I was digging through some old computer magazines my dad kept and found a prediction from 1997 saying CDs would be obsolete in three years. Here I am in 2024 still buying used CDs at garage sales for a buck each, what a miss.
I was working a concrete pour in East Nashville back in 1995 and this older electrician kept saying the internet was just a toy for kids and would never replace the yellow pages or catalogs. He said nobody would buy groceries or books from a computer screen because people like to touch things before they buy them. I wonder what he would say if he saw me ordering a bag of cement mix from my phone while sitting in my truck.
I was digging through old YouTube archives last week and found this clip from 2007 where some tech blogger in Seattle swore the iPhone would never sell because people hated touchscreens on their PDAs. He literally said 'no one wants a phone without buttons' and laughed at the $499 price tag. Anyone else got a favorite prediction that aged like milk?
Was cleaning out my uncle's garage last weekend and found this old Popular Mechanics issue from October 1993. There's a whole article about how the internet would never replace libraries or phone books because "people need physical records." They literally said online shopping would fail because nobody trusts paying with a credit card over a modem. I scanned it and put it on imgur if anyone wants to see the full thing. Anyone else got old predictions that aged like milk?
I was clearing out my dad's garage in Tampa last weekend and stumbled on a copy of Wired where some expert predicted dial-up would kill broadband because "no one needs faster than 56k" - has anyone else found an old prediction that made them laugh out loud?
I was cleaning out my dad's old hard drive and stumbled on a PDF from some tech magazine predicting global network failure within 6 years if broadband adoption kept growing. We're out here streaming 4K cat videos in 2025, guess that prediction aged like milk. Anyone else find old tech doomsday predictions that make you laugh?
I was cleaning out my glove box last weekend and found my old Garmin Nuvi from like 2007. Turned it on for laughs and it still shows this highway near my town that was supposed to connect to the interstate by 2008. The road literally never got built, the exit ramp just ends in a field. I checked the map data and it predicted 45 miles of new pavement that just never happened. Kinda wild to think someone in an office predicted the future so wrong. Has anyone else dug up an old device that had hilariously bad predictions baked into it?
I found a scanned article where they guessed drones would be delivering Amazon packages by 2010 and I just laughed seeing my own 2008 self believing it would totally happen within 2 years. How did we go from that timeline to still waiting on regular drone deliveries in most neighborhoods?
I was buying a laptop at Best Buy in Denver back in 2007 and the sales guy laughed when I asked about tablet PCs, saying nobody wants to poke at a screen instead of having a real keyboard. Now I see toddlers swiping on iPads better than my grandpa can use a mouse. Anyone else get a terrible prediction like that from a store employee?
I was digging through old tech blogs last night and found a piece from Wired predicting Uber Air would be shuttling commuters over LA by now, yet here I am stuck in traffic on the 405 for the third time this week with zero drones in sight, anyone else remember some of these wild predictions from a decade back that never happened?
I went with a $30 Casio HR-100RC calculator for my small used bookstore instead of a $400 tablet setup. Has anyone else found older gear works better for simple inventory tracking?
Back in 2018, I was posting photos from a camera I got secondhand on Craigslist up in Portland. This one moderator on a hobbyist board straight up said my images looked like 'melted plastic wrapped in static'. They were right though. I had been saving everything as a baseline JPEG at quality 60 to save space, thinking nobody would notice. Turns out that setting was actively destroying my highlights and making everything look flat. After they called me out, I switched to saving at quality 85 and started shooting in RAW. The difference was night and day. I still cringe thinking about how many decent shots I butchered before that. Has anyone else had a random piece of criticism totally change how you process your files?
Was digging through my dad's old computer magazines in his garage and found a PC World piece from 1995 saying the internet would never replace shopping malls. The author literally called it "a digital toy for hobbyists" which is pretty funny considering I just ordered my groceries online 10 minutes ago.
I was cleaning out my garage last weekend and found a tech magazine with that prediction, yet here I am in 2024 building a new desktop because my iPad can't even handle basic spreadsheet work. Has anyone else held onto old tech predictions just to laugh at how wrong they were?
Paid $3,200 for a Samsung fridge that was supposed to order groceries for me. The screen is laggy and the camera died after 6 months. Anyone else get burned by this fancy appliance hype?
I was cleaning out my dad's old bookmarks on his computer and stumbled across this article from 2004. The guy was dead serious that streaming would make AM/FM radio completely obsolete within 5 years. Fast forward 20 years and I still listen to radio in my truck every morning on the way to work. Sure, streaming is huge now, but radio just kinda stuck around. Did anyone else have people predicting the death of something that's still hanging on today?
Was at a pub in Austin last week and this older dude was going off about how nobody would trust their photos on 'some server somewhere.' He said it like it was 2008 and we were all still using floppy disks. Made me wonder how many other bad predictions from back then we've just forgotten about. Anyone else got a specific old quote like that stuck in your head?
Was cleaning out my dad's garage last weekend in Denver. Found a stack of old Wired magazines. One article from 1995 said flying cars would be everywhere by 2010 and the biggest problem would be traffic jams in the sky. We can barely get self-driving cars to work on flat roads. Nobody thought about how loud and dangerous flying cars would be. Anyone else find old predictions that aged this badly?
I remember finding that old PC Magazine prediction in a box of magazines at my uncle's house last summer, and it's wild how they thought open-source community chaos could ever beat Microsoft's corporate machine back then, has anyone else dug up a hilariously bad OS prediction?
I was looking through some old trade magazines from the 80s and found an article saying by the year 2000, homes would have self-diagnosing wiring that would make electricians irrelevant. Well here I am in 2024 running new circuits for someone's 4th home office. But I did change how I price jobs after a customer laughed at my estimate and told me I was stuck in 1995 with my rates. Now I actually look at current material costs before quoting instead of guessing. Has anyone else had an old prediction that made them change a business habit?
I was digging through some old tech magazines at a thrift store in Portland last weekend and found a 1975 issue claiming we'd be completely paperless by 1995. I work in an office and we still print out 500 pages a week just for meeting agendas... has anyone else's workplace actually cut down on paper?
I dragged that heavy thing out of my parents' basement last weekend to play some retro games and the picture was just so warm and natural. My $600 gaming monitor from Best Buy keeps washing out blacks and making skin tones look plastic. Anyone else got an old tech relic that still outshines the modern replacement?
I was cleaning out my old bookmarks last night and found a CNET article from December 2007 that said by 2015, over 80% of Americans would be walking around with internet connected glasses. We barely even got smartwatches to stick, and most people I know still just use their phones. Even Google Glass came and went in like 2 years, and now we're all just back to staring down at our screens. Anybody else remember those wild predictions about wearable computing taking over?
I keep seeing old articles from the 90s saying the internet would completely kill off local papers by 2005, but my town's paper is still printing 3 days a week and has more readers online than ever. Meanwhile big city papers folded fast but the small ones adapted with hyperlocal coverage and paid newsletters. Do you think the prediction was just wrong, or did the industry actually find a workaround that wasnt obvious back then?
I bought a PDF tool in 2022 from some small dev shop because they promised a one time fee and no subscription. Cost me $30 and it worked fine until they shut down the activation server in early 2023 with no warning. Now the program just gives an error and won't open. Has anyone else gotten burned by those too good to be true lifetime deals?