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.
