Deck: Cyber Curmudgeon - The experts speak

I don't make predictions, at least not serious ones.

I learned my lesson early on when I predicted that a certain obscure senator from Massachusetts didn't have a chance for the Democratic nomination for president. You remember John F. Kennedy? Just a few months ago I said that Obama didn't have a chance for the Democratic nomination because racism is still a potent force in America.

I was delighted when I found the book many years ago titled 'The Experts Speak,' filled with predictions and judgments that were oh so slightly wrong. Like the report that dismissed a certain actor: "Can't act; can't sing; can dance a little." But Fred Astaire did alright for himself.

I'm not alone in my inability to predict the future.

Rense.com had a bunch of these predictions in an unbylined and unsourced story the other day. Some of favorites:

"Man will never reach the moon regardless of all future scientific advances. --Dr. Lee DeForest, "Father of Radio & Grandfather of Television."

"Computers in the future may weigh no more than 1.5 tons." --Popular Mechanics, 1949

"This 'telephone' has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication." --Western Union internal memo, 1876.

"We don't like their sound, and guitar music is on the way out," - Decca Recording Co. rejecting the Beatles, 1962.

"Everything that can be invented has been invented," -- Charles H. Duell, Commissioner, US Office of Patents, 1899.