An important number of those remarks were based on a snapshot of the state of the technology: a fault in not seeing the potential evolution.
Examples of people who could not see non (in some way) dead-ends do not cancel examples of people who correctly saw dead-ends. The lists may even overlap ("if it remains that way it's a dead-end").
Gosh no. I knew most of that list but I'll be honest and tell you that I used ChatGPT to come up with it. it's a collection of quotes to begin with so I think that's okay. I'm not passing off someone else's writing as my own, I'm explicitly quoting them.
I doubt that list is as long as the great minds that glommed onto a new tech that turned out to be a dud, but I could be wrong. It's an interesting question, but each tech needs to be evaluated separately.
-Lord Kelvin. 1895
> I think there is a world market for maybe five computers. Thomas Watson, IBM. 1943
> On talking films: “They’ll never last.” -Charlie Chaplin.
> This ‘telephone’ has too many shortcomings… -William Orton, Western Union. 1876
> Television won’t be able to hold any market -Darryl Zanuck, 20th Century Fox. 1946
> Louis Pasteur’s theory of germs is ridiculous fiction. -Pierre Pachet, French physiologist.
> Airplanes are interesting toys but of no military value. — Marshal Ferdinand Foch 1911
> There’s no chance the iPhone is going to get any significant market share. — Steve Ballmer, CEO Microsoft CEO. 2007
> Stocks have reached a permanently high plateau. — Irving Fisher, Economist. 1929
> Who the hell wants to hear actors talk? —Harry Warner, Warner Bros. 1927
> By 2005, it will become clear that the Internet’s impact on the economy has been no greater than the fax machine. -Paul Krugman, Economist. 1998