Failed Predictions
- Islands anticipates that the Soviet Union will still be in existence in 2023 - in reality, the USSR was officially dissolved on December 8, 1991, just three years after the book was published.
- In Islands, communication on the Network relies on one-way messaging: pre-recorded video messages and telex. It misses both the interactive nature of the WWW and effects of Moore's Law on prices. Excerpt, p 16-17: "The Lodge did most of its business as telex, straight print sent by wire ... it was cheapest and simplest... Fax was good for graphics and still photos; the fax machine was essentially a Xerox with a phone ... Rizome favored one-way prerecorded calls because they were more efficient. There was less chance of expensive screwup in a one-way recorded call... Teleconferencing was the expensive borderland where phones blurred into television."
Read more about this topic: Islands In The Net
Famous quotes containing the words failed and/or predictions:
“The first general store opened on the ‘Cold Saturday’ of the winter of 1833 ... Mrs. Mary Miller, daughter of the store’s promoter, recorded in a letter: ‘Chickens and birds fell dead from their roosts, cows ran bellowing through the streets’; but she failed to state what effect the freeze had on the gala occasion of the store opening.”
—Administration in the State of Sout, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“The Brahmins say that in their books there are many predictions of times in which it will rain. But press those books as strongly as you can, you can not get out of them a drop of water. So you can not get out of all the books that contain the best precepts the smallest good deed.”
—Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910)