27 Hilariously Bad Predictions of the Future From Experts
![27 Hilariously Bad Predictions of the Future From Experts](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/4/8/9/817489_320x180.jpg)
It's hard to believe we're approaching the twenty-first century. Though we've seen some incredible technical advancements, such as artificial intelligence as well as smartphones that unlock via facial recognition, we're still not living in the world of flying automobiles and personal robot assistants that people once dreamed of. Indeed, projections about the contemporary and dramatic changes we'd experience in this distant-sounding year were fairly lofty decades ago. Do you need a good laugh? Here are a few amusing predictions for the coming years that people actually expected to happen at one point or another. They haven't, regrettably... at least not yet!
Although no one can truly foretell the future, some people sure do try. It's amusing to look back on their expectations years later to see how badly they failed. So take a look at these arrogant predictions of the future from so-called experts if you need proof that no one knows the future. Yikes.
![Tired: gold. Wired: steel. THOMAS EDISON CRACKED.COM Edison was convinced we were on the verge of dispensing precious metals like a Taco Bell soda fountain. And what would we do with the power of alchemy? Devalue gold and turn all our furniture into cold, hard steel.](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/4/8/7/817487.jpg)
Source: 15 Impossibly Silly Predictions (Made By Serious People)
![There's simply no demand for YouTube. YOUTUBE COFOUNDER CRACKED COM Cofounder and СТО Steve Chen once said there's just not that many videos I want to watch. Strange that a man with zero foresight could accidentally invent a perpetual motion propaganda machine!](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/4/8/6/817486.jpg)
Source: 15 Impossibly Silly Predictions (Made By Serious People)
![HOME 50 5 APPLIANCES 1955 CRACKED.COM Nuclear-powered vacuum cleaners will probably be a reality within ten years. -Alex Lewyt, vacuum company president. We have nuclear power today, but it makes a lot more sense to produce it centrally than to stick a reactor in every appliance.](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/4/8/4/817484.jpg)
![55 50 5 TRAINS 1850 : 8 SIERRA RAILROAD CRACKED COM Rail travel at high speed is not possible because passengers, unable to breathe, would die of asphyxia. -Irish professor Dionysius Lardner. We do have high-speed trains now, as well as even faster transport methods.](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/4/8/5/817485.jpg)
![50 BATHROOMS 5 2000 1900 CRACKED CON French artists predicted life in the year 2000 for the 1900 World Exhibition. They foresaw machines scrubbing you clean and applying makeup. Even with access to robotics today, we prefer handling certain intimate activities ourselves.](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/4/8/3/817483.jpg)
![50 THE ALPHABET 5 DECEMBER 1900 no D CRACKED COM There will be no C, x or Q in our every-day alphabet. They will be abandoned because unnecessary. -John Watkins, from the Saturday Evening Post. Yes, we'd develop informal spelling but wouldn't drop any letters entirely, bc that idea sux, dafuq would be the point in doing that?](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/4/8/2/817482.jpg)
![55 50 CYBORGS 5 OPTICO-VIDEO NOVEMBER 1963 ASER ANTENNA SYNCHRO-ELECTRONIC SHAVER GAMMA-RAY REPELLER OPTICO-VIDEO HELMET SENSOR CONNECTED TO OPTIC NERVE RADAR-AUDIO SENSOR SELF-REGENERATING ATOMIC BATTERIES PUSHBUTTON PANEL FOR PSYCHO-BIOLOGICAL NEEDS EMERGENCY CARDIAC PUMP FORCE-FIELD OXYGEN TANKS REGULATOR AND COMPRESSOR IN THORACIC PUSHBUTTON BIOLOGICAL NEED PANEA CRACKED.COM CAVITY Popular Science believed we were close to the cyborg above, but their ultimate goal (Optiman) was more advanced. We had to hurry else Russia would do it first. Absurd, of course. We're not going to make our cyborgs green.](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/4/8/1/817481.jpg)
![Brick-and-mortar stores have nothing to worry about. TIME MAGAZINE CRACKED.COM Their 1966 prediction that remote shopping will flop was based on the observation that women like to get out of the house.](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/4/7/9/817479.jpg)
Source: 15 Impossibly Silly Predictions (Made By Serious People)
![The Beatles have no future in showbiz. DECCA RECORDS CRACKED.COM An impressively shortsighted record exec expounded that four-piece groups with guitars, particularly, are finished.](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/4/8/0/817480.jpg)
Source: 15 Impossibly Silly Predictions (Made By Serious People)
![Nothing bad will happen to the stock market. IRVING FISHER CRACKED.COM 3 days before the stock market crash, an American economist declared that stocks had reached a permanently high plateau.](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/4/7/7/817477.jpg)
Source: 15 Impossibly Silly Predictions (Made By Serious People)
![We'll go full Flintstones. To Find Some Use For Every Wild Animal Man's Steadily Increasing Need for More Space Will Eventually Force Untamed Beasts to Pay Their Way in the Scheme of Things or Join the Species Already Extinct The - - been THE breading .. - lab president - been AND HOME - - and S - - - - - - - - CRACKED.COM - - clare It was once commonly thought that we'd train endangered species to perform menial tasks as we continued to encroach into their territory. We've opted to just indiscriminately kill them instead!](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/4/7/8/817478.jpg)
Source: 15 Impossibly Silly Predictions (Made By Serious People)
![We'll all get tired of the internet. ROBERT METCALFE GRACKED.COM The guy who co-invented Ethernet predicted the internet would go supernova, and in 1996 will catastrophically collapse.](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/4/7/6/817476.jpg)
Source: 15 Impossibly Silly Predictions (Made By Serious People)
![Rail commuters will suffocate. DIONYSIUS LARDNER Manaroil CRACKED.COM The professor at University College, London, was convinced that high-speed trains were simply impossible, because the passengers, unable to breath, would die of asphyxia.](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/4/7/4/817474.jpg)
Source: 15 Impossibly Silly Predictions (Made By Serious People)
![The 23-letter alphabet. J. ELFRETH WATKINS WHAT MAY HAPPEN IN THE NEXT HUNDRED YEARS By JOHN ELFRETH WATKINS,JR. Grand Oper Trains One Hundred and Filly Miles an Hour Traine will HESE prophecies will seem strange. almost will sound as Fire two miles-a minute. normally express trains one hun- impossible. Yet they have come from the To go from New York to dred and fifty miles aus hour box. Automa most learned and conservative minds 111 night America To the wisest and most careful There will San Francisers becigarshaped will take a day electric and locomotives a by fast haul CRACKED CON men in our](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/4/7/5/817475.jpg)
Source: 15 Impossibly Silly Predictions (Made By Serious People)
![FEMALE 50 5 EVOLUTION DECEMBER 1950 1950 , 2000 O GRACKED.com The woman of the year 2000 will be will be more than six feet tall, wear a size 11 shoe, have shoulders like a wrestler and muscles like a truck driver. -Associated Press. True for some women. AP also predicted, She may even be president.](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/4/7/3/817473.jpg)
![55 MOVING 50 5 HOUSES JULY 1971 CRACKED.COM The house of the future would have no roots Gone would be water pipes, drains, power lines; the autonomous home could therefore move, or be moved, to anywhere on earth. -Arthur C. Clarke. Не wasn't predicting RVs, which already existed.](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/4/7/2/817472.jpg)
![65 50 REMOTE 5 DIAGNOSES 1905 CRACKED.COM The Popular Mechanics version of medical video conferencing included an electric handshake that touches you from afar. That didn't come to pass. And if it did, you know we'd have it shaking body parts for decidedly non-medical purposes.](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/4/7/0/817470.jpg)
![50 FASHION 5 FEBRUARY 1939 CRACKED G COM The man of the next century will revolt against shaving... His hat will be an antenna. His socks, disposable. His belt will hold all his pockets ever did. -Vogue. They were right about beards, at least.](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/4/7/1/817471.jpg)
![55 50 AVAILABILITY 5 OF MEAT SEPTEMBER 1913 GRAGKED.COM If current trends continue, Americans in the 21st century will live as the low-caste Chinaman does now, on rice and vegetables, and like him, slothful creatures, anaemic and without initiative. -Gustav Bischoff, Meat Packers Association](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/4/6/7/817467.jpg)
![50 DEMOCRACY 5 1936 CRACKED.COM Democracy will be dead by 1950. -John Langdon-Davies, British journalist. Yeah, it got hairy there for a bit, but they haven't quite managed to get rid of democracy so far.](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/4/6/4/817464.jpg)
![50 THE INTERNET 5 DECEMBER 1995 CompuServe Internet Services AHENET - - The - Insurance - f - 1 - - Rystan WT - Maketing il iw - и MADE CRACKED.COM I predict the Internet will soon go spectacularly supernova and in 1996 catastrophically collapse. -Robert Metcalfe, the inventor of Ethernet. Не said he'd eat his words if he were wrong. And so he did, sticking a magazine page in a blender then eating the goop with a spoon.](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/4/6/5/817465.jpg)
![TV won't last 6 months. 20TH CENTURY FOX CRACKED.COM Studio exec Darryl Zanuck predicted that people will soon get tired of staring at a plywood box every night. Staring at that box is the only thing that gets us through the day!](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/4/6/6/817466.jpg)
Source: 15 Impossibly Silly Predictions (Made By Serious People)
![Michael Jordan won't carry this franchise. CHICAGO BULLS GM LLS 1 CRACKED.COM General Manager Rod Thorn was almost apologetic that there was no one taller he could have drafted: What can you do? Jordan isn't going to turn this franchise around.](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/4/6/2/817462.jpg)
Source: 15 Impossibly Silly Predictions (Made By Serious People)
![Smoking's probably fine. NATIONAL CANCER INSTITUTE CRACKED.COM W.C. Heuper, director of the institute's Environmental Cancer Section, was pretty darn sure that, if smoking played a part in lung cancer, it seems to be a minor one.](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/4/6/9/817469.jpg)
Source: 15 Impossibly Silly Predictions (Made By Serious People)
![Audiences don't want to hear actors. A WARNER BRO. CRACKED.COM H.M. Warner thought silent movies were the height of cinema: Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/4/6/3/817463.jpg)
Source: 15 Impossibly Silly Predictions (Made By Serious People)
![Movies are a fad. CHARLIE CHAPLIN CRACKED.COM Before becoming a silent film star, Chaplin declared what audiences want to see is flesh and blood on the stage. Right about the flesh; right about the blood; wrong about the medium.](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/4/6/8/817468.jpg)
Source: 15 Impossibly Silly Predictions (Made By Serious People)
![The telephone has no legs. WESTERN UNION CRACKED COM In an internal memo, employees were told that the telephone shouldn't be seriously considered as a means of communication.](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/4/6/1/817461.jpg)
Source: 15 Impossibly Silly Predictions (Made By Serious People)