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Good morning. Newsletter editor Karen Yuan here, filling in for Adam.
Tech predictions—they’re fun to make, but can either be eerily prescient or wildly off-base.
Take Phaedrus’ classic argument against the invention of writing: Plato says that putting words to paper (or papyrus) is dangerous because “if men learn this, it will implant forgetfulness in their souls; they will cease to exercise memory because they rely on that which is written.”
The 1984 Fortune classic “Mobile phones: Hot new industry,” makes for another amusing retrospective.
In 1984, only the wealthiest could afford a mobile phone. They cost $2,500, but analysts saw the promise of the budding wireless networks, or, as the writer Colin Leinster puts it, a “cellular explosion.”
The experts he interviews imagine a brave new world: “When you fly from New York to Washington, you’ll be able to take your phone with you,” one marvels. They envision a national network—“a universe unto itself” where cell phones would share a single area code.
But, Leinster says, lots could go wrong. “Prices won’t drop fast enough to make a phone in the car as irresistible as it sounds,” he writes. “Another grim possibility is that cellular might prove so popular that emerging systems would be temporarily swamped, driving potential users away.”
That’s not the case with today’s smartphones, of course.
Leinster actually speculates about super-phones of some kind that have functions beyond mere calls. “Mobile phones will be able to link up with computers to receive information on stock movements, inventory availability, sales orders, and other data.” Burglar alarms could even be hooked up to phones, he continues.
It sounds like he’s getting at something, but then the prediction becomes quintessentially 80s: “These services could be provided as hard copy, using printers or facsimile machines.”
As phones get more and more advanced, “competition will be especially tough because there is little to differentiate products,” Leinster also says. “Salesmanship makes the difference.”
Yes and no—what no one could have predicted at the time was the obsession with smartphone design that Apple would kick off.
Leinster does write that some customers may pay almost any price to get fancier and fancier phones. He describes a quaint version of today’s enthusiasm over new drops: When one cell system got approval in New York, hundreds of early-bird fans began to line up. “Everybody’s got to be first. Me. Me. Me,” one seller told Leinster, exasperated.
It seems like one thing stays consistent, especially in tech: hype. That “hot new industry” may stay hot for a while.
Karen Yuan
This edition of Data Sheet was curated by Aaron Pressman.
