Nice. Is there a handy, pre-compiled list of more
modern examples?
- Tom
--- Eugen Leitl <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> On Mon, Jun 04, 2007 at 03:34:27PM -0700, Tom McCabe
> wrote:
> > "Of those that do, 80% don't believe that
> artificial,
> > human-level intelligence is possible - either
> ever, or
> > for a long, long time."
> >
> > Does this apply to other futuristic technologies,
> like
> > interstellar travel, nanotechnology or genetics? I
> > remember a professor of "nanoengineering"'s
> speech, in
> > which he said that Drexlerian nanomanufacturing is
> > totally impossible, today, tomorrow and forever.
>
> "..so many centuries after the Creation it is
> unlikely that anyone could
> find hitherto unknown lands of any value." -
> committee advising Ferdinand
> and Isabella regarding Columbus' proposal, 1486
>
> "I would sooner believe that two Yankee professors
> lied, than that stones
> fell from the sky" - Thomas Jefferson, 1807 on
> hearing an eyewitness
> report of falling meteorites.
>
> "Drill for oil? You mean drill into the ground to
> try and find oil?
> You're crazy." - Drillers who Edwin L. Drake tried
> to enlist to his
> project to drill for oil in 1859.
>
> "Louis Pasteur's theory of germs is ridiculous
> fiction." - Pierre
> Pachet, Professor of Physiology at Toulouse, 1872
>
> "The abdomen, the chest, and the brain will forever
> be shut from the
> intrusion of the wise and humane surgeon." - Sir
> John Eric Ericksen,
> British surgeon, appointed Surgeon-Extraordinary to
> Queen Victoria
> 1873.
>
> "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'VE HEARD
> ONE REPORT THAT THIS
> QUOTE WAS A HOAX, THE INTERNAL MEMO WAS A RECENT
> FORGERY
>
> "Such startling announcements as these should be
> deprecated as being
> unworthy of science and mischievious to to its true
> progress" - Sir
> William Siemens, 1880, on Edison's announcement of a
> sucessful light bulb.
>
> "We are probably nearing the limit of all we can
> know about astronomy." -
> Simon Newcomb, astronomer, 1888
>
> "Fooling around with alternating current is just a
> waste of time. Nobody
> will use it, ever." - Thomas Edison, 1889
>
> "The more important fundamental laws and facts of
> physical science have
> all been discovered, and these are now so firmly
> established that the
> possibility of their ever being supplanted in
> consequence of new
> discoveries is exceedingly remote.... Our future
> discoveries must be
> looked for in the sixth place of decimals." -
> physicist Albert. A.
> Michelson, 1894
>
>
> "Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible." -
> Lord Kelvin,
> president, Royal Society, 1895.
>
>
> "It is apparent to me that the possibilities of the
> aeroplane, which two
> or three years ago were thought to hold the solution
> to the [flying
> machine] problem, have been exhausted, and that we
> must turn elsewhere."
> - Thomas Edison, 1895
>
>
> "The demonstration that no possible combination of
> known substances, known
> forms of machinery, and known forms of force can be
> united in a
> practicable machine by which men shall fly for long
> distances through the
> air, seems to the writer as complete as it is
> possible for the
> demonstration of any physical fact to be." -
> astronomer S. Newcomb, 1906
>
>
> "Airplanes are interesting toys but of no military
> value." - Marechal
> Ferdinand Foch, Professor of Strategy, Ecole
> Superieure de Guerre.
>
> "Caterpillar landships are idiotic and useless.
> Those officers and men
> are wasting their time and are not pulling their
> proper weight in the war"
> - Fourth Lord of the British Admiralty, 1915, in
> regards to use of tanks
> in war.
>
> "Professor Goddard does not know the relation
> between action and
> reaction and the need to have something better than
> a vacuum against
> which to react. He seems to lack the basic
> knowledge ladled out daily
> in high schools." - 1921 New York Times editorial
> about Robert
> Goddard's revolutionary rocket work.
>
> "The wireless music box has no imaginable commercial
> value. Who
> would pay for a message sent to nobody in
> particular?" - David
> Sarnoff's associates in response to his urgings for
> investment in the
> radio in the 1920s.
>
> "All a trick." "A Mere Mountebank." "Absolute
> swindler." "Doesn't know
> what he's about." "What's the good of it?" "What
> useful purpose will it
> serve?" - Members of Britain's Royal Society, 1926,
> after a demonstration
> of television.
>
> "This foolish idea of shooting at the moon is an
> example of the absurd
> lengths to which vicious specialisation will carry
> scientists."
> -A.W. Bickerton, physicist, NZ, 1926
>
> "Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?" - H.M.
> Warner, Warner
> Brothers, 1927.
>
> "Stocks have reached what looks like a permanently
> high plateau." -
> Irving Fisher, Professor of Economics, Yale
> University, 1929.
>
> "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
>
> "The energy produced by the atom is a very poor kind
> of thing. Anyone who
> expects a source of power from the transformation of
> these atoms is
> talking moonshine" - Ernst Rutherford, 1933
>
> "The whole procedure [of shooting rockets into
> space]...presents
> difficulties of so fundamental a nature, that we are
> forced to dismiss the
> notion as essentially impracticable, in spite of the
> author's insistent
> appeal to put aside prejudice and to recollect the
> supposed impossibility
> of heavier-than-air flight before it was actually
> accomplished." Richard
> van der Riet Wooley, British astronomer, reviewing
> P.E. Cleator's "Rockets
> in Space", Nature, March 14, 1936
>
> "Space travel is utter bilge!" -Sir Richard Van Der
> Riet Wolley, astronomer
>
> "I think there is a world market for maybe five
> computers." - Thomas
> Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943
> [ debunked in "The Maverick and His Machine"]
>
> "Computers in the future may weigh no more than 1.5
> tons." - Popular
> Mechanics, forecasting the relentless march of
> science, 1949
>
=== message truncated ===
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