This document summarizes predictions made by experts that turned out to be incorrect, including Thomas Watson's prediction that the world market for computers would be five, Darryl Zanuck saying people would tire of television after six months, and Ken Olsen saying no one would want a computer in their home. It also shares Clifford Stoll's skeptical views of the internet from 1995, including that people wouldn't shop or do business online, and his preference for physical books over ebooks. The document advocates for free productivity tools like Mendeley and cb2Bib and shares thoughts on the future of communication technologies and publishing.

2. Balance

3. Utterly
Unbalanced

6. October 25th, 2010
“…a tale told by an idiot, full of
sound and fury…signifying
nothing.”
Tomorrow and
Tomorrow and
Tomorrow….

7. Danger, Will Robinson!
• "I think there is a world market for maybe five
computers,"
-Thomas Watson
Chairman of IBM, 1943.
• "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 Zanuck
20th Century Fox, 1946.
• "There is no reason anyone would want a computer
in their home,"
-Ken Olsen
Founder, Digital Equipment Corp., 1977.
(Trying to predict the future is a foolish thing to do)

8. • "No one will need more than 637
kb of memory for a personal
computer—640K ought to be
enough for anybody,"
-Bill Gates,1981.
• "Next Christmas the iPod will be
dead, finished, gone, kaput,"
-Sir Alan Sugar,
British entrepreneur, 2005.
Danger, Will Robinson!
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704039704574616401913653862.html
(Trying to predict the future is a foolish thing to do)

9. http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/07/is-google-making-us-stupid/686
Short answer:
No.
Longer Answer:
No, but WOW…

10. http://pewresearch.org/pubs/1499/google-does-it-make-us-stupid-
experts-stakeholders-mostly-say-no
by Janna Quitney Anderson, Elon University, and Lee Rainie,
Pew Internet & American Life Project
February 19, 2010

11. Newsweek,1995.
Astronomer Clifford Stoll:
http://www.newsweek.com/1995/02/26/the-internet-bah.html

12. Stoll:
“Visionaries see a future of telecommuting
workers, interactive libraries and multimedia
classrooms. They speak of electronic town
meetings and virtual communities.
Commerce and business will shift from
offices and malls to networks and
modems…”
Baloney.”

13. “How about electronic publishing? Try
reading a book on disc. At best, it's an
unpleasant chore: the myopic glow of a
clunky computer replaces the friendly pages
of a book. And you can't tote that laptop to
the beach. Yet Nicholas Negroponte,
director of the MIT Media Lab, predicts that
we'll soon buy books and newspapers
straight over the Internet. Uh, sure.”

14. Here’s where you can buy Stoll’s books online:
http://www.amazon.com/Clifford-
Stoll/e/B000AQ44MY/ref=sr_ntt_srch_lnk_1?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1284821957&sr=8-
1
http://productsearch.barnesandnoble.com/search/results.aspx?store=book&ATH=Clifford
+Stoll

15. “Then there's cyberbusiness. We're promised
instant catalog shopping-just point and click
for great deals. We'll order airline tickets over
the network, make restaurant reservations
and negotiate sales contracts.”
“Even if there were a trustworthy way to send
money over the Internet-which there isn't-the
network is missing a most essential ingredient of
capitalism: salespeople.”

16. …and he PREFERS online payment:
http://www.cartserver.com/sc/cart.cgi?item=s-1810&view.x=1
Stoll has, by the way, commented in hindsight on his 1995 piece:
http://www.boingboing.net/2010/02/26/curmudgeony-essay-
on.html#comment-723356
http://www.kleinbottle.com/

17. Feared Future #1:

24. What’s this REALLY about?
“They THINK everything is available
via Google.”
How have they been
allowed
to believe this?

25. Feared Future #2:

30. Clinician-Oriented Interfaces

31. Working with the I.S. Department
• Troubleshoot, train users, develop
training materials, and identify user
needs.
• Filtering what issues reach I.S.
• Administration of online on-call
scheduling system, meeting room
reservation system, support of
mobile devices, RoboHelp, etc…

32. Working with the I.S. Department
Making a library intranet portal
that I.S. could live with
• No Web development software
• Not allowed to code from scratch

33. Working with the I.S. Department

34. Free Long Distance Calls

35. Mendeley is great for consolidating search results from
various databases)
•Installed app
•Web site
•Bookmarklet
Free Productivity Tools I Use:
Mendeley

36. Free Productivity Tools I Use:
cb2Bib
Cb2bib
http://www.molspaces.com/cb2bib/index.html
• Awesome for extracting metadata from
PDFs (and Web pages and email alerts!)
• BibTeX output
• If it can’t extract, it’ll help you extract
• If you give it SOME metadata, it can
frequently look up the rest for you

37. Free Productivity Tools I Use:
cb2bib

38. Free Productivity Tools I Use: cb2Bib
Demo

39. Free Productivity Tools I Use:
cb2Bib
Demonstration

40. Bang for Your Buck?
• SMS Reference / IM Reference
• QR Codes
• Social Networks
• Second Life

41. Assorted Prognostications
• Text = King
• Paper isn’t going anywhere, but the costs
will shift
• Publishers are more scared of the future
than we are
•Open Source/Open Access

42. David Rothman
david.rothman@gmail.com
http://davidrothman.net
315-876-9574