It was not so long ago that walking along the streets was an exercise in olfactory sensitivity. Mankind's only source of transport was via horse and horse emissions were kinda crap. The doomsayers, the "it will never work" camp were up in arms when Henry Ford got going with his "You can have it in any colour so long as it's black" campaign to sell cars to every man and his dog. Somehow - the farmers, the saddle makers, the cart creators, the crap sweepers, the feed merchants, the leather goods makers and all the other merry people that made a living off of equine transport survived. A little bit of skills training and the former crappy jobs turned into the "American Dream". “The horse is here to stay but the automobile is only a novelty – a fad.” reportedly said by the President of the Michigan Savings Bank advising Henry Ford’s lawyer, Horace Rackham, not to invest in the Ford Motor Company. Chart the progress through the years - with every introduction of new technology one always got the early adopters, the enthusiasts, the looneys the passionate advocates, the doomsayers, the naysayers. As each technology matured the most compelling reason for mass adoption reared it's head - cheaper, more pervasive and better. Woe is the 'sage' who predicted that the European market for computers was only for 3 machines. Professor Douglas Hartree, in 1951, said that, in his opinion, all the calculations that would ever be needed in this England could be done on the three digital computers which were then being built - one in Cambridge, one in Teddington, and one in Manchester. No one else, he said, would ever need machines of their own, or would be able to afford to buy them. Woe is the sage who predicted; "Well informed people know it is impossible to transmit the voice over wires..." Half right I suppose as we now transport voice through air as well. Poor Lord Kelvin is on record saying; "Radio has no future." Quick, someone tell Algoa FM! Woe to the people that continue to believe that Port Elizabeth IS the Windiest City in South Africa. Charlie Chaplin once said; "The cinema is little more than a fad. It's canned drama. What audiences really want to see is flesh and blood on the stage." Bill Gates, at the World Economic Forum in 2004 put his foot firmly in it when he said; "Two years from now, spam will be solved." Which just goes … [Read more...]
