Everything you now use on a daily basis, that seems common, was once ridiculed as “impossible” by a REALLY smart person….
Don’t believe me?
Let’s do this.
(as you read these, try to internalize the POINT of this exercise… -> people are STILL doing this today. All game-changing technology is ALWAYS underestimated, even right before its breakthrough, EVEN by the people that should know better…)
1) 1902 - Flying? Yeah right.
“Flight by machines heavier than air is unpractical and insignificant, if not utterly impossible.” - Simon Newcomb, Canadian-American astronomer and mathematician, 18 months before the Wright Brothers’ flew at Kittyhawk.
2) 1903 - Cars? Nah.
“The horse is here to stay, but the automobile is only a novelty, a fad.” - President of the Michigan Savings Bank to Henry Ford’s Lawyer.
3) 1916 - Movies? NO WAY.
“The cinema is little more than a fad. It’s canned drama. What audiences really want to see is flesh and blood on the stage.” - Charlie Chaplin - World Famous Actor, Producer, Director, and Studio Founder
4) 1927 - Movies with SOUND? Get outta town.
“Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?” - H.M. Warner, co-founder of Warner Brothers.
5) 1946 - TV? No way that lasts…
“Television won’t last because people will soon get tired of staring at a plywood box every night.” - Darryl Zanuck, movie producer, 20th Century Fox.
6) 1995 - Internet collapse.
"I predict the Internet will soon go spectacularly supernova and in 1996 catastrophically collapse." - Robert Metcalfe (the inventor of Ethernet)
7) 2003 - Subscription music will never work.
The subscription model of buying music is bankrupt. I think you could make available the Second Coming in a subscription model, and it might not be successful.”— Steve Jobs, in Rolling Stone
8) 2007 - iPhone? Piece of crap!
“There’s no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share.”— Steve Ballmer, Microsoft CEO.
You guys get the idea right?
What do all of these have in common?
A) They were horribly wrong in their predictions.
B) The predictions centered around some sort of EXPONENTIAL TECHNOLOGY.
For instance, Airplanes exponentially changed the way the World functions. Military, transportation, commerce, etc.
C) The people that were wrong were usually experts in their fields and it still didn’t matter.
So what do we do with this information?
Here’s how I see it…
Don’t assume that an expert in one area is already an expert in another. For instance, Charlie Chaplin went on to become one of the most famous MOVIE actors of all time. But he said it would never work. Sometimes the best people get so focused on what they are currently doing that they miss what’s right in front of them.
Get a variety of opinions. Of course there will always be naysayers, but for everything listed above there were also dreamers, who knew the truth. Often, the truth was not conveyed by traditional “experts”.
Break it down to first principles. This deserves a letter of its own, but basically it means, break down a concept to its CORE, what is actually possible. For instance, the people that thought flight was impossible, were not thinking in first principles. First principles would say that as long as you generate enough lift, theoretically, ANYTHING can fly.
Stay informed, keep studying. Don’t be afraid to change your mind. The smartest people in the World have been wrong so many times it’s crazy! Steve Jobs thought Apple Music would fail! And here we are.
If you enjoyed this letter, I would REALLY appreciate it if you would share it and subscribe.
For a limited time I’m offering it FREE for 30 days, if you end up not liking it I won’t charge you a penny :)
Here’s a few more super bad predictions as a bonus, haha!
“Fooling around with alternating current is just a waste of time. Nobody will use it, ever.” — Thomas Edison, 1889.
“There is not the slightest indication that nuclear energy will ever be obtainable. It would mean that the atom would have to be shattered at will.” — Albert Einstein, 1932
“I must confess that my imagination refuses to see any sort of submarine doing anything but suffocating its crew and floundering at sea.” — HG Wells, 1901.
“To place a man in a multi-stage rocket and project him into the controlling gravitational field of the moon where the passengers can make scientific observations, perhaps land alive, and then return to earth – all that constitutes a wild dream worthy of Jules Verne. I am bold enough to say that such a man-made voyage will never occur regardless of all future advances.” — Lee DeForest, 1926
"There's just not that many videos I want to watch." — Steve Chen, CTO and Co-founder of YouTube, 2005.
See you subscribers tomorrow!
Thanks for reading and sharing!
Kale
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