Prediction Problems:


"Everything that can be invented has been invented." (Director of
U.S. Patent Office to President McKinley, 1899) 

"The radio craze will die out in time."  (Thomas Edison, 1922)

"Video won't be able to hold onto any market it captures after
the first six months."  (Darryl F. Zanuck, 1946)

"Five computers will satisfy the world requirements for the
foreseeable future."  (Thomas A. Watson, IBM Corp.)


The Mercedes-Benz Corporation did a study at the turn of the
century (1900) that estimated the worldwide demand for
automobiles "would not exceed one million, primarily because of
the limitation of available chauffeurs." (Brand, 256)  This
prediction was based on the assumption that only people who could
afford chauffeurs could afford automobiles; and that driving a
horseless carriage would require as much skill as driving a horse
and carriage.  In 1968, the same kind of rationale prompted an
optimistic RCA Corporation to predict that there might be as many
as 220,000 computers in the United States by the year 2000. 
Computers were large, expensive, highly complex electronic
devices that required considerable operator skill.  Unanticipated
advances in the electronic technologies over the past twenty
years were as dramatic in their impact on the computer and
computing applications as the electric starter and the assembly
line were for the automobile.  As a result, the estimated number
of computers in the U.S. today (1989) is 45 million (Miller,
1989).  RCA is no longer in the computer business.

<ffile11>   A Look to the Future
<ffile13>   Hindsight