Was cleaning out my dad's garage last weekend in Denver. Found a stack of old Wired magazines. One article from 1995 said flying cars would be everywhere by 2010 and the biggest problem would be traffic jams in the sky. We can barely get self-driving cars to work on flat roads. Nobody thought about how loud and dangerous flying cars would be. Anyone else find old predictions that aged this badly?
I remember finding that old PC Magazine prediction in a box of magazines at my uncle's house last summer, and it's wild how they thought open-source community chaos could ever beat Microsoft's corporate machine back then, has anyone else dug up a hilariously bad OS prediction?
I was looking through some old trade magazines from the 80s and found an article saying by the year 2000, homes would have self-diagnosing wiring that would make electricians irrelevant. Well here I am in 2024 running new circuits for someone's 4th home office. But I did change how I price jobs after a customer laughed at my estimate and told me I was stuck in 1995 with my rates. Now I actually look at current material costs before quoting instead of guessing. Has anyone else had an old prediction that made them change a business habit?
I was digging through some old tech magazines at a thrift store in Portland last weekend and found a 1975 issue claiming we'd be completely paperless by 1995. I work in an office and we still print out 500 pages a week just for meeting agendas... has anyone else's workplace actually cut down on paper?
I dragged that heavy thing out of my parents' basement last weekend to play some retro games and the picture was just so warm and natural. My $600 gaming monitor from Best Buy keeps washing out blacks and making skin tones look plastic. Anyone else got an old tech relic that still outshines the modern replacement?
I was cleaning out my old bookmarks last night and found a CNET article from December 2007 that said by 2015, over 80% of Americans would be walking around with internet connected glasses. We barely even got smartwatches to stick, and most people I know still just use their phones. Even Google Glass came and went in like 2 years, and now we're all just back to staring down at our screens. Anybody else remember those wild predictions about wearable computing taking over?
I keep seeing old articles from the 90s saying the internet would completely kill off local papers by 2005, but my town's paper is still printing 3 days a week and has more readers online than ever. Meanwhile big city papers folded fast but the small ones adapted with hyperlocal coverage and paid newsletters. Do you think the prediction was just wrong, or did the industry actually find a workaround that wasnt obvious back then?
I bought a PDF tool in 2022 from some small dev shop because they promised a one time fee and no subscription. Cost me $30 and it worked fine until they shut down the activation server in early 2023 with no warning. Now the program just gives an error and won't open. Has anyone else gotten burned by those too good to be true lifetime deals?
I was working at my uncle's hardware store back in 1999 when this big article came out predicting online shopping would wipe out places like ours within 5 years. People would just order a hammer or a light switch from their computer and get it delivered same day. Well here we are 25 years later and I still see the same faces on Saturday mornings buying lumber and asking me which pipe threader works best. The internet didn't kill us because you can't hold a screwdriver through a screen. Has anyone else seen old predictions about your trade that just never panned out?
I was working on a web scraper for a client project last week and kept getting a weird error when parsing dates. After 12 hours of checking regex, libraries, and timezone settings, I finally posted the code on a forum. Someone pointed out I was passing the wrong variable name to the date function. Fixed it in under 2 minutes. Has anyone else spent way too long on something that simple?
I was cleaning out a box of old computer magazines from my parents' attic in Cleveland and found a 2003 PC World article saying streaming video was a doomed fad because nobody had the bandwidth. The guy literally wrote "people will never want to watch grainy, choppy video on a monitor when they have a TV." Makes me wonder what current tech we're all laughing at that'll be totally normal in 20 years.
I was at a cafe in Portland last Tuesday getting some work done and this barista noticed my tablet. He said he's been keeping all his recipes in a plain Moleskine for 5 years because every notes app he tried either shutdown or got bought out. Made me think about all the old Palm Pilot data I lost back in 2004 that I still wish I had. Has anyone else had a old digital project get erased by a company going under?
My buddy was at an Apple keynote in 2010 and came back 100% sure printed books were dead within 5 years. He claimed every college would go digital by 2013 and paper would be obsolete. I just found a picture of his iPad 2 from 2012 with a cracked screen and a stack of actual textbooks next to it. We talked about it last week and he laughed because his kid still uses a $40 used physics book from 2019. The only thing that really died was his iPad battery after 2 years. Anyone else remember those early 2010s predictions that never panned out?
I was digging through some old tech magazines last weekend and found a 2005 Forbes piece where an analyst said the iPod would never last because 'people don't want to carry their whole music library in their pocket.' My buddy and I still laugh about it every time we see someone streaming on their phone. Makes me wonder what current hot tech is going to look stupid in 20 years, you know?
Was cleaning out my dad's basement and stumbled on a PC Magazine from '99 that said we'd all be living in 3D-printed homes by 2005. I just spent $200 on lumber for a tiny shed, so clearly that prediction aged like milk. Anyone else find old tech mags that missed the mark by a mile?
I was cleaning out my dad's old office last Tuesday and found a 2007 tech magazine predicting we'd all ditch physical keyboards for touchscreens within 5 years. They swore haptic feedback would feel just like real keys, but I still fat-finger half my texts on this glass slab. Meanwhile my buddy refuses to upgrade from his Blackberry because he says buttons just work. Does anyone else still miss typing on a real keyboard?
I was cleaning out my garage last weekend and found a stack of old tech magazines from the late 90s. One had a bold prediction for 2025 - flying cars everywhere, traffic jams in the sky. Meanwhile I'm sitting in my driveway watching a neighbor try to parallel park a Honda Civic for 10 minutes. Not a single flying car in sight, but we do have smart fridges that tell us when we're out of milk. Anyone else find old predictions that make you laugh at how wrong they were?
I was cleaning out my grandad's old office and found a 1977 newspaper clipping where Ken Olsen (DEC's founder) said there's no reason for anyone to have a computer at home. I started thinking about how my 12 year old nephew just built his own gaming PC and uses it for school, games, and chatting with friends. It took me about 45 years for that prediction to look ridiculous. Has anyone else dug up old tech quotes that aged like milk?
I found it in my mom's basement last weekend and it even had a diagram of a personal hovercraft parking garage, which just made me laugh because I spent yesterday morning scraping gum off a bus seat in Atlanta traffic.
I was cleaning out my dad's basement last month and found a stack of old tech magazines from the late 90s. One had this bold prediction that DVD players would make theaters obsolete by 2005 because nobody would pay $8 for a ticket when they could watch at home. But here we are in 2024 and I just paid $18 to see Dune 2 in a packed theater last weekend. The guy also claimed we'd all be watching movies on 13 inch laptop screens instead of TVs. Has anyone else stumbled across predictions that just completely missed how people actually behave?
I was cleaning out my dad's attic last weekend and found a stack of old tech magazines from the late 90s. There was this article from a 'futurist' claiming that by 2005 nobody would send physical mail anymore because email would take over everything. But here I am in 2024 still getting junk mail every single day and Christmas cards from my aunt in Ohio. I even got a package delivered yesterday from Amazon... how did that email prediction miss so hard. Anyone else got some ancient tech predictions they've stumbled across recently?
Spent months reading reviews that said mirrorless was the future and DSLRs were dead. Borrowed a buddy's Nikon D600 for a weekend shoot at the local park and got sharper shots than my phone could dream of. Anyone else stick with older gear after ignoring the hype?
I bought this thing from a Kickstarter campaign back in 2021, one of those sensor lid cans that ties the bag for you. It worked okay for like a month but then the motor started grinding on wet coffee filters and now it just sits there blinking red. I think these internet of things gadgets are a total scam for kitchen stuff but my buddy says his fancy can has lasted 3 years without issues. Has anyone else got burned on a smart home appliance that promised way more than it delivered?
I dropped $300 on a TI-84 Plus CE for my daughter's algebra class two years ago. Now she just uses a free app called Desmos on her phone and it works better. Anyone else regret buying one of these after smartphones made them obsolete?
So this guy I used to work with back in 2018 told me I should never trust cloud storage for anything important. He said it was a fad and everyone would be back to external drives within 5 years. I actually listened to him and kept all my business photos on a couple of hard drives. Fast forward to last month when one of those drives just clicked and died. Lost about 3 years of client work. My buddy is still using Google Drive with zero issues. Has anyone else had some old timer give you advice that sounded smart but was actually terrible?