The Expert Track Record

Before you trust the next confident prediction, review the track record.

"There is no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share. No chance." — Steve Ballmer, Microsoft CEO, 2007

iPhone current market share: ~28% globally, ~57% in the US. Microsoft phone market share: discontinued.

"I predict the Internet will soon go spectacularly supernova and in 1996 catastrophically collapse." — Robert Metcalfe, inventor of Ethernet, 1995

He later blended his own column and drank it on stage.

"There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in his home." — Ken Olsen, founder of Digital Equipment Corporation, 1977

You are reading this on one. Or three.

"Remote shopping, while entirely feasible, will flop—because women like to get out of the house." — Time Magazine, 1966

Amazon 2024 revenue: $575 billion.

"Apple is already dead." — Nathan Myhrvold, Microsoft CTO, 1997

Apple current market cap: $3.4 trillion. The most valuable company on Earth.

"Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible." — Lord Kelvin, president of the Royal Society, 1895

Eight years later: Kitty Hawk.

"The horse is here to stay, but the automobile is only a novelty, a fad." — President of Michigan Savings Bank, advising against investing in Ford, 1903

Ford Motor Company is 122 years old.

"Self-driving cars will be taking over the roads very soon." — Elon Musk, 2017

Promised fully autonomous cross-country trip by end of 2017. Still waiting in 2026.

The pattern is not that experts are stupid. They are not. Ballmer built Microsoft. Metcalfe invented Ethernet. Lord Kelvin was one of the greatest physicists of his era.

The pattern is that expertise in the current paradigm blinds you to the next one.

The people who know the most about how things work are the worst at imagining how things could work differently.

So when you hear today's experts say something is impossible, remember: you are probably reading this on a device that was not supposed to exist, delivered through a network that was supposed to collapse, made by a company that was already dead.

The next impossible thing is probably already being built.