I should know better and follow the advice a friend once gave me when he said: “Peter, a shut mouth gathers no foot.” On the other hand, who in the world could possibly resist an invitation from www.mediate.com to opine on the future of something near and dear to my heart and happily rekindle some old quarrels with colleagues? Still, I fear no good things will come of this and it will be a rapid descent into some not so good company.

In the early 19th century an English aristocrat working for the British Raj in India noted after a trip back to London that the telegraph and telephone were interesting inventions but they would never take hold because of a surplus of messenger boys in the colonies. Then there was William Thompson, aka Lord Kelvin, the most famous English scientist of his time, who proudly pronounced: “Radiation has no future. Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible. X-rays will prove to be a hoax.” And of course Sir Richard Van Der Reit Wooley, The Astronomer Royal, who in 1956 said, “Space travel is utter bilge.”

Lest you think only the English stumble in this area, there have also been plenty of misses by our people. In 1903 the president of the Michigan Savings Bank strongly advised Henry Ford’s lawyer not to invest in the Ford Motor Company. “The horse is here to stay but the automobile is only a novelty—a fad.” About that time as the era of silent films was coming to a close, Harry Warner, founder of Warner Brothers Studio, confidently said: “Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?” Later, inventor Lee Deforest noted “While theoretically and technically television may be feasible, commercially and financially I consider it an impossibility.” And Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, who self-assuredly predicted there would be no real market for computers.

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