30 ’90s Predictions About The Future We Can Laugh At Since None Of Them Were Correct

"Two years from now, spam will be solved" - Bill Gates, 2004

“I don’t believe that phone books, newspapers, magazines, or corner video stores will disappear as computer networks spread. Nor do I think that my telephone will merge with my computer, to become some sort of information appliance.” “Video-on-demand, that killer application of communications, will remain a dream.” - Clifford Stoll

In 1998, FourFourTwo magazine predicted David Beckham would look like this (left) in 2020. This is how he actually looks like

“You’ll never make any money out of children’s books” – Advice to JK Rowling from Barry Cunningham, editor at Bloomsbury Books, 1996.

“The whole way that you can check somebody’s reputation will be so much more sophisticated on the Net than it is in print today” - Bill Gates

“I suspect Big Brother won’t have an easy time tracing us. … Our privacy will be protected, as it always has been, by simple obscurity and the high cost of uncovering information about us.” - Clifford Stoll, 1995

"No matter how inexpensive the machines become, I still can't imagine the average user taking one along when fishing." -  Erik Sandberg-Diment

"The idea of a personal communicator in every pocket is a 'pipe dream driven by greed'." - Andy Grove, then CEO if Intel (1992)

In 1993, internet expert John Allen told CBC that he believed that our own moral code and internal rules would stop people from doing horrible things online. "There's not a lot of cursing, or swearing. One would think if you're anonymous you could do anything you want, but people in a group have their own sense of community and what we can do."

Clifford Stoll being sceptical about online shopping, which is basically how everyone buys stuff now: "We’re promised instant catalogue shopping–just point and click for great deals. We’ll order airline tickets over the network, make restaurant reservations and negotiate sales contracts. Stores will become obsolete. So how come my local mall does more business in an afternoon than the entire Internet handles in a month? 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."

"...Apple [is] a chaotic mess without a strategic vision and certainly no future." (1996)

This book from 1999 thought this was gonna be space in 2010. Needless to say, that didn't happen.

"HANGING OUT IN THE YEAR 2020" Trapper Keeper from 1993

“Admit it, you’re out of the hardware game.” - Wired Magazine challenges Apple to face up to the ‘fact’ that it can’t compete with other gadget makers, 1996

Jeff Bezos in the late 90s, describing Apple Computer as an "true American tragedy", among other choice quotes of what caused Apple to bite the dust

Ines Uusuman, the Swedish minister of communication said in 1996“Internet is just a temporary fly”

"Almost all of the many predictions now being made about 1996 hinge on the Internet’s continuing exponential growth. But I predict the Internet, which only just recently got this section here in InfoWorld, will soon go spectacularly supernova and in 1996 catastrophically collapse." - Robert Metcalfe

Virtual reality, 90's perspective

In the September 4, 1998, edition of the Amarillo Daily News in Texas, writer Amy Tao made a few predictions about what life may look like in 20 years—most importantly stating that human cloning will be commonplace. "Cloning will be a big thing. Despite moral activist protests, clones of animals and human beings walk the earth. Don't feel like going to school? Send your clone! What if your dog dies suddenly? Just take out the clone of him!" she writes.

Futurist Ray Kurzweil predicted in 1999 that human life expectancy would rise to "over one hundred" by 2019

"By the turn of the century, we will live in a paperless society." —Roger Smith, chairman of General Motors, 1986

In 1988, the Los Angeles Times magazine published a special issue predicting what life would be like in 25 years’ time. In some ways, they missed the mark completely: Cities mandate that business stagger shifts, to ease the burden on commuting and city services. Barcodes on our money to avoid corruption and crime and keep track of every dollar bill and who it belongs to. Multiple families cram into single-home structures, because there's no housing. The opposite of the housing bubble that floods markets with too many empty homes.

2000: ‘Children won’t know what snow is.’

“When high-bandwidth links allow every home to access animated, talking, holographic computerized encyclopedias, I can’t help thinking that kids still won’t use ’em.” - Clifford Stoll