Things people believed 10 years ago that ended up being wrong

[a425couple]

Things people believed 10 years ago that ended up being wrong

Amber Petty @PettyAmberPetty Rani Baker @destroyed4com4t

The Aughts aren't exactly an ancient, prehistoric era — in fact, a good
chunk of it is strikingly similar to today's world. In 2007, for
example, we were eagerly awaiting another Pirates of the Caribbean film
and a Spider-Man movie. Beyoncé and Rihanna topped the charts, and
everyone was wrapped up in the drama of the sexy doctors on Grey's
Anatomy. So, life might not seem that different from then. The world
certainly hasn't changed that much in the past ten years, especially
when compared to how much its changed in the past 25, 50, or 100 years.

That said, 2007 wasn't exactly the same as today. In fact, a lot of
predictions and beliefs from just a decade past ended up being
completely incorrect.

Arctic summers would be ice-free by now

Based on modeling studies in 2007, which was a really bad year for
arctic ice, scientists predicted that within less than a decade arctic
penguins and polar bears might have to browse some beach wear.
Remarkably, the modelling hadn't even incorporated the drastically low
2007 arctic ice coverage into their modelling, only using data up to
2004. Things looked pretty bleak, but thankfully that prediction was wrong.

Don't take this as an excuse to suddenly ride through town on a centaur
with "CLIMATE CHANGE IS NOT REAL" tattooed on his glistening abs, but
this particular prediction doesn't prove anything one way or the other
except for an assessment of possible damage. It's also worth noting that
after a few good years there was a dip in arctic ice coverage in 2016
comparable to 2007, which is now the second lowest recorded coverage in
modern history.

We could still see penguin bikinis in our lifetime if we aren't careful.
Despite how cute that sounds, it's probably not a good thing.

The iPhone would fail
Getty Images
With a headline that it'll probably regret for the rest of its days,
Tech Crunch confidently announced in 2006: "We Predict the iPhone Will
Bomb." It's a classic "Dewey Defeats Truman" type of headline that will
go down as one of the most wrong things ever said. Now, Tech Crunch
wasn't insane. When the iPhone first came out, it seemed ridiculous that
a phone would have so many extraneous uses. Sure, checking your email on
your phone is great, but what else would anyone want to do on their
phone? Conan O'Brien even ran a sketch making fun of the phone's many uses.

But why was Tech Crunch so sure the iPhone would be a disaster? First,
they thought the glass would result in lots of cracked screens. This is
true, but everyone just buys a new phone or pushes through the finger
cuts when playing Farmville. They also believed the iPhone's keyboard
was laughable, comparing it to a rotary phone.

They also figured people would flock to iPods. "Since AT&T is REQUIRING
iPhone purchasers to sign up for two-year contracts (any lawyers out
there know if this is legal?), it isn't difficult to imagine folks who
have no real need for the phone aspect looking for a nice web-browsing
widescreen iPod. But boy will they be expensive (probably about $750
new)." The iPod Touch stuck around for a while, but they were never as
pricey as iPhones or got anywhere near a $750 price tag.

Porn could have saved the HD-DVD

The "format wars" of the late 2000s ended so definitively hardly anyone
even remembers there was a progression hiccup between DVD and Blu-ray.
High-definition DVDs became the current generation's Betamax despite
having a significantly lower price point and some early studio support.
Blu-ray always had the distinct advantage of being built into
PlayStation and other video game consoles. However, some people thought
that because many porn studios became early adopters of the HD-DVD
format, it could be a turning point. And not just the kind where you try
to get a better angle.

Legend goes that porn studios picking VHS rather than Betamax killed the
latter faster than ice water down the pants would kill a … you know.
However, that love affair didn't last. Blu-ray porn releases sold much
faster than HD-DVD. Perhaps the market demand for a device that could
play both video games and porn was too powerful to defy.

Housing bubble? What housing bubble?
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As the opening teaser to what became a massive financial crisis, the
collapsing of the mortgage bubble in the U.S. was a pretty big deal.
This is the kind of thing that ridiculously rich financial experts
supposedly help us avoid. Yet many of those experts claimed they never
saw it coming.

Of course, financier and stock broker Bernie Madoff (who was not yet
disgraced at this point) was pretty optimistic about the whole thing
because he was basically the fox selling life insurance policies
throughout the henhouse with himself as the beneficiary. But plenty of
other people chimed in who should have known better. Like the financial
products head of AIG, Joseph Cassano, who was basically the insurance
company in this metaphor. Or someone like former Treasury Secretary Hank
Paulson, who doesn't fit into this metaphor at all. (Metaphors are
messy, OK?)

Even Ben Stein, who you might not know as a conservative economics
commentator but definitely know as the man that said "Bueller, Bueller,
Bueller …," described the bubble as just a bunch of lucky
"super-bargains" with no consequences to be concerned about. If you
can't trust the economic opinions of the host of Win Ben Stein's Money,
who can you trust?

The Wii was the future of gaming
Getty Images
Nintendo has had high highs and low lows for many years, but the company
thought their troubles were over when the Wii hit the shelves. When the
active video game console was released, it was an immediate hit. While
PlayStation and Xbox were reducing their console prices, Wii's were
flying out of stores at full price. It looked like Nintendo was on top
again and might even take out its competitors once and for all.

People loved that the Wii required physical movement, and Wii Fit was a
growing fitness craze. Gamers were coming together to form Wii bowling
leagues, and even senior centers were getting on the Nintendo bandwagon.
Wii was the future, all hail Wii! The Wii-volution didn't last, as sales
peaked in 2008. PlayStation and Xbox upped their game, and their games
steadily upped Wii's sales.

Nintendo still wasn't worried about the competition. They thought having
an affordable console with average graphics and a limited variety of
games would be just fine. But it wasn't. As their competitors' games
grew more and more graphically impressive, Wii stayed the same, and
people realized there's only so many times you can pretend to play
tennis in your basement before getting bored. By 2013, Nintendo stopped
production on the original Wii, and the days of Wii bowling leagues are
long in the past.

Brian Williams thought we'd all have chips under our skin

In 2007, Brian Williams ran a story about predictions for America's
future ten years down the line. Since it was coming from Brian Williams,
you knew it had to be true and very trustworthy. B-Dog would
never exaggerate a story for dramatic effect.

The segment focused mainly on how technology would change in a decade's
time. Of course, it starts out insanely wrong. "The year is 2017. You're
rushed to a hospital unconscious with no ID or medical history," said
reporter Tom Costello. "But thanks to a microchip under your skin, it's
all there." Reality check: Just like in 2007, if you're rushed to the
hospital with no ID in 2017, you still get a crappy chair until someone
proves you've got money. And although you can get chips implanted under
our skin, we as a nation have overall chosen not to put computers in our
arms and treat ourselves like stray dogs.

The story goes on to talk about facial recognition technology and how it
will be able to pick a single face out of a crowd with ease. Since half
the time Facebook and iPhoto facial recognition think boobs are faces,
we probably don't need to worry about getting singled out in a hoard any
time soon. The segment ends by comparing 2017 to the world of Minority
Report. Sure, even today, Google can stalk your every move and major
companies can buy your most personal info, but if you think a Macy's is
going to recognize you from an iris scan and try to sell you custom
perfumes in the near future, no way.

Virtual worlds were going to take over everything

By 2007, Second Life was already around for a few years. People still
weren't sure what to make of it, but they also thought it would take
over everything. Social media was becoming a pretty big thing (but
nobody knew quite how big yet) and theorists like Digital Media Wire's
Ned Sherman predicted that such virtual worlds could be the next big
step. He noted that Second Life was developing its own in-game economy
with a nearly standardized exchange rate between real-world and virtual
currency. Remember, this was still quite a few years before
"microtransactions" were regularly groaned about.

He claims, "Second Life may not grow to the scale of a MySpace or a
YouTube, but it may be laying the groundwork for something that will,"
implying a potential merge between social media, content-creation, and
peer-to-peer all virtualized. Which actually sounds amazing, even if it
is the plot of dozens of sci-fi dystopias. Meanwhile, investors of the
time wondered if such an environment, part MySpace and part World Of
Warcraft, could also be part of the future of the gaming market.

Unfortunately (?), such an environment is still more the realm of gritty
'90s cyberpunk stories than real life. Virtual reality still gives a lot
of people nausea and headaches, and parents use social media now, so
it's become more user-friendly and less technologically flashy. All we
have left of this dream is the opportunity to spend real money on
virtual game pieces in the Pokemon and Angry Birds games we play on our
phones. Kinda sad actually.

Ringtones could save the music industry
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Oh man, remember when the latest Evanescence track would come out and
you'd run to iTunes to download it as a ringtone? It was so cool, making
everyone hear little snippets of songs every time you got a phone call
or text. And we can all agree, if you want prime sound quality, you've
got to hear the song playing from Motorola Razr.

Ringtones were huge business ten years ago, an embarrassing fact for all
of us who bought "Clocks" by Coldplay to announce our phone calls. Since
the music industry was starting to falter from piracy and a move toward
digital single sales, the great ringtone sales gave industry insiders
hope. CNN Money reported that experts weren't sure if ringtone sales
would continue to rise, but they'd certainly be used to promote artists.
At the time, Madonna's single Hung Up was introduced as a ringtone
before it came out as a single, and experts figured that trend would
stick around for a very long time.

Unfortunately, iPhones came out, your phone became your MP3 player, and
somehow as a nation we all realized how stupid it was to play a
30-second clip of a song every time we got a damn call. There's no
better way to never want to hear a song again than by having it play
every time Sallie Mae phones to hassle you about student loans, so
ringtones' effectiveness as a promotional tool slowly faded away.

People would be too lazy to keep making internet content
Getty Images
Tech Crunch had a bit of a hard time ten years ago. After its
announcement that the iPhone would be a big pile of garbage, it went on
to say that laziness would lead to the end of user-created content.
Again, this isn't crazy logic. People are lazy, and they tend to get
bored of any major fad (such as the Wii), so it makes sense that sites
dependent on user-generated content would run out of steam and become
Friendster-like fads.

What Tech Crunch didn't predict was how much people love seeing
themselves and expressing their myriad opinions to the world. The
article stated that when Facebook went the way of Myspace, "it might be
time to grow up and invest your time in LinkedIn." Really, the idea that
LinkedIn could ever compete as a social media site is the real crime here.

TC also predicted Wikipedia's days were numbered. "And Wikipedia—perhaps
the Web's greatest gift to humanity—is based on the idea that people
will be generous with their time and editing skills." Again, this
prediction was incredibly wrong. Sure, there are plenty of trolls
online, but lots of smart people still love putting out content. Giving
people a way to anonymously post their thoughts, opinions, and sometimes
very dated points of view has proven to be exceedingly popular. Sure,
Facebook might give way to another future social media site, but unless
there's some kind of electrical apocalypse, it's hard to imagine a world
where people get tired of posting pictures of their own face and their
hot takes about the Marvel Universe.

Everyone thought Hillary Clinton would be president ... in 2008

We had a pretty tense election not too long ago. We had Hillary Clinton,
with an established political career, against a relative newcomer. Polls
and predictions were all in her favor; she seemed to be the winning
ticket. Then, all of a sudden … she didn't even win the primary. Wait,
what year did you think we were talking about?

To be fair, a decade ago, she definitely seemed a shoo-in. She was
leading the polls, and Al Gore's insistence on not running seemed to
promise an even greater lead as she was expected to get the majority of
the votes that would have gone to him. People were so sure she'd beat
Barack Obama that there are hubris-drenched actual written and published
hardcover book titles declaring it, which aged about as well as 2004
Bill Gates claiming spam email would be over by 2006.

A lot of folks chimed in on Hillary's win ability, or Obama's lack of
it, a decade ago. We're counting both because they're both just as
wrong. On the conservative side were Joe Scarborough, Charles
Krauthammer, and Bill Kristol; the liberal side had Mark Penn and the
late Christopher Hitchens. It's kind of a shame that one of the few
things you could get true bipartisan agreement on had to be a faulty
prediction.

Radiohead's In Rainbows online release would destroy the music industry
Getty Images
Radiohead made a bold move with the release of its album In Rainbows.
Before selling physical CDs, it sold digital downloads, and customers
could pay whatever they wanted for the album. Whether they chose to pay
nothing or $50, they'd get the same songs. Some people praised Radiohead
for breaking away from major labels, but a lot of people were very
worried about the moody band's new record-selling technique.

The Sunday Times called it "the day the music industry died." The
headline was a bit melodramatic and a horrible sequel to the song
"American Pie," but The Guardian went even further. It said that though
the pay-what-you-want ploy worked for the popular band, it was a death
blow to up-and-coming musicians. Sure, Radiohead could afford to give
its stuff away, but new bands don't have the luxury of big money-making
tours.

The idea that the record industry was changing and physical sales would
never be what they were was spot on. But In Rainbows had little to do
with it. The arrival of Spotify and streaming services has upset sales a
lot more than bands doing a pay-what-you-can system. Oddly enough,
Radiohead refuses to put its music on the streaming platform, claiming
it's a bad deal for the artists. Classic.

Voice recognition technology in cars would actually work
Shutterstock
Ten years ago, Ford and Microsoft debuted Sync, an entertainment system
in cars that would let you connect your phone to the system via
Bluetooth and have a readable electronic display. You're probably pretty
familiar with this, since pretty much all new cars have a similar
system, and it works well. But one of the biggest things Ford was
excited to announce was their advancement in voice recognition technology.

They bragged that you could play songs entirely via voice control. After
your MP3 player was indexed, you could say "Play Avril Lavigne" or
request a specific song by saying "Play track 'My Humps.'" As you may
have guessed, this didn't quite work out.

Voice recognition is still a part of many cars, but it's far from the
revolutionary device they made it out to be. Really, try to play a
specific song in your car. You'll end up crashing into a tree with rage
before you ever get your Rage Against the Machine song to play. Even
today, we can hardly get Siri or Alexa to play an artist without
repeating it ten times and holding back your anger toward the faceless
robot. Voice recognition technology is getting better, but just barely
and just in the last few years. In 2007, nobody was having a good time
talking to their car, and now, the voice prompts in cars are seldom used.

The Flip camera would be around forever
Getty Images
Camera technology has rapidly changed over the last 30 years. Going from
something you could only have access to in a fancy studio, to a bulky
over-the-shoulder model where half your videos would come out as
straight darkness because you forgot to take the lens cap off, to
digital cameras, it kept getting easier to make videos. When the Flip
cam came around, it seemed like we'd reached the pinnacle of affordable
filmmaking.

The Flip Video Ultra was super small, inexpensive, and captured pretty
good-quality video. It was easy enough to carry around, unlike many home
video cameras of the past. Other manufacturers were copying their design
and putting out light cameras of their own. With its winning combo of
good price, size, and quality, people couldn't imagine this camera going
out of style any time soon. But then came the iPhone.

Before iPhones, there were cameras on cell phones, but those cameras
sucked, and they sucked hard. The idea that phone cameras would ever be
popular seemed ridiculous. Where would you ever get enough memory? But
then old iPhone came along with their good camera and decent storage,
and people realized they didn't really need to carry a bothersome Flip
cam when they had everything they needed in the palm of their hand
already. By 2011, the promising Flip was obsolete, rendered useless by
that "bomb" of an iPhone.

Myspace could stay easily stay ahead

"Will Myspace ever lose its monopoly?" asked The Guardian's Victor
Keegan in February 2007. Now it's hard to believe it ever had one.
Wedged firmly into history among other late aughts embarrassments like
emo bangs and Four Loko, it's hard to picture Myspace as having the
cultural or financial footprint it had back then. At the time, however,
it had a definite lead over both Facebook and YouTube until it decided
to compete with both simultaneously by becoming a Frankenstein
amalgamation of the two.

It rebranded itself as a "social portal" as response to competition in
the social media field, deciding to more on focus on video and music
sharing. That was cool, but then Twitter happened, and Facebook was
better prepared to compete because Facebook wasn't distracted trying to
be YouTube. As Facebook constantly evolved in the social media game, it
eventually became the face of it, leaving MySpace's layout looking bland
by comparison.

Before you could even belt out a soulful rendition of "How Could This
Happen To Me?" to your Jeffree Star poster, MySpace was done.


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[None of the Above]

On Tue, 17 Apr 2018 13:32:27 -0700, a425couple
<a425c...@hotmail.com> wrote:

>
>Arctic summers would be ice-free by now
>
>Based on modeling studies in 2007, which was a really bad year for
>arctic ice, scientists predicted that within less than a decade arctic
>penguins and polar bears might have to browse some beach wear.

There aren't any penguins in the arctic...