Wired steps up and admits defeat
July 1st, 02008 by Alexander Rose
In a rare, if not completely unique, look back at a few of it’s own failed predictions, Wired published the five largest predictive blunders of its 15 year history (see A Look Back). When we started Long Bets in 02002, it was precisely because pundits and press did not take this type of responsibility. Kudos Wired! Now on to the embarrassment…
Stuff that Wired predicted would die (but didnt):
- Commercial Web publishing (April 1996) Online news sites everywhere respectfully disagree.
- Web browsers (March 1997) Push media was about to supersede browsers. Or not. If we could push this claim from the archives, we would.
- Online song swapping (December 2002) Kazaa? LimeWire? BitTorrent? D’oh!
- Futurism (December 2003) Predicting the death of predictions? Niiiice.
- Brands (november 2004) Would someone please tell the tweens — and Abercrombie & Fitch, purveyors of the finest softcore billboards?
One would hope that they are also bragging about the stuff they got right? If so please send the pointer.
This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 1st, 2008 at 7:26 am and is filed under Long Bets. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Posted on July 2nd, 2008 at 2:42 pm
1996… what a long time ago that seems
the inter-disciplinary or meta-analysis predictions are the ones im most interested in hearing.
for example, some of the banter i used to hear at the plant seminars in palenque has born out quite interestingly.
also, talebs recommendation to go from practice to academics(not the other way around)comes to mind,
albeit obliquely.
Posted on July 4th, 2008 at 8:38 am
I so clearly remember the cover where we were invited to ‘kiss the browser goodbye’ and to move over for PointCast and push media. Oh well. Congrats to WIRED for reveling in its own misses, because when people are able to talk about what predictions don’t come true, we know we’re talking with someone who is willing to take chances and think big. Keep on predictin’, WIRED.