Matt Yglesias prediction:
1895: Heavier than air machines are impossible:
1946: Television won’t last. It’s just a flash in the pan.
1955: Rock&Roll? It will never catch on.
1963: The Beatles have absolutely no future in show business.
1968: Men will never land on the moon and return to earth, alive.
1972: Computers for home use will never become popular. The average person has no need for a computer in his house.
1980: No one will ever need more than 640KB of memory on their home computer.
1860: There is no way the north can win a war against the south.
We all know people like this (mostly libs). In Middle school band class, my new music teacher proudly proclaimed "the Beatles are a flash in the pan, won't last more than a year!" when the Beatles first started performing. As I graduated a few years later, all the students were laughing at him because he was such a loser.