Sipsey Street Irregulars: The half-life of predictions.

Wednesday, October 9, 2013

The half-life of predictions.

As you know, I'm using my insomniac hours and cleaning up the library/office and donating some of my papers to the Birmingham Public Library Archives Division. I found a copy of the 15 January 1910 issue of The Literary Digest among my father's stuff that I got after he died. In an article, "Doubts About the Practicality of the Aeroplane":

"Our skepticism is only as to the utilitarian value of any present or possible achievement of the aeroplane. We do not believe it will ever be a commercial vehicle at all. We do not believe it will find any very large place in the world of sport. We do not believe its military importance is as great as is commonly supposed, or will extend (except accidentally) beyond the range of scouting and courier service."

6 comments:

Anonymous said...: That was a reasonable observation for the day, given the level of technology they had. Heck, back in the 1950's, the CEO of IBM said that in the future, the world would only need 4 or 5 computers.; October 9, 2013 at 9:32 AM
Anonymous said...: Apparently about a year...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aviation_in_World_War_I

In 1911, Captain Bertram Dickson predicted the military use of (fixed-wing) aircraft and the ensuing development and escalation of aerial combat

:-)

RSR; October 9, 2013 at 10:31 AM
Anonymous said...: Some people see the future better than others.....

Merle; October 9, 2013 at 10:37 AM
Anonymous said...: “It's tough to make predictions, especially about the future.” ― Yogi Berra; October 9, 2013 at 2:49 PM
Ed said...: Predictions on any topic could be spot on, completely off, or anywhere between the two extremes. The hindsight enjoyed by historical perspective deludes us into thinking that the sources of these predictions are somehow "smarter" for generating the more correct predictions, which may not be true. There is a proverb that "generals always prepare for the last war", as what has worked in the past is what they can study and know best. The proverb acknowledges that we have little ability to accurately predict the future, yet we insist on somehow being prepared for it. We should instead acknowledge that we cannot accurately predict the future and concentrate on developing the ability to quickly adapt to a rapidly changing situation. 0leo; October 9, 2013 at 3:20 PM
Roger J said...: When I was growing up, we had a copy of a 1960 Kiplinger's that confidently predicted that, by 1980, the average American would commute by personal chopper, making traffic jams a thing of the past but not, presumably, mid-air collisions. The writer utterly failed to predict the personal computer, but so did most of us. The future is never what we think it will be.; October 9, 2013 at 5:32 PM

"Progress made under the shadow of the policeman's club is false progress."

I believe that liberty is the only genuinely valuable thing that men have invented, at least in the field of government, in a thousand years. I believe that it is better to be free than to be not free, even when the former is dangerous and the latter safe. I believe that the finest qualities of man can flourish only in free air – that progress made under the shadow of the policeman's club is false progress, and of no permanent value. I believe that any man who takes the liberty of another into his keeping is bound to become a tyrant, and that any man who yields up his liberty, in however slight the measure, is bound to become a slave. -- H.L. Mencken

"The Fate of Unborn Millions. . ."

"The time is now near at hand which must probably determine, whether Americans are to be, Freemen, or Slaves; whether they are to have any property they can call their own; whether their Houses, and Farms, are to be pillaged and destroyed, and they consigned to a State of Wretchedness from which no human efforts will probably deliver them. The fate of unborn Millions will now depend, under God, on the Courage and Conduct of this army-Our cruel and unrelenting Enemy leaves us no choice but a brave resistance, or the most abject submission; that is all we can expect-We have therefore to resolve to conquer or die." -- George Washington to his troops before the Battle of Long Island.

"We will not go gently . . ."

This is no small thing, to restore a republic after it has fallen into corruption. I have studied history for years and I cannot recall it ever happening. It may be that our task is impossible. Yet, if we do not try then how will we know it can't be done? And if we do not try, it most certainly won't be done. The Founders' Republic, and the larger war for western civilization, will be lost.

But I tell you this: We will not go gently into that bloody collectivist good night. Indeed, we will make with our defiance such a sound as ALL history from that day forward will be forced to note, even if they despise us in the writing of it.

And when we are gone, the scattered, free survivors hiding in the ruins of our once-great republic will sing of our deeds in forbidden songs, tending the flickering flame of individual liberty until it bursts forth again, as it must, generations later. We will live forever, like the Spartans at Thermopylae, in sacred memory.

-- Mike Vanderboegh, The Lessons of Mumbai:Death Cults, the "Socialism of Imbeciles" and Refusing to Submit, 1 December 2008

"A common language of resistance . . ."

"Colonial rebellions throughout the modern world have been acts of shared political imagination. Unless unhappy people develop the capacity to trust other unhappy people, protest remains a local affair easily silenced by traditional authority. Usually, however, a moment arrives when large numbers of men and women realize for the first time that they enjoy the support of strangers, ordinary people much like themselves who happen to live in distant places and whom under normal circumstances they would never meet. It is an intoxicating discovery. A common language of resistance suddenly opens to those who are most vulnerable to painful retribution the possibility of creating a new community. As the conviction of solidarity grows, parochial issues and aspirations merge imperceptibly with a compelling national agenda which only a short time before may have been the dream of only a few. For many Americans colonists this moment occurred late in the spring of 1774." -- T.H. Breen, The Marketplace of Revolution: How Consumer Politics Shaped American Independence, Oxford University Press, 2004, p.1.

Sipsey Street Irregulars

Wednesday, October 9, 2013

The half-life of predictions.

6 comments:

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