Predictions

Predicting the future is tough. But we still seem happy to quote "experts" who happily deliver us all sorts of predictions. Some of them even get paid for the stuff they churn out.

I came across one nice example yesterday while looking up some references for Apple's "Rosetta" technology that was used to assist in the transition from PowerPC to Intel processors for the Macintosh.

A CNET article quotes an "Illuminata analyst" (someone who should know, I guess) who says "History says that binary translation basically doesn't work."

He goes on to say that "The day may come when someone can do a goood enough job with it, but that concept has been thrown out there many times in the computer industry, and it's always fallen flat on its face."

Well, Rosetta did work, though to be fair, the comments above fall some way short of predicting its failure. They just hint strongly that success is very unlikely.

The financial world is a wonderful source of failed predictions too. What about UK house prices? In the news today is a report from the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors. At the beginning of the year, they were predicting falls in prices of 10-15% this year; now it says prices may rise slightly. That's quite a shift.

Economic forecasts generally seem to be pretty pointless. None of them predicted the current recession, the most severe since the great depression. So why bother?

Weather forecasts? The UK Met Office predicted a hot, dry "barbecue summer" and instead we have just had a July with twice the average rainfall, though the Met Office has published some stats to convince us that it really hasn't been that bad.

I have a prediction. This year, we will finally see that producing pointless predictions is futile and we will give up. I will also win the lottery.

Remember, you read it here first.