Robert Metcalfe - Incorrect Predictions

Incorrect Predictions

Outside of his technical achievements, Metcalfe is perhaps best known for his 1995 prediction that the internet would suffer a catastrophic collapse the following year; he promised to eat his words if it did not. During his keynote speech at the Sixth WWW International Conference in 1997, he took a printed copy of his column that predicted the collapse, put it in a blender with some liquid and then consumed the pulpy mass. This was after he tried to eat his words in the form of a very large cake, but the audience strongly protested.

During an event where he talked about predictions at the Eighth International World Wide Web Conference in 1999, a participant asked: what is the bet?. He stated that there was no bet as he was not ready to eat another column.

Metcalfe is also known for his harsh criticism of open source software, and Linux in particular, predicting that the latter would be obliterated after Microsoft released Windows 2000:

The Open Source Movement's ideology is utopian balderdash reminds me of communism. Linux organic software grown in utopia by spiritualists When they bring organic fruit to market, you pay extra for small apples with open sores – the Open Sores Movement. When gets here, goodbye Linux.

He later recanted to some extent, saying in a column two weeks later:

I am ashamed of myself for not resisting the temptation to take cheap shots in my column ... I should not have fanned the flames by joking about the Open Sores initiative.

He also predicted that wireless networking would die out in the mid 1990s.:

After the wireless mobile bubble bursts this year, we will get back to stringing fibers ... bathrooms are still predominantly plumbed. For more or less the same reason, computers will stay wired.