Technologizer

Here’s a 1960 Paramount cartoon about future tech that predicts the Roomba and Skype–and therefore reminds me of the eerily accurate/hilariously off-base 1940s whiskey-ad predictions I discovered a couple of months back.

(Via Jerry Beck at Cartoon Brew)

A month ago, before any of us knew anything for sure about Apple’s tablet, I looked back at the period before any of us knew anything for sure about Apple’s phone. It turned out that about 95% of the speculation and rumors about the iPhone had nothing to do with the device that Apple actually announced at Macworld Expo in January of 2007.

Now that we know quite a bit about the iPad, a massive rush to judgment is already underway, with pundits predicting everything from historic success to epic failure. Which led me to wonder: How accurate were the first predictions that got made about the iPhone’s fate? So I went back and read scads of stories from the first couple of weeks after the phone’s announcement.

Overall, they weren’t bad. Lots of pundits said it was a landmark product with the potential to transform the phone business. But there were plenty of dissenting opinions, too. This article is devoted to them.

I’m not dredging up these stories to mock anyone. For one thing, some of them make reasonable arguments about the original iPhone’s limitations; it’s just that the phone managed to thrive despite them. For another, I thought that famous flop the G4 Cube would be an influential hit, and am therefore in no position to taunt anyone for making inaccurate forecasts about Apple products. I’m doing this because I think reviewing iPhone predictions is a useful exercise as we think about the future of the iPad.

Continue reading this story…

“The best way to predict the future is to invent it.” So said legendary tech visionary Alan Kay. He was absolutely correct. But he might have added that inventing the future is anything but a cakewalk. Even though everyone who does it has the luxury of learning from predecessors who tried and failed.

The brightest inventors on the planet keep coming up with ideas that never amount to much–even when they set out to solve real problems, and even when their brainchildren foreshadow later breakthroughs. And professional tech watchers have long proven themselves prone to getting irrationally exuberant about stuff that just isn’t ready for prime time.

Thanks to Google Books’ archives of Popular Science, Popular Mechanics, LIFE, and other magazines that frequently reported on futuristic gizmos, we have a readily accessible record of technology that failed to live up to the initial hype–including random notions that never got off the drawing board, startlingly advanced products that didn’t find a market, and very rough drafts of concepts that eventually became a big deal. The best of them are fascinating, even when it’s not the least bit surprising that they flopped.

Herewith, fifteen inventions–not that all of them ever got built–that were at least a decade ahead of their time. They’re in chronological order, starting with the inspiration that gave this article its title.
Continue reading this story…

Last week, I asked you to help me kill time until Apple (probably) announces its tablet by participating in an experiment: a group prediction about its features, name, and price. Nearly three hundred of you pitched in. Here’s part two of the project: aggregating your responses into one big collective guess. (Part three will come once Apple unveils the thing: We’ll go over our prediction and see how we did.)

The predictions are based on your answers to a series of multiple choice questions. In instances where you were allowed to select more than one answer, any answer that more than 51% of you chose counts as a prediction. In cases where you were only allowed to select one answer, the one that received the most votes counts as a prediction, even if it fell short of a true majority.

(There is, of course, nothing the least bit scientific about any of this. But given the lousy track record of professional Apple pundits, I figure it stands at least as good a chance of being accurate as any other method short of finding someone within Apple who knows what he or she is talking about and has very loose lips. )

Continue reading this story…

The world is still busy making technology predictions for 2010. How about some predictions made more than sixty years ago–in magazine ads for hard liquor?

In the mid-1940s, Seagram’s VO Canadian whiskey ads depicted technology miracles which were supposed to arrive in the postwar era. Some did come to change the world, eventually; others, we’re still waiting for. (That’s a TV that prints its own newspapers at right,) In both cases, the art commissioned by Seagram’s is more entertaining today than when these ads first ran.

View Men Who Think Beyond Tomorrow slideshow.

Once again, I’ve cleverly avoided making any predictions for the coming year by asking you to do the job instead. Dozens of you responded to my call for prognostications earlier this month; I enjoyed reading ‘em all and have selected some highlights for this post. (A year from now, we can see how many came true, as we did with last year’s crop.)

First, an announcement: We have a winner for the Olive 4 Hi-Fi Music Server that we offered to tempt you to submit your predictions. We picked Aaron Neyer (whose fearless forecasts you’ll find below) in a random drawing as explained in our original post. Congratulations, Aaron!

The Olive folks, incidentally, have a limited-time special offer that Technologizer readers qualify for: If you buy an Olive 4 by December 31st, they’ll throw in the recent 17-CD set of remastered Beatles albums for free. Here’s a special page to visit if you want to take advantage of the deal.

Okay, end of announcement. Prediction highlights follow after the jump (you can read all the submissions here). Once you’ve read them, feel free to add some last-minute forecasts of your own. And happy 2010!

Continue reading this story…

A year ago, I asked the Technologizer community to make tech predictions for 2009. Lots of you chimed in–and with 2009 wrapping up, it’s time to revisit your forecasts and see whether they were eerily accurate, in the ballpark, or bizarrely off-base. Here we go…

Digital Entertainment

Prediction: “I think what’s going to be the big news story of 2009 is the further personalization of entertainment. Apple has been on the cutting edge of this with such items as the iPod and iTunes, but I see a dark horse coming up that is going to change the game. But mass-communication as we know it is going to begin a steady decline, with people preferring to listen to their own portable video and audio libraries, on their own schedule and terms, and eschewing the old model of “I must be home at 9 pm to watch Desperate Housewives”. Broadcast television, which is already slated to go all-digital in February, is going to soon become as quaint as 78 rpm records.”–Dave Mackey

Continue reading this story…

Want a chance at winning Olive’s cool Olive 4 Hi-Fi Music Server? Or just feeling in a predictive mood? Enter our 2010 tech predictions contest–and do it very soon. It ends at 5pm PT today. We’ll give away the Olive to a lucky prediction-maker, and use the best predictions in an upcoming story.

We’re still seeking your tech-related predictions for the year ahead–and one lucky predictor is going to win Olive’s Olive 4 Hi-Fi Music Server, a cool product and a $1499 value. Head here to make your predictions and enter the contest–it’s easy and fun. Just be sure and do it before this Wednesday, December 16th at 5pm PT, since that’s when the contest closes and we start work on a story based on your 2010 forecasts.

Good grief, it’s almost 2010! For the second year, we’re asking you to make bold predictions about where tech-related products, companies, technologies, and people will go in the coming year–and are offering a prize to encourage your contributions.

This year, the prize is a biggie: It’s Olive’s Olive 4 Hi-Fi Music Server, which lets you convert your entire collection of CDs into high-quality digital form for listening over your stereo or across your network.The Olive has a color touchscreen; a 500GB hard drive and a built-in CD drive; and Wi-Fi, Ethernet, and digital and analog audio outputs. It’s a $1499 value and is provided courtesy of Olive.

Continue reading this story…

Back on December 31st, I asked the Technologizer community to make technology-related predictions for the year ahead. You made scads of them–from ones that seem like sure bets for 2009 to ones that might never come to be. Highlights follow after the jump–thanks to everyone who contributed. Once 2010 rolls around, let’s rate the accuracy of these predictions, then start prognosticating all over again. 

Oh, and we have a winner for the Seagate FreeAgent XTreme external desktop hard drive I promised to give away in a random drawing. It goes to Dave Moyer–congratulations!

Continue reading this story…

Quick reminder: We’re still looking for tech-related predictions for 2009 from members of the Technologizer community. And we’ll give away a cool Seagate 1TB external drive at random to one person who submits a prediction. We need ‘em by 12pm PT on this coming Wednesday, and will compile the best predictions into a story we’ll publish soon thereafter. Full details and a submission form here. Thanks, and hope that 2009 is treating you well so far…

Confession time: I like reading tech predictions, but I don’t much like making them…mainly because I’m just not that good at it. So I’m putting the burden on you guys: I’m rounding up predictions for 2009, and will publish highlights much as we did with our Whaddaya Want? wishlist project. You can guess at cool products and services that we’ll see, corporate mergers that’ll happen, embarrassments that will be suffered by major companies–anything, really, as long as it relates to technology.

How will I induce you to chime in? With a prize, of course. We’ll pick one community member who contributes at random and give that person Seagate’s FreeAgent XTreme external desktop hard drive, a Cadillac of a drive with 1TB of storage and FireWire 400, USB 2.0, and eSata ports. If you’ve got a Mac, you can choose to receive the FreeAgent Desk Mac drive, which is designed for Macs and bundled with OS X software tools, instead. (Prize courtesy of Seagate.)

You can submit predictions until 12pm noon PT on Wednesday, January 7th; we’ll draw a winner and notify that person by midnight on Friday, January 8th.

Please use the handy-dandy form below to submit predictions–more than one is fine, but won’t increase your chances at winning the drive, so just include ‘em all in one message. Please give your real name and be sure to provide a working e-mail address, so we can e-mail you with any good news (if you’re logged into WordPress.com, we’ll get your e-mail automatically). Thanks in advance! And remind me to follow up a year from now to see how well we (er, you) did at guessing what 2009 would bring.

[UPDATE: Submissions are now closed--thanks to all who contributed.]