PREDICTIONS

TAKING A CHANCE SOME FAMOUS PREDICTIONS AND THEIR FATE

H I TS


LIFE AUTOMATIC | In 1911, Thomas Edison predicted in an interview to Cosmopolitan magazine that machines "will make the parts of things and put them together, instead of merely making the parts of things for human hands to put together". As we know today, most industrial processes are mechanised. And we have robots that do/assist complex surgeries or pour us a drink
EYE SPY | In 1984, George Orwell wrote about "big brother" who is watching the protagonist Winston all the time. His iconic book imagined a life where hapless people were constantly monitored on telescreens. Orwell's dystopian tale came true and there are now an estimated four million cameras in the UK alone
EARTH'S SHADOW | In the Feb edition of Wireless World magazine in 1945, science fiction writer Arthur C Clarke made one of the most relevant and important predictions of our times - the creation of geostationary satellites to aid communication. The first such satellite was launched into the earth's orbit 20 years later on April 6, 1965
THE TUBE GENERATION
Another science
braveheart,
Aldous Huxley,
predicted the technology to make test tube babies 46 years before the birth of the world's first IVF baby, Louise Brown. In Brave New World, Huxley wrote about a world where the children are created from machines, where their genes can be perfected and the nutrition controlled. While a glass tube or petri dish has replaced the ovary where the egg is formed, mankind still hasn't found a mechanical replacement for the womb
PLASTIC GREED
In 1888 an American college dropout Edward Bellamy's Looking Backwards was published. The book talked of a socialist utopian world in the year 2000 where people could carry out cashless transactions with the help of a credit card. Bellamy is considered the first person to have come up with the idea of a credit card. His idea became a reality in the US in 1920s when a credit card was used to sell fuel to car owners. India has around 18.04 million credit cards and 2,27.85 million-debit card users as per RBI data of 2010-11

MISSES

WHO NEEDS COMPUTERS?
"I think there is a world market for maybe
five computers." These were the words of Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943. For maybe ten years his prediction stood true but by the 1980s with the advent of personal computers Watson's words rang hollow. At present there are more than 1 billion PCs in use worldwide and the figure will go up to 2bn by 2014 (Gartner, the world's leading technology researchers)
Y2K BUG | Computers in Crisis by Jerome and Marilyn Murray, published in 1984 first tackled the year 2000 problem. Since computers store the four digit date as the last two digits, therefore, it was feared that when the clocks strike 01.01.2000 comps would go crazy and crash. The media and politicians latched on to this digi-doomsday prediction and further fed the fears of a political and economic breakdown. The scare spawned a mini-publishing industry of Millenium Bug books that discussed the possible ways to avoid such a colossal collapse of
digital infrastructure. There's even a The Y2K Survival Guide and Cookbook listing how to grow food and cook it in case of a catastrophe like Y2K. Of course, no one wanted it after 01.01.00 when the world woke up as usual with everything in place
ONLY BIRDS CAN FLY
Lord Kevin was a British mathematician and engineer who formulated the first and second laws of thermodynamics and also discovered that there can be sub-zero temperatures. Yet, this brilliant scientist got it wrong on at least one count. In 1896 when Britain's Aeronatutical Society invited him to be a member he wrote an arrogant letter stating: "I have not the smallest molecule of faith in aerial navigation other than ballooning or of expectation of good results from any of the trials we hear of." The Wright Brothers flew the first airplane in 1903

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