After much protest and anxiety, an Ikea opens in Brooklyn and turns out to not be so horrible.
Every person in America protests Rupert Murdoch‘s purchase of the Wall Street Journal, but it’s actually looking pretty good.
Back in 1966, Time magazine predicted that “remote shopping, while entirely feasible, will flop — because women like to get out of the house, like to handle the merchandise, like to be able to change their minds.” (On the other hand, Time believed in the Internet: “One thing people almost certainly will want is electronic ‘information retrieval’: the contents of libraries and other forms of information or education will be stored in a computer and will be instantly obtainable at home by dialing a code.” Ironically, that shrewd prediction is spelling big trouble for Time and other magazines.)
It is probably hard to think of any progress or disruptive technology that hasn’t been met with fear, anxiety, and predictions of failure. What are your favorite examples?
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Middle-aged suburban folk riding the CTA (Chicago Transity Authority) for the first time… they act like they’re taking a trip through downtown Baghdad.
I don’t know what WSJ you are reading….
The classic dismissal of the telephone.
If Obama wins the election, there will be plenty of fear, anxiety, and predictions of failure–at least from the Fox News set.
I only recently read Lawrence Lessig’s The Future of Ideas in which he talks about the dangerous implications of the AOL-TW merger and how they would be able to control the information we receive.
“1) everything that’s already in the world when you’re born is just normal; 2) anything that gets invented between then and before you turn thirty is incredibly exciting and creative and with any luck you can make a career out of it; 3) anything that gets invented after you’re thirty is against the natural order of things and the beginning of the end of civilisation as we know it until it’s been around for about ten years when it gradually turns out to be alright really.” — Douglas Adams
Fossil Fuels. Oil.
I don’t have actual quotes at my fingertips, but they went something like this:
Oil from the ground!? How are you going to get it out in any kind of economically feasible way? Forget it, there’s plenty of whales in the ocean.
Elvis Presley