False prophecy
Dec 1, 1999 12:00 PM, Ted Uzzle
Millennium fever spurs crazy new-age predictions, and disbelief seems permanently suspended. S&VC's editor emeritus exposes some of the predictions he guarantees not to come true.
The millennium will come to an end on December 31, 2000. That does not seem to bother some pundits, who predict streets of gold on January 1, 2000, or else the end of civilization as we know it. Why do we credit these insane predictions? Most of us do not fully believe them, but we listen anyway and attentively read the crackpot articles in irresponsible journals. It is time for some little child to point at the emperor, snicker and say, "He is naked!"
Movie theaters will close
In 1979, the futurists at the Rand Corporation predicted the movie theaters would all close by 1984. They would all be displaced by home video on Betamax. Well, home video came on as strongly as predicted (although not Betamax), but the movie theaters never actually closed their doors. In fact, theater box office takings set a record in 1984, which lasted only until 1985, and that record lasted only until 1986. The 1986 record lasted only until 1987, which lasted only until 1988. Do you see a trend here?
Movie theaters get about six months of exclusivity before the feature comes out on video. The money made by film companies in the cinemas does not detract from the subsidiary revenues they inevitably receive six months later from video sales and rental. Why should they surrender box office takings for no financial benefit later?
Movie theaters will go to video
This crackpot notion has been around for 45 years, and at this time, it is no closer to happening. Video projector salesmen claim the best high-definition video projectors are now equal to the best 16 mm projection. On what planet might that be? The best theatrical 16 mm projectors, from Hortson in France, Kinoton in Germany or Prevost in Italy, blow the socks off any video projection now available. Video-projector shootouts never include the best theatrical 16 mm projectors, and there is a reason for that. Compare the best video projectors to 35 mm theatrical projection, and there is no contest - film rules.
Whenever you go into a cinema and see bad picture and hear bad sound, the fault does not lie in the technology. More than likely the theater owner will not pay for proper maintenance until the projector is jammed so tight that it will not turn at all. Besides, the projectionist is often a 17-year-old popcorn popper making Federal minimum wage.
Replace that film equipment with video equipment, and the cinema still will not pay for maintenance, and it still will not pay for a qualified technician to run it. You will see just as much bad picture and hear just as much bad sound with video in cinemas as you do with film.
Why should a theater owner junk all that film equipment, already long paid for, and spend money anew for video projectors? How is the owner to make more money to pay for the new video equipment? If there is no more money to be made, why spend? Imaginably, the film distributor might save money distributing features as digital video, but the film distributor will not be paying for the new projectors. In the long run, the theater owner will save nothing.
What about security? It does sometimes happen that an underpaid cinema employee "borrows" a release print from a projection booth overnight and brings it to a crooked film laboratory to be duped or transferred to VHS. The investment in hardware, however, is daunting for the common thief. Wait until the thieves can get their hands on infinitely duplicable digital copies, whose encryption they can hack, or try to hack, in their very bedrooms. Remember, those underpaid cinema employees are teenagers. Video in the cinemas makes no sense, neither technically nor financially.
Thin, flat-panel video will conquer
A cliche of science-fiction is the wall-sized, flat-panel video display. Trouble is, nobody wants that but science-fiction authors and dedicated fans. Consumers want bigger displays for less money. What difference does it make to a consumer if the display is 4 inches (102 mm) thick or 20 inches (508 mm) thick? The size of the average newly constructed American house grows every year; space is simply not that scarce. Besides, right next to the video display is a VCR or DVD player that is 14 inches (356 mm) deep, a receiver that is 18 inches (457 mm) deep, and loudspeakers that are 9 inches (228 mm) deep. How is the average homeowner to benefit from any extra space in the room? Because consumers want bigger pictures for less money, I am betting on video projection as the home-video future.
The paperless office
We have been promised this malarkey for some 15 years now. Go into a business office today, and you will stumble over the mountains of fan-fold, pin-feed printout.
Some industries have actually achieved a nearly paperless office. Consider, for example, the back office of a brokerage company and the back office of a bank. Those businesses, however, are not using PCs. They are actually using mainframe computers along with a million lines of custom-written code. The software costs more than the hardware. Right now, that is the price for a paperless office. Do not look for it in your office anytime soon.
E-mail will replace snail-mail
What do we hate about snail-mail? It used to be slow, although that has improved tremendously. My letters get overnight delivery in a four-state area, and second-day delivery in most of the Midwest, all for 33 cents.
The main thing we hate about snail mail is that there is too much of it - unsolicited, unwanted offers and catalogs. Yet, is that not even worse with e-mail? We do not get spammed simply because the spammers like electronic technology; we get spammed because it is free. Then, there are the crackpot e-mails, page after page of jokes and puns. Also, there are the strangers who send prayers or ideological rants, things I would prefer not to have jammed into my face without solicitation. Legislators no longer even respond to e-mail because it is too easy to send, and they have no way to know if a thousand e-mails are the views of a thousand voters or the toil of one obsessed fanatic.
As we control access to our e-mailbox to filter out the unwanted, we will still need a physical mailbox. A snail-mailbox has a filter of its own, you know: Those who want to communicate with us must be willing to pay, modestly, for the privilege. If your message is not worth 33 cents for you to send it to me, how much value should I place on it?
The Internet will replace book-libraries
I really want to find out what "sikolijee" is all about, but the Internet was no use at all. My browser found absolutely nothing. Someone recommended I read a sikolijee book by Sigmoid Froid, but it seems that he never wrote a book. I have seen pictures of him, goatee and all. Why are his books not on the Web?
E-books will replace paper books
Several recent bestsellers, or bestseller wannabees, have been released simultaneously as bound paper and as e-books. Guess what. The e-books cost more than the bound-paper books. Oh yes, dear reader, this has a big future.
An e-book is infinitely duplicable, while copying an in-print bound book on an office copier is an exercise in insanity. If I had to live off the income from my books' being sold, I am not sure that I would want distribution as e-books, whatever the price.
The physical classroom will disappear
A wise man once said the best-equipped classroom consists of a hollow log with the student sitting at one end and Socrates sitting at the other. The lesson, I suppose, is that the physical setting, or lack of a physical setting, does not matter. Certainly, I would rather be in a teleconference with a great teacher or in a tumble-down urban schoolroom with a great teacher than in a Palace of Learning with an inarticulate, incompetent hack of a teacher.
Turn it around the other way for a moment. Ask the great teacher, "Would you prefer a schoolroom or a row of video monitors?" The answer you get will be immediate and vociferous. The physical classroom is the gold standard, and will remain so.
Calculators will replace math study
Here is a 25 year-old prediction, as phoney now as it was at the time of its inception. Quick, what is eight times seven? Quick! Sorry, too slow. You do not know, do you? Now, run and ask an old geezer who went to school before calculators. Guess what? The old geezer does not know either.
Our ability to add, subtract, multiply and divide in our heads is terribly poor, but then, it always was. With calculators, we do more math than ever before, and with calculators, we study algebra and trigonometry more effectively because we are not interrupting our problem solving to look into log and trig tables. Give an extremely smart kid a scientific calculator, and the kid will invent the calculus for himself or herself.
The nation's lungs will atrophy
Here is a gem from a century ago. When shown Edison's new phonograph, John Philip Sousa recoiled in horror and predicted unemployment and destitution among musicians. They would record a piece of music once, and then no one would ever want to play it again. Besides, he said, the nation's lungs would atrop hy because American families would no longer gather around the parlor piano and lift their voices in patriotic song.
In the modern incarnation of this myth, we are told in the 1990s the nation's youth will have sunken chests, spindly arms and legs and no interpersonal skills because of the time they spend on the Internet. Does that sound familiar? We heard it in the 1980s about video games. Earlier in this century, we were told that would be the result of masturbation. Each modern generation is taller, stronger, healthier, and longer-lived than the one before. The atrophied-lungs prediction was wrong a century ago, and is still wrong today.
Technological gurus will predict the future
This is sure to come true. Unfortunately, the predictions to come will be as inaccurate as the predictions of the past. The self-appointed punditocracy is bloated to bursting with the afflatus of its own self-importance and unable to spot a trend outside an advertiser's press release. That will not, however, stop them from making whack-o predictions.
Here are the tell-tale signs of a worthless prediction:
- The crackpot prediction presumes that technology will advance even if nobody makes any money off it.
- More generally, the crackpot prediction assumes technology drives the world. Sorry, but that is wrong. Greed drives the world; love drives the world; hate drives the world; fear drives the world; hope drives the world. Technology is not even in the top 20. I cannot believe that this is not common knowledge.
- The crackpot prediction assumes technology is inherently good or inherently evil. The crackpot prediction believes a semiconductor can make a moral choice.
- Ignore all the many predictions that refer to "Silicone Valley."
- The crackpot prediction ignores the 80-20 rule (it takes 20% of the effort to get 80% of the way to a technological goal, but 80% of the effort to get the last 20%).
- The crackpot prediction extrapolates one single present trend but assumes nothing else in technology or society will change.
- More specifically, the crackpot prediction assumes that there will not be a direct, competitive response to the present trend being extrapolated.
- In closing, here is one more piece of advice about predictions: Once a trend is reported in Time magazine or Newsweek magazine, you will know for sure that it has peaked and is on the way down.
Remember, the greatest piece of technology in your house or office was invented by Minoans around 2,000 B.C.E.: the flush toilet.
- "In less than 25 years. . .the motor-car will be obsolete, because the aeroplane will run along the ground as well as fly over it." -Sir Philip Gibbs, 1928.
- "The Wankel [engine] will. . .dwarf such major post-war technological developments as xerography, the Polaroid camera and color television." -General Motors, 1969.
- "[By 1965] the deluxe open-road car will probably be 20 feet long, powered by a gas turbine engine, little brother of the jet engine." -Leo Cherne, 1955.
- "50 years hence. . .[w]e shall escape the absurdity of growing a whole chicken in order to eat the breast or wing, by growing these parts separately under a suitable medium." -Winston Churchill, 1932.
- "Cold fusion may eventually turn out to be one of the most significant sources of energy for the world in the 1990s and beyond." -U.S. Congressman Robert S. Walker, 1989.
- "In 15 years, more electricity will be sold for electric vehicles than for light." -Thomas Edison, 1910.
- "[A] few decades hence, energy may be free - just like the unmetered air." -John von Newmann, 1956.
Acceptable Use Policy blog comments powered by Disqus
