Can you predict the future?
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Section A
Four failed predictions
1 Everyone’s always asking me when Apple will come out with a cell phone. My answer is,
‘Probably never.’
David Pogue, technology writer for The New York Times, 2006
2 Talking films are a very interesting invention, but I do not believe they will remain long in fashion.
Louis-Jean Lumière, inventor of the cinematograph, 1929
3 By 2005 or so, it will become clear that the internet’s impact on the economy has been
no greater than the fax machine’s.
Paul Krugman, economist, 1998
4 There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home.
Ken Olson, president, chairman and founder of Digital Equipment Corporation, 1977
Two predictions about the future
1 By 2029, robots will tell jokes and learn from experience.
2 By 2099, robots and humans won’t be different. We will have artificial technology in our
brains and be half human and half robot.
Your predictions
1
2
3
Section B
Four failed predictions
1 Before man reaches the moon, your mail will be delivered within hours from New York to
Australia by guided missiles. We stand on the threshold of rocket mail.
Arthur Ellsworth Summerfield, fifty-fourth Postmaster General of the United States, c. 1959
2 Television won’t be able to hold on to any market it captures after the first six months. People
will soon get tired of staring at a plywood box every night.
Darryl F. Zanuck, film producer, 1946
3 I predict the internet will soon go spectacularly supernova and in 1996 will catastrophically
collapse.
Robert Metcalfe, co-inventor of Ethernet, 1995
4 Flight by machines heavier than air is impractical and insignificant, if not utterly impossible.
Simon Newcomb, mathematician and astronomer, c. 1902
Two predictions about the future
1 By 2029, there won’t be any war, hunger or disease because of technology.
2 By 2049, computers will create their own knowledge without human help.
Your predictions
1
2
3
PHOTOCOPIABLE
© Pearson Education Limited 2017
RESOURCE 129 UNIT 10 Lesson 12
Culture
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