Is there life outside the U.S.A.?

books:


	• The Experts Speak : The Definitive Compendium of Authoritative Misinformation Christopher Cerf, Victor S. Navasky Villard, 1998 - 445 pages average customer review:based on 15 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Is there life outside the U.S.A.?

The idea behind this book is very nice, and the authors are quite successful at making great deal of fun, at the expense of the learned (or sometimes not so learned) experts, who should have known better. Unfortunately for an international reader, the vast majority of the events and personae selected for the book deals with the U.S.A., and may be of little interest to people outside of that country. In particular, if the sections on politics or sports make you more than chuckle occationally, it is a clear sign that you've been watching way too much american television recently.
Overall, it is not a bad book - however, neither it is as hillarious as some reviews would make you believe.

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Highly enjoyable

This is a fun book of humorous quotations many about scientific predictions that were WAY off the mark. My favorites concern computers, and I've received some of them over the internet. Since I'm concerned about Urban Legends, this book was very helpful in discerning the veracity of these statements-though the authors are careful to point out quotes that could be Urban Legends or ones that have become part of the culture, whether historically accurate or not. Some good examples are:
Regarding Radio (and, perhaps now, cordless phones, cell phones, and Voice Over IP):
Well-informed people know it is impossible to transmit the voice over wires and that were it possible to do so, the thing would be of no practical value. (Editorial in the Boston Post, 1865
The radio craze ... will die out in time. Thomas Alva Edison
I do not look upon any system of wireless telegraphy as a serious competition with our cables. Some years ago I said the same think and nothing has since occurred to alter my views. (Sir John Wolfe-Barry, Chief Executive of Western Telegraph Company at their annual stockholder's meeting in 1907

Regarding the development of computers:
Worthless. (Sir George Bidell Airy, K.C.B., M.A., LL.D., D.C.L., F.R.S., F.R.A.S., Astronomer Royal of Great Britain, estimating for the Chancellor of the Exchequer the potential value of the "analytical engine" invented by Charles Babbage, September 15, 1842. This resulted in the British government discontinuing its funding for Babbage. Today, however, Babbage is hailed as the inventor of the computer.)
I have traveled the length and breadth of this country and talked with the best people, and I can assure you that data processing is a fad that won't last out the year. (The editor in charge of business books for Prentice Hall, Inc., 1957
Where a calculator on the ENIAC is equipped with 18,000 vacuum tubes and weighs 30 tons, computers in the future may have only 1,000 vacuum tubes and perhaps weigh 1 ½ tons. (Popular Mechanics, March 1949. [Interestingly, I recently received a photo by internet of the predicted "home computer" from 1954-it was huge.]

Personal computers:
It is quite impossible that the noble organs of human speech could be replaced by ignoble, senseless metal. Jean Bouillaud, member of the French Academy of Sciences, referring to Thomas Edison's phonograph.
What the hell is it good for? (Robert Lloyd, Engineer at the Advanced Computing Systems Division of IBM, c.1968, reacting to colleagues who insisted that the microprocessor was the wave of the future.
We don't need you. You haven't got through college yet. (Hewlett-Packard executive, responding to Apple Computer founders Steve Jobs' and Steve Wozniak's attempts to interest the company in the "personal computer" they had designed, 1976.
Get your feet off my desk, get out of here, you stink, and we're not going to buy your product. (Joe Keenan, President of Atari, responding to Steve Jobs' offer to sell him rights to the new personal computer he and Steve Wozniak had developed, 1976; and, of course, the very famous "quote":
640K ought to be enough for anybody. Attributed to Bill Gates, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Microsoft, 1981

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I have two copies it's so good!!!

Hello,

This book is a great book. I have two copies of ¡§The Experts Speak.¡¨ I have one at my house for reference and then another in my classroom (I teach economics, sociology, and psychology) and that¡¦s for reference too. The book is full of quotes both famous and not from ¡§experts¡¨ both famous and not, who have made predictions, and relayed facts and/or opinions that we later see to be simply wrong. The book itself is funny and interesting. Funny, to see how wrong man-kind has been in the past, and interesting to see how we¡¦ve been wrong, but also on speculating how much we are wrong about now and what the future generations will look back and laugh at our current ¡§experts¡¨ for. The book is broad and this should be mentioned at there are sections on religion, science, inventions, music, war, gender, medicine, and so on¡K so there really is something for everyone!

Lastly, I am not making fun of official experts here, I think they are doing the best they can and I would trust an expert who spends all their time studying a field and is subject to peer review by the other brightest minds of their generation before I trusted myself or someone else. What I am finding amusing is the pride we sometimes have at thinking we really have THE answers now, and in the past ¡§they¡¨ were so dumb, and we are so enlightened ?º

Finally, I hope you like my review and vote nicely for it! Thanks and have a good time shopping.

Sam Kochel

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Very funny.

Great book - very funny. It is fascinating (and very educational) to see how wrong people can be. I will never believe in the word impossible again!

reviews: page 1, 2, 3

Did you ever have the uneasy feeling the experts
are not . . . well, expert?

"Stocks have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau."
--Irving Fisher, professor of economics at Yale University, October 17, 1929

"Forget it, Louis, no Civil War picture ever made a nickel."
--Irving Thalberg's warning to Louis B. Mayer regarding Gone With the Wind

"We don't like their sound. Groups of guitars are on the way out."
--Decca Recording Company executive, turning down the Beatles, 1962

"With over fifty foreign cars already on sale here the Japanese auto industry isn't likely to carve out a big share of the market for itself."--Business Week, 1968

"There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in their home."
--President of Digital Equipment Corporation, 1977

"Bill Clinton will lose to any Republican who doesn't drool on stage."
--The Wall Street Journal, in a 1995 editorial

The Experts Speak systematically catalogues, footnotes, and sets straight these and a couple of thousand other examples of expert misunderstanding, miscalculation, egregious prognostication, boo-boos, and just plain lies. The experts have been wrong about everything under, including, and beyond the sun: time, space, the sexes, the races, the environment, economics, politics, crime, education, the media, history, and science. In this expanded and updated edition (now more error-filled than ever), we see just how much the experts don't know. But the book also goes deeper, presenting a through-the-looking-glass chronicle of human knowledge: the story of what was and is so, as seen through the story of what we wanted to and did believe.

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