Mark Gero
IEOR 190G
Assignment 4A
February 16, 2015

Here are my top 5 bad predictions out of the list of 25. The basic criteria I used was in looking at the effect of the technology that the person underestimated. So the technologies that have had the greatest effects and the worst predictions will be on this list.

1) "This 'telephone' has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication. The device is inherently of no value to us." – Western Union internal memo, 1876

I think this is one of the worst predictions because this encompasses both mobile and stationary telephones. Even if mobile phones had never been invented, stationary phones have changed the world immensely and have been vital to both business and personal situations world wide.

Keeping mobile phones in mind and the effect that they have had on our culture, society, and way of life it is hard imagine a world without them.

2) "I think there is a world market for maybe five computers." – Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943

This comment clearly came from a place that could never fully understand the potential of this technology. In his defense, at this time computers were massive and could realistically do comparably very little to what they can do now.

Computers are essential in our everyday lives and more importantly have completely revolutionized so much of our industrial and business world that it is hard to imagine our economy without computers.

3) "Everyone acquainted with the subject will recognize it as a conspicuous failure."– -Henry Morton, president of the Stevens Institute of Technology, on Edison's light bulb, 1880

This is one of the world predictions I have ever heard in my life. It is hard for me to imagine a world that was simply lit by sun during the day and candles during the night. In this world, when an invention that would revolutionize lighting and thus everything attached to it, how can one underestimate its importance. Lighting completey changes the way people can live their lives and the way companies can operate.

4)"No one will pay good money to get from Berlin to Potsdam in one hour when he can ride his horse there in one day for free." – King William I of Prussia, on trains, 1864

I picked this one because I think of all of them it is the most correct using the assumptions of the time, and possibly the least correct given the cultural norms of today. Back in the mid 1800s and earlier everything moved slower and time was not valued as it is today. A letter could take months to reach its destination and everyone simply accepted this as truth. I todays society time is everything, and if one is able to save an extra second it is worth  a great deal. King William I simply did not understand or forsee this paradigm shift in society.

5No, it will make war impossible." – -Hiram Maxim, inventor of the machine gun, in response to the question "Will this gun not make war more terrible?" from Havelock Ellis, an English scientist, 1893

I thought this one was particulary interesting because people say the same thing about nuclear weapons and how they make war impossible. The simple truth is that humans will always quarrel with one another, and however much destructive power can be harnessed, people will always find ways to kill one another over the same issues that they have been fighting over for centuries.