Predictions

Predicting about the future is a risky business. There are bright chances of you eating your own words! If there's something we Pakistanis hate more than Talibans, George Bush and India, it's being wrong. Many of you might have heard about Charles H Duell, the commissioner of the US Patent Office back in 1899, who said that "Everything that can be invented has been invented". Now those were old times. But even as late as 1977, just before personal computing age took a headlong, point-break dive into free-fall speeds, the president of Digital Equipment Corp. said "There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home."

Lets take a look back at some of the predictions, speculations and just plain bad judgement that led to the spectacular failures by the companies that turned down multi-billion dollar opportunities.

Who was the first one to make the personal computer as we know it anyway? IBM, you say? NO. Then perhaps you might guess the ever appetising Apple? Wrong again. It was Xerox.
After a decade of research and development in the deep, dark, dungeons of Xerox's Palo Alto Research centre, a new product was demonstrated to the photo-copying giant's upper-management in 1977. The machine featured a bitmapped screen with wacky windows and drop-down menus, a more or less conventional keyboard accompanied by a strange little rolling thing called a "mouse", a built-in hard drve, a software package that included a word processor, the first onboard Ethernet and the best of all, early email capabilities. This machine was obviously the coolest thing since disco. But the top brass of Xerox didnt see a profit in it. Xerox did their best to mismanage the entire initiative until the key innovators had left the company and Xerox had securely and effectively relieved themselves of the hassles of making a few trillions dollars.

We all know that the petroleum, we use for our cars, comes to us after passing through a lot of processes, and Drilling is one of them. But you know what did the associates of Edwin L Drake said when he suggested to drill for oil back in 1850?
They said, "Drill for oil? You mean drill into the ground to try and find oil? You’re crazy!"
They must be crying up there in heaven (or hell) for saying such a stupid thing.

Microsoft, as you all know (unless you are a cave-dweller) also has their share of short-sighted speculations. Bill Gates himself is reported to have said in 1981, "640K ought to be enough for anybody". Although now he vehemently denies it.
Another one from Bill Gates, he said this in 2003, "These Google guys, they want to be billionaires and rock stars and go to conferences and all that. Let us see if they still want to run the business in two to three years". Now, in 2009, Google is the one of the biggest challengers to Microsoft's dominance in Computer world.

Off course, its impossible to list all the faulty speculations and short-sightedness of these trend setters. But the interesting thing about the failures, that formed the world as we know it, is that most of them led to further innovations and great achievements. Humans, as it turns out, often learn from their mistakes. Besides, as the great Yogi Berra said "Its hard to make predictions-especially about the future."