:23.880 should be doing this in base two. It should really 0:05:23.920 --> 0:05:26.039 be one thy twenty four bytes. But it really depends 0:05:26.120 --> 0:05:28.760 upon the company, Like some companies will just round it off, 0:05:28.800 --> 0:05:31.560 and some companies will use the base two. So either 0:05:31.600 --> 0:05:34.159 a thousand or one thousand, twenty four bytes, that's what 0:05:34.240 --> 0:05:36.880 a kilobyte is, So six hundred and forty would be 0:05:36.920 --> 0:05:42.479 six hundred forty times that. A gigabyte is a billion bytes, 0:05:42.600 --> 0:05:45.080 or if we're going base two, it's technically one billion, 0:05:45.360 --> 0:05:48.400 seventy three million, seven hundred and forty one thousand, eight 0:05:48.520 --> 0:05:52.880 hundred and twenty four bytes. So yeah, like gigabytes are 0:05:53.360 --> 0:05:56.960 orders of magnitude larger than kilobytes. So obviously the story 0:05:56.960 --> 0:06:00.240 seems to paint Bill Gates as extremely short sighted. To 0:06:00.279 --> 0:06:02.960 assume that six hundred and forty kilobytes would be enough 0:06:02.960 --> 0:06:07.600 for anybody would be an enormous whiff when these days 0:06:07.640 --> 0:06:10.680 even a bargain computer will have orders of magnitude more 0:06:10.800 --> 0:06:15.840 memory as standard. But the thing is, Gates says he 0:06:15.920 --> 0:06:18.800 never actually made this claim. In fact, he said that 0:06:18.880 --> 0:06:21.640 he was always pushing to create systems that could take 0:06:21.680 --> 0:06:25.280 advantage of more memory, which is pretty much the opposite 0:06:25.360 --> 0:06:28.040 of what the claim says. So on top of that, 0:06:28.160 --> 0:06:30.640 while the general stories that Gates said this at some 0:06:30.880 --> 0:06:35.480 point at some trade show in nineteen eighty one, there's 0:06:35.640 --> 0:06:40.120 no actual record of him saying that. There's no account 0:06:40.279 --> 0:06:45.400 from that year that says at this event, during this conversation, 0:06:45.520 --> 0:06:49.000 Bill Gates said this thing. So Gates would later say 0:06:49.000 --> 0:06:53.040 in an interview quote, I've said some stupid things and 0:06:53.120 --> 0:06:57.039 some wrong things, but not that No one involved in 0:06:57.120 --> 0:06:59.960 computers would ever say that a certain amount of memory 0:07:00.080 --> 0:07:03.560 is enough for all time. End quote. So if Gates 0:07:03.880 --> 0:07:07.400 had said this, he would certainly qualify someone making a 0:07:07.440 --> 0:07:11.080 wrong prediction or statement about tech. But it doesn't seem 0:07:11.120 --> 0:07:13.680 like that ever happened. There's lots of stuff we could 0:07:13.720 --> 0:07:18.440 say about Gates that is terrible and deeply disturbing, but 0:07:19.440 --> 0:07:22.440 when it comes to making this particular prediction that appears 0:07:22.480 --> 0:07:26.040 to just be made up in whole cloth. There's a 0:07:26.080 --> 0:07:29.400 similar story that I want to touch on that also 0:07:29.480 --> 0:07:33.120 paints a tech leader in a foolish light, but this 0:07:33.280 --> 0:07:36.720 is due to a lack of context. This leader would 0:07:36.720 --> 0:07:39.720 be Ken Olsen. He was a co founder of a 0:07:39.760 --> 0:07:45.840 company called Digital Equipment Corporation or DEC. Later on COMPAC 0:07:46.120 --> 0:07:50.720 would acquire DEC, and then even later Hewlett Packard would 0:07:50.800 --> 0:07:54.720 acquire COMPAC. So there's always a bigger fish. But the 0:07:54.760 --> 0:07:59.200 story goes that Olsen, back in nineteen seventy seven gave 0:07:59.440 --> 0:08:03.640 a present at the World Future Society in which he proclaimed, 0:08:03.760 --> 0:08:07.800 quote there is no reason for any individual to have 0:08:07.840 --> 0:08:11.520 a computer in his home. End quote. Now, if we 0:08:11.640 --> 0:08:14.440 take that quote on the face of it, it sounds 0:08:14.520 --> 0:08:18.080 like what Olsen was saying is that the very idea 0:08:18.080 --> 0:08:21.600 of a home personal computer is ludicrous. And considering that 0:08:21.640 --> 0:08:24.720 the nineteen seventies, the late seventies that was the launching 0:08:24.800 --> 0:08:29.440 ground for the home computer, Olsen's words appear to be indefensible, 0:08:29.840 --> 0:08:33.880 like he was just totally wrong. The personal computer would 0:08:33.960 --> 0:08:36.720 become a huge deal. Today it's a market that's nearly 0:08:36.760 --> 0:08:40.680 two hundred billion dollars in value. But here's the thing. 0:08:41.160 --> 0:08:45.240 Olsen explained that the problem was people were lifting that 0:08:45.320 --> 0:08:49.320 statement out of his presentation without the benefit of context. 0:08:49.960 --> 0:08:53.600 He later defended what he said. He said he wasn't 0:08:53.640 --> 0:08:56.560 talking about personal computers. He wasn't talking about little desktop 0:08:56.600 --> 0:08:59.080 computers that let us do all sorts of stuff. He 0:08:59.360 --> 0:09:02.600 obviously believe that those would be a thing, because dec 0:09:03.280 --> 0:09:07.320 was in that business itself, So there's no reason why 0:09:07.400 --> 0:09:10.240 his company would be pursuing that line of business if 0:09:10.240 --> 0:09:14.439 he didn't believe that it was viable. Rather, what Olsen 0:09:14.559 --> 0:09:16.640 was talking about was that you were not going to 0:09:16.679 --> 0:09:20.360 see people get a mainframe like computer system installed in 0:09:20.400 --> 0:09:25.000 their home for the purposes of automating everything, like having 0:09:25.120 --> 0:09:29.080 a computer run household. That's what he was talking about. 0:09:29.440 --> 0:09:32.679 So we're not going to see people get a computer 0:09:32.760 --> 0:09:37.040 to be the central operating system of your home. So 0:09:37.080 --> 0:09:41.720 we're talking about functions like controlling your lights or climate controls, 0:09:41.920 --> 0:09:44.360 or the sort of stuff that we can now do 0:09:44.400 --> 0:09:48.360 with network products like smart thermostats and light bulbs. Olsen 0:09:48.440 --> 0:09:50.240 was saying he didn't see a future where people were 0:09:50.240 --> 0:09:53.480 going to buy and install these hefty computer systems, and 0:09:53.520 --> 0:09:56.319 also that people wouldn't want their lives to be run 0:09:56.440 --> 0:09:59.719 by computers. And this would have been back in the 0:09:59.760 --> 0:10:01.880 night teen seventies when he made this statement, and he 0:10:02.000 --> 0:10:06.320 was mostly right right, like, we didn't see people pay 0:10:06.880 --> 0:10:09.920 ridiculous amounts of money to automate their homes. Now these days, 0:10:09.920 --> 0:10:12.720 we do have lots of home automation products out there, 0:10:13.440 --> 0:10:20.280 and depending upon how deeply integrated your computer calendar is 0:10:20.360 --> 0:10:22.840 with your life, maybe you do feel like you're being 0:10:22.960 --> 0:10:26.360 your life is being run by a computer, which that's 0:10:26.360 --> 0:10:29.120 a possibility, but it doesn't. It's not the same thing 0:10:29.160 --> 0:10:31.200 as holding his statement up and saying, oh, he was 0:10:31.200 --> 0:10:34.400 totally wrong about home computers. So Olsen's point was aimed 0:10:34.400 --> 0:10:37.200 more at Pie and the sky futurists who had imagined 0:10:37.240 --> 0:10:39.839 the fully automated home, which is a vision that actually 0:10:39.920 --> 0:10:42.640 dates back decades. Some of my favorite cartoons as a 0:10:42.720 --> 0:10:46.360 kid were cartoons that were about the home of tomorrow, 0:10:46.760 --> 0:10:49.440 and the cartoonists and writers found goofy ways to poke 0:10:49.520 --> 0:10:54.040 fun at basic automation concepts. Olsen was saying that was 0:10:54.040 --> 0:10:55.680 the sort of system no one would be buying for 0:10:55.760 --> 0:10:58.120 their home, and he was right about that, but a 0:10:58.160 --> 0:11:01.240 misinterpretation of his meaning had people to say that he 0:11:01.400 --> 0:11:05.280 was absolutely wrong and that he was talking about home computers. Okay, 0:11:05.440 --> 0:11:08.760 Next up, I want to talk about The Hitchhiker's Guide 0:11:08.880 --> 0:11:12.360 to the Galaxy and how Douglas Adams dreamed up an 0:11:12.400 --> 0:11:17.960 outlandish technology in the titular Guide. When Adams wrote the 0:11:18.040 --> 0:11:20.640 first version of the story, which was actually a radio 0:11:20.720 --> 0:11:23.400 play for BBC Radio back in nineteen seventy eight. There 0:11:23.440 --> 0:11:27.600 are like half a dozen different versions of the Hitchhiker's 0:11:27.640 --> 0:11:30.680 Guide to the Galaxy story, and no two are exactly alike. 0:11:31.240 --> 0:11:33.200 You know, you have the radio play, you have the novels, 0:11:33.520 --> 0:11:36.080 you have a TV series, you've got a movie like 0:11:36.320 --> 0:11:40.040 and each version tells the story slightly differently. Even even 0:11:40.120 --> 0:11:45.280 the vinyl record which took the radio play scripts, changed things. 0:11:45.440 --> 0:11:49.480 So there's no definitive version of Hitchicker's Guide to the Galaxy. Anyway. 0:11:50.080 --> 0:11:53.600 When he wrote this back in nineteen seventy eight, personal 0:11:53.679 --> 0:11:57.559 computers were really new, right, they had not been around 0:11:57.559 --> 0:12:00.480 for very long. So in his story he has a 0:12:00.559 --> 0:12:05.040 character that has this Guide to the Galaxy, and it 0:12:05.120 --> 0:12:08.840 is essentially a digital book. It's about the size of 0:12:08.840 --> 0:12:12.000 a book, and it contains enormous amounts of information on 0:12:12.080 --> 0:12:15.320 pretty much anything you could encounter in the great big 0:12:15.360 --> 0:12:20.520 galaxy out there. Although some entries warranted longer descriptions than others, 0:12:21.160 --> 0:12:25.960 Earth's entry, for example, was just mostly harmless, and even 0:12:26.000 --> 0:12:30.760 before that it was just harmless. While Adams's work reveled 0:12:30.800 --> 0:12:34.320 in absurdity and comedy, this idea of this sort of 0:12:34.440 --> 0:12:37.040 portable device that could have access to vast amounts of 0:12:37.040 --> 0:12:40.839 information would persist beyond the pages of fiction, and as 0:12:40.840 --> 0:12:43.880 companies found ways to build smaller components and then cram 0:12:43.920 --> 0:12:47.720 those components into microchips, computers got more powerful and capable 0:12:47.760 --> 0:12:52.160 of storing more information. Adding the ability to network these 0:12:52.200 --> 0:12:56.040 devices and things really would start to take off. This 0:12:56.160 --> 0:13:00.240 brings me to Andy Grove, the former CEO of INDI Hell. 0:13:00.640 --> 0:13:04.360 Back in nineteen ninety two, Andy Grove famously dismissed the 0:13:04.400 --> 0:13:07.960 notion that before long, executives would be walking around with 0:13:08.000 --> 0:13:12.120 a wireless digital personal communications device capable of doing things 0:13:12.200 --> 0:13:15.920 like sending and receiving email or can you just imagine 0:13:15.960 --> 0:13:18.880 being able to pull up like real time local maps 0:13:18.960 --> 0:13:22.959 complete with traffic information and a suggested route to get 0:13:23.000 --> 0:13:28.240 to your next destination. Essentially, Grove thought this vision, which 0:13:28.240 --> 0:13:32.760 would slowly coalesce into the smartphone, was a pipe dream, 0:13:32.960 --> 0:13:35.360 and that it was something being hyped up by companies 0:13:35.679 --> 0:13:40.360 that were greedy but unrealistic. Of course, Grove was wrong. 0:13:40.920 --> 0:13:44.000 The invention of the personal digital assistant and then the 0:13:44.120 --> 0:13:47.960 gradual convergence of the PDA with the cell phone would 0:13:48.000 --> 0:13:51.600 give birth to the modern smartphone, and it wouldn't just 0:13:51.640 --> 0:13:54.080 be executives who would carry them around. It would be 0:13:54.120 --> 0:13:58.640 tons of people, hundreds of millions of people. Something that 0:13:58.720 --> 0:14:01.320 was once in the realm of science fiction would now 0:14:01.640 --> 0:14:04.719 be a reality. Now we all have access to a 0:14:04.800 --> 0:14:08.640 vast database of information. Some of the information is really useful, 0:14:09.440 --> 0:14:13.320 some of it is diverting, some of it's outright harmful. 0:14:13.840 --> 0:14:18.040 We can send and receive emails or instant messages, even 0:14:18.120 --> 0:14:21.120 photos and videos. We could jump online and interact with 0:14:21.280 --> 0:14:24.440 various platforms. We can shop from our phones, we can 0:14:24.520 --> 0:14:27.600 use them as navigation devices. We could just play with 0:14:27.680 --> 0:14:31.240 them like toys. It turns out that the pipe dream 0:14:31.560 --> 0:14:34.960 was in fact a possibility and then a reality. But 0:14:35.040 --> 0:14:38.920 back in nineteen ninety two you could probably understand Grove's skepticism. 0:14:39.320 --> 0:14:42.440 Apple launched the Newton in ninety two, and that became 0:14:42.480 --> 0:14:45.760 the first product that would be called a personal Digital assistant, 0:14:45.840 --> 0:14:49.040 or PDA. But that particular device had a lot of 0:14:49.040 --> 0:14:53.840 limitations and quirks, plus it lacked wireless connectivity. Still, IBM 0:14:53.920 --> 0:14:56.840 released a PDA with analog cell phone connectivity in nineteen 0:14:56.920 --> 0:15:00.520 ninety four, and Nokia followed with a PA that had 0:15:00.560 --> 0:15:04.200 digital cell phone connectivity in nineteen ninety six, so it 0:15:04.320 --> 0:15:09.760 did not take very long for Grove's prediction to fall flat. Okay, 0:15:09.760 --> 0:15:11.360 we're gonna take a quick break and then we'll be 0:15:11.400 --> 0:15:24.200 back with some more bad tech predictions. We're back and 0:15:24.320 --> 0:15:28.600 next up. Sometimes the guy who helped build the thing 0:15:29.440 --> 0:15:32.600 ends up being very wrong about the thing. So in 0:15:32.640 --> 0:15:37.120 this case, I'm talking about Robert or Bob Metcalf. So 0:15:37.320 --> 0:15:41.320 when he was a graduate student, Metcalf worked on ARPANET. 0:15:41.720 --> 0:15:44.960 So for those who are unfamiliar with arpa neet, you 0:15:45.000 --> 0:15:47.760 can think of it as sort of the predecessor to 0:15:47.840 --> 0:15:52.120 the Internet. You add a lot of engineers and scientists 0:15:52.240 --> 0:15:56.120 and researchers who worked to create the means to network 0:15:56.240 --> 0:15:59.840 different computers together, even if those computers were far apart 0:15:59.840 --> 0:16:02.760 from from one another. This was a non trivial task. 0:16:02.840 --> 0:16:05.800 You know, these different computers worked on different operating systems. 0:16:06.560 --> 0:16:09.480 You could think of it as they communicated in different languages. 0:16:09.560 --> 0:16:12.360 So you had to create a way, a common ground 0:16:12.960 --> 0:16:16.240 for these different machines to be able to send and 0:16:16.280 --> 0:16:19.360 receive information in a useful way with it or other machines. 0:16:19.560 --> 0:16:24.400 And then how does that information travel across communications lines. 0:16:24.680 --> 0:16:26.560 You had to come up with ways for that to 0:16:26.680 --> 0:16:29.480 be foolproof, or at least as close to foolproof as 0:16:29.480 --> 0:16:31.720 you could get, because if it were something where it 0:16:31.760 --> 0:16:35.240 was just a solid connection and there was an interruption 0:16:35.360 --> 0:16:39.680 in that connection, then what happens to the process. These 0:16:39.680 --> 0:16:43.080 were all practical problems that the arpinet folks had to solve, 0:16:43.600 --> 0:16:46.720 and the work would become a foundational component for the 0:16:46.800 --> 0:16:51.000 Internet which would follow after arpinet. Metcalf wrote an early 0:16:51.120 --> 0:16:54.680 definitive work describing different ways to use the arpinet. He 0:16:54.760 --> 0:16:59.120 also included information on resources and instructions to make use 0:16:59.200 --> 0:17:01.640 of arpinet. He would then go on to take a 0:17:01.720 --> 0:17:04.680 job at Xerox Park. That's a facility that I've talked 0:17:04.720 --> 0:17:09.000 about in recent tech Stuff episodes, very important in various 0:17:09.040 --> 0:17:13.120 technological innovations, although Xerox itself had a reputation for failing 0:17:13.200 --> 0:17:16.680 to capitalize on the developments that came out of Park. 0:17:17.440 --> 0:17:20.600 And while he was at Park, he developed ethernet. That's 0:17:20.680 --> 0:17:25.200 the cable based technology that allows data transfers between connected computers. 0:17:25.520 --> 0:17:28.560 He based it off of the Alohan net that was 0:17:28.640 --> 0:17:32.080 used by the University of Hawaii, which relied on radio 0:17:32.080 --> 0:17:35.200 waves rather than cables to send signals back and forth. 0:17:35.480 --> 0:17:40.040 But he built upon the technologies of alohan Net to 0:17:40.119 --> 0:17:44.840 develop ethernet. Okay, but let's flash forward to nineteen ninety five, 0:17:45.320 --> 0:17:47.640 So this is five years after the US government had 0:17:47.640 --> 0:17:50.960 already decommissioned Arpinet. It had been shut down a couple 0:17:51.000 --> 0:17:55.600 of years earlier, got decommissioned in nineteen ninety the Internet 0:17:55.680 --> 0:17:59.159 itself was actually really taking off. It was helped in 0:17:59.280 --> 0:18:03.200 large part by the development of the Worldwide Web, which 0:18:04.080 --> 0:18:07.480 wasn't a thing when the Internet was first coalescing, but 0:18:07.720 --> 0:18:11.000 became a thing in the early nineties. And on December fourth, 0:18:11.320 --> 0:18:15.880 nineteen ninety five, the magazine InfoWorld published an article written 0:18:16.040 --> 0:18:20.639 by Metcalf in which the network visionary said, quote, I 0:18:20.760 --> 0:18:23.879 predict the Internet, which only just recently got this section 0:18:24.000 --> 0:18:29.119 here in InfoWorld, will soon go spectacularly supernova and in 0:18:29.240 --> 0:18:36.560 nineteen ninety six catastrophically collapse end quote. So Metcalf thought 0:18:36.600 --> 0:18:41.560 the Internet was growing beyond the technological and economic capacities 0:18:42.000 --> 0:18:45.440 that would be needed to support the Internet. He envisioned 0:18:45.440 --> 0:18:49.240 a scenario in which the money just wouldn't be there 0:18:49.400 --> 0:18:52.600 to build out the infrastructure that would be required to 0:18:52.800 --> 0:18:55.840 allow for the explosive growth. He didn't deny that the 0:18:55.840 --> 0:18:59.000 Internet was growing. He just said it's going to reach 0:18:59.040 --> 0:19:02.960 a tipping point where where we're not able to supply 0:19:03.080 --> 0:19:05.680 it with the technology needed to let it run, and 0:19:05.720 --> 0:19:08.480 it's going to collapse under its own weight. So he 0:19:08.640 --> 0:19:11.080 also predicted that we were going to see a lot 0:19:11.119 --> 0:19:14.920 more vulnerabilities in the Internet that would facilitate security breaches, 0:19:15.119 --> 0:19:17.240 and that would convince folks that the Internet would be 0:19:17.280 --> 0:19:20.000 too dangerous. Right once you have a couple of big 0:19:20.000 --> 0:19:25.040 security breaches, people would say, oh, we can't you know, 0:19:25.040 --> 0:19:27.040 we can't rely on the Internet because if we do, 0:19:27.160 --> 0:19:30.480 we're going to potentially lose everything. So he proclaimed that 0:19:30.560 --> 0:19:34.040 he would even eat his words if he were proven wrong. 0:19:34.640 --> 0:19:38.919 In April nineteen ninety seven, Bob Metcalf proved to be 0:19:38.960 --> 0:19:41.440 a man of his word. While at a tech conference, 0:19:41.760 --> 0:19:45.560 Metcalf had a cake wheeled out. His column was printed 0:19:45.680 --> 0:19:49.159 on icing on the cake. Some versions of the story 0:19:49.240 --> 0:19:51.639 say that the crowd kind of turned against him, saying 0:19:51.640 --> 0:19:54.000 that he was taking the easy way out, and so 0:19:54.080 --> 0:19:56.159 at least one version of the story says that he 0:19:56.280 --> 0:20:00.000 then had the actual physical article on paper brought out 0:20:00.080 --> 0:20:02.880 out and then put the article in a blender with 0:20:02.880 --> 0:20:05.560 some water and blended it into kind of slurry, and 0:20:05.600 --> 0:20:09.280 then he ate the goop. But either way, he reportedly 0:20:09.359 --> 0:20:11.960 did in fact eat his own words and admitted that 0:20:12.000 --> 0:20:16.879 he had been wrong, which I totally respect. Metcalf failed 0:20:16.880 --> 0:20:20.560 to predict the innovations that would drive the Internet's expansion, 0:20:21.240 --> 0:20:23.639 and again that really gets back to that heart of 0:20:23.720 --> 0:20:26.440 a lot of wrong predictions that we lean so heavily 0:20:26.600 --> 0:20:29.960 on basing our guess of what comes next by looking 0:20:30.000 --> 0:20:33.879 at how we do things currently. But obviously this fails 0:20:33.880 --> 0:20:37.360 to take into account new techniques and technologies and ideas, which, 0:20:37.440 --> 0:20:41.040 let's be fair, makes sense because if we could predict 0:20:41.640 --> 0:20:45.720 new techniques and technologies and ideas, we would already have them. Like, 0:20:46.560 --> 0:20:50.040 you can't fault people for not guessing something that hasn't 0:20:50.080 --> 0:20:52.840 been thought up yet, because otherwise they would have thought 0:20:52.840 --> 0:20:57.080 it up. Of course, technologists aren't the only ones who 0:20:57.080 --> 0:21:01.080 get tech predictions wrong. Economists can do a real fine 0:21:01.200 --> 0:21:06.080 job of getting stuff wrong too, while also referencing a technologist, 0:21:06.240 --> 0:21:09.959 perhaps in the process. See In nineteen ninety eight, an 0:21:10.040 --> 0:21:13.840 economist named Paul Krugman had a dire prediction for the Internet, 0:21:14.200 --> 0:21:17.840 and he ended up referencing our previous example of Robert Metcalf. 0:21:18.440 --> 0:21:21.560 Krugman wrote an article in a magazine titled red Herring 0:21:22.080 --> 0:21:25.919 and said, quote, the growth of the Internet will slow 0:21:26.040 --> 0:21:30.199 drastically as the flaw in Metcalf's law, which states that 0:21:30.240 --> 0:21:33.760 the number of potential connections in a network is proportional 0:21:33.800 --> 0:21:37.160 to the square of the number of participants, becomes apparent. 0:21:37.720 --> 0:21:40.360 Most people have nothing to say to each other. By 0:21:40.359 --> 0:21:42.520 two thousand and five or so, it will become clear 0:21:42.720 --> 0:21:45.520 that the Internet's impact on the economy has been no 0:21:45.640 --> 0:21:50.760 greater than the fax machines. End quote. All right, so 0:21:51.440 --> 0:21:54.640 this does raise the question about Metcalf's law. What is that? 0:21:54.800 --> 0:21:57.280 What actually comes from an observation that Robert Metcalf had 0:21:57.280 --> 0:21:59.600 made way back in nineteen eighty, which was that the 0:21:59.600 --> 0:22:03.560 financial value of a telecommunications network is proportional to the 0:22:03.600 --> 0:22:07.480 square of the number of connected communication devices on that network. 0:22:07.520 --> 0:22:10.240 Sometimes we simplify this to say the number of users 0:22:10.280 --> 0:22:12.880 on a network, but it's really more fair to say 0:22:13.080 --> 0:22:18.000 nodes or connected devices. Essentially, met Keef was saying that 0:22:18.080 --> 0:22:21.600 the more devices you have connected within a network, the 0:22:21.680 --> 0:22:26.560 more possible connections exist between those devices, and we can 0:22:26.600 --> 0:22:30.879 express this mathematically with the equation of n times n 0:22:30.920 --> 0:22:34.400 minus one divided by two. In in this case would 0:22:34.400 --> 0:22:38.119 be the number of users or connected devices or nodes 0:22:38.119 --> 0:22:39.879 however you want to think of it. So if we 0:22:39.920 --> 0:22:42.080 only have two devices, right, let's say that we've got 0:22:42.119 --> 0:22:44.520 a direct connection between device one and device two. But 0:22:44.560 --> 0:22:47.359 that's it. Well, we would fill in our equation. We 0:22:47.400 --> 0:22:49.800 would use two in place of end, So our equation 0:22:49.880 --> 0:22:53.520 will be two times two minus one, which is one 0:22:53.800 --> 0:22:56.080 and then divided by two. So then that means we 0:22:56.119 --> 0:22:58.560 get two times one divided by two. That means we 0:22:58.600 --> 0:23:01.720 eventually just get one. That's the number of possible connections 0:23:01.760 --> 0:23:04.840 between these two connected devices. You only have one possible connection. 0:23:05.400 --> 0:23:10.320 But let's say we've got twenty connected devices on this network. Well, 0:23:10.320 --> 0:23:14.000 that means now our equation is twenty times twenty minus 0:23:14.000 --> 0:23:17.879 one divided by two, So that means it's twenty times 0:23:17.960 --> 0:23:21.280 nineteen then divide by two, or we get one hundred 0:23:21.320 --> 0:23:25.600 and ninety possible connections. So as you add more users 0:23:25.640 --> 0:23:29.800 or devices to a network, then network's value increases significantly. 0:23:30.240 --> 0:23:33.240 But Krugman was saying that if no one has anything 0:23:33.280 --> 0:23:35.320 interesting to say to each other then you don't really 0:23:35.359 --> 0:23:37.840 have any added value there, and then growth is going 0:23:37.880 --> 0:23:40.399 to slow down, and this is going to show that 0:23:40.520 --> 0:23:44.919 Metcalf's law is flawed. Clearly, the era of social media 0:23:44.960 --> 0:23:49.239 has proved Krugman way wrong. People spend all day not 0:23:49.400 --> 0:23:52.760 saying anything to each other, at least nothing of substance, 0:23:53.400 --> 0:23:57.760 and it is going like gangbusters. Even as some platforms 0:23:57.800 --> 0:24:01.480 are slowing down, others are picking up. Krugman and himself 0:24:01.480 --> 0:24:03.719 had said that he was just trying to be provocative, 0:24:04.040 --> 0:24:06.679 and sometimes when you do try to be provocative, you 0:24:06.760 --> 0:24:09.440 end up just being very wrong, and he just happened 0:24:09.440 --> 0:24:13.720 to be very very wrong about this. Now, sometimes we 0:24:13.760 --> 0:24:16.800 get predictions of doom and gloom from someone who appears 0:24:16.800 --> 0:24:19.240 to be driven by having a vested interest in a 0:24:19.359 --> 0:24:23.439 competing technology. They say, oh, that technology is going to fail, 0:24:23.800 --> 0:24:28.000 partly because they are supporting a different technology. There's a 0:24:28.080 --> 0:24:32.879 quote frequently and also incorrectly attributed to a Hollywood movie 0:24:32.920 --> 0:24:35.720 producer named Darryl F. Zanuk. He was one of the 0:24:35.760 --> 0:24:39.240 folks responsible for creating the film company twentieth Century Pictures, 0:24:39.320 --> 0:24:42.240 among a lot of other things. But the story goes 0:24:42.640 --> 0:24:49.160