Rant: That Ken Olsen quote about nobody wanting a home computer keeps haunting me

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?

2 comments

2 Comments

blairm4415d ago

Yeah it's not that deep, people miss on predictions all the time.

webb.christopher15d ago

The trick for me was keeping a running list of my OWN predictions and checking them after a few months. I used to get embarrassed when I was wrong but then I realized being wrong just means you learned something new about how things actually work. Writing them down takes the emotion out of it because you see patterns in your own thinking instead of defending a position. Once I started treating predictions like experiments instead of statements about who I am it got WAY easier to just shrug and move on. Now when I miss one I just jot down what I missed and try again next time.