-----Original Message-----
From: Keith Hudson [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Saturday, February 11, 2006 3:22 AM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: (SAPIENTIA) Daily Wsidom (146)
DAILY WISDOM
(146)From: Keith Hudson [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Saturday, February 11, 2006 3:22 AM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: (SAPIENTIA) Daily Wsidom (146)
Saturday is the day for letting go a little and the day for David Milsted's Dictionary of Regrettable Quotations. The random page opened on page 201 on which there are quotations telling us that telegraphy, the telephone and television will never happen. All these underline the general tendency of negative forecasts -- they are nearly always wrong. The classic negative forecast of them all in my opinion was that of the world-famous scientist, Lord Kelvin, who said just before he died in 1907: "There is nothing more to be discovered in physics, only a few grey areas to be cleared up." Since then, of course, the stable world of Newtonian physics has been entirely overturned with the advent of both Relativity Theory and Quantum Theory! Anyway, from page 201 I've selected "Television" and I've decided to quote three forecasts made about it -- they are so, so wrong! But before I re-quote these, what can be said with hindsight of half a century of television? I suppose what can be said is that, alongside the radio and the motor car, television has been the greatest destroyer of community in the whole history of mankind. Community has largely disappeared now for a large segment of the population who do not motor back and forth to specialised hobby-communities. Our genetic need for a group to belong to is very strong but, unfortunately, the more that politicians prate about the "local community" the less evident it is becoming in these modern times and the more we will see bunches of adolescent males with little education and no jobs making hell-holes of the "communities" in which they live. But, let me get on with the today's quotes:
"For God's sake, go down to Reception and get rid of a lunatic who's down there. He says he's got a machine for seeing by wireless! Watch him -- he may have a razor on him."
The Editor of the Daily Express sends someone to deal with John Logie Baird in 1925.
"While theoretically and technically, television may be feasible, commercially and financially I consider it an impossibility, a development of which we need waste little time dreaming."
USA radio pioneer Lee DeForest, interviewed in the New York Times, 1926.
"Television won't matter in your lifetime or mine."
Rex Lambert, Editor of the Radio Times, 1936.
Keith Hudson, Bath, England, <www.evolutionary-economics.org>
No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Anti-Virus. Version: 7.1.375 / Virus Database: 267.15.5/256 - Release Date: 10/02/2006
_______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [email protected] http://fes.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
