History's boldest predictions, aged to perfection.

The Prophets Were Wrong (Mostly)

History's boldest predictions, aged to perfection.

Latest Articles

Confidence Aged Like Milk: The Brilliant Minds Who Bet Against the Internet in 1995
Tech & Internet Culture

Confidence Aged Like Milk: The Brilliant Minds Who Bet Against the Internet in 1995

In 1995, some of America's sharpest CEOs, journalists, and academics looked at the World Wide Web and saw absolutely nothing worth worrying about. We found their quotes, dusted them off, and built a scoring system to rank exactly how wrong they were. Spoiler: several of them later ran companies that would have ceased to exist without the thing they mocked.
The Man Who Predicted the Future in 1900 — And Somehow Got Strawberries Wrong But Smartphones Right
Tech & Internet Culture

The Man Who Predicted the Future in 1900 — And Somehow Got Strawberries Wrong But Smartphones Right

In 1900, a civil engineer named John Elfreth Watkins Jr. sat down and wrote a list of predictions for what life would look like in the year 2000. Some of them were visionary. Some were completely unhinged. And one of them — one glorious, eerily specific one — should have made the man a household name.
They Said the Office Would Be Dead by 1985. They Were Just 35 Years and One Pandemic Early.
Tech & Internet Culture

They Said the Office Would Be Dead by 1985. They Were Just 35 Years and One Pandemic Early.

Somewhere in a filing cabinet that nobody has opened since 1987, there are think tank reports confidently declaring that the traditional American office would be obsolete by the mid-1980s. They were wrong, of course. Or were they just catastrophically, almost impressively, early? COVID-19 may have just retroactively vindicated a generation of futurists who severely underestimated the gravitational pull of the office parking lot.
Experts Said Americans Would Never Do These 15 Things. Americans Did All 15 Things.
Tech & Internet Culture

Experts Said Americans Would Never Do These 15 Things. Americans Did All 15 Things.

Throughout history, a parade of confident experts, industry analysts, and very serious journalists have declared certain behaviors categorically un-American. Paying for water. Talking to a cylinder on your kitchen counter. Letting a computer handle your money. Every single time, Americans looked at the expert consensus and said: hold my (expensive bottled) beer.
The Man Who Looked at the Early Internet and Said 'Nah' — And Wasn't Entirely Wrong
Tech & Internet Culture

The Man Who Looked at the Early Internet and Said 'Nah' — And Wasn't Entirely Wrong

In 1995, astronomer Clifford Stoll published a Newsweek column confidently explaining why the internet would never replace real commerce, real community, or real anything. He was spectacularly wrong. The uncomfortable part? His reasoning was almost coherent.
The 20-Year Curse: How Flying Cars Have Been 'Almost Here' Since Your Grandfather Was in Diapers
Tech & Internet Culture

The 20-Year Curse: How Flying Cars Have Been 'Almost Here' Since Your Grandfather Was in Diapers

For eight consecutive decades, engineers, investors, and magazine editors have solemnly promised that flying cars are just twenty years away. Mathematically speaking, that means they were due in 1945. We're still waiting. Chester Wrongwright investigates humanity's most stubborn, most expensive, and most aeronautically challenged broken promise.
Herman Kahn Saw the Future Coming — He Just Didn't See the Bill
Tech & Internet Culture

Herman Kahn Saw the Future Coming — He Just Didn't See the Bill

In 1967, RAND Corporation analyst Herman Kahn mapped out the technological landscape of the year 2000 with uncanny accuracy — lasers fixing your eyeballs, satellites beaming TV into your living room, shopping from a screen in your kitchen. The one thing he got catastrophically, almost insultingly wrong? He thought all that technology would give Americans more time off. Bless his heart.
Tech & Internet Culture

Digg, Reddit, and the Greatest Self-Inflicted Wound in Internet History

Once the undisputed king of social news, Digg managed to fumble its throne so spectacularly that it became a cautionary tale taught in business schools. Here's the full, gloriously messy story of how one website rose to the top of the internet, handed everything to a competitor on a silver platter, and then spent the next decade trying to remember what it was good at.