‘Experts speak’ a fun book

Press, 3 February 1986, Page 15

‘Experts speak’ a fun book

By

MARTIN GOTTLIEB

of the Cox News Service (through NZPA) New York Who said in 1932 that, “There is not the slightest indication that (nuclear) energy will ever be obtainable. It would mean that the atom would have to be shattered at will”? The answer Albert Einstein. Who said in 1901, “Man will not fly for 50 years”? Wilbur Wright. These embarrassments are recorded in a book called “The Experts Speak,” by Christopher Cerf and Victor Navasky, (Pantheon, 1984),which is now available in the United States as a large paperback. The book is a mischievous and irresistible compilation of mistaken predictions and other discredited dicta, many of them coming from authoritative or even revered sources. It’s a fun book. How about this one from 1913: “The talking motion picture will not supplant the regular silent motion picture ... there is such a tremendous investment to

paptomime pictures that it would be absurd to disturb it.” The source? If you’re getting into the spirit of this, you probably know: Thomas Edison, introducing his new motion picture machine. Edison apparently had little notion what people like him were doing to the world — 1880 (approx.): “The phonograph ... is not of any commercial value.” 1922: “The radio craze ... will die out in time.” When he was not underestimating his impact, he was erring in the other direction. When he invented a kind of battery, he predicted that it would replace petrol as the way of fuelling cars. (It would put “the gasoline buggies ... out of existence in no time.”) The more revered the predicter, the better the reading, of course. H.G. Wells is here. He was the science fiction writer-political essayistjournalist who is revered

for, of all things, his predictive ability.He is credited with having predicted in the early 1900 s all kinds of modem technologies, including nuclear energy. But Messrs Cerf and Navasky have him saying: • 1928:.“! am reported to be ‘pessimistic’ about broadcasting ... the truth is that I have anticipated its complete disappearance — confident that the unfortunate people, who must now subdue themselves to ‘listeningin,’ will soon find a better pastime for their leisure.” ® 1914: “(World War I), the greatest of all wars, is not just another — it is the last war!” • 1902: “My imagination refuses to see any sort of submarine doing anything but suffocate its crew and founder at sea.” • 1944: “(De Gaulle’s) day is passing, and the road back to obscurity opens wide and imperative before him.” It seems almost unfair Jto

pick on Wells here. After all, what distinguishes him is not that he was bad at predicting — which any reading of this book will demonstrate is hardly a distinguishing characteristic — but that he was so willing to do it. You want somebody even better known than Wells? How about Mohandas Gandhi, 1940: "I do not consider Hitler to be as bad as he is depicted. He is showing an ability that is amazing, and he seems to be gaining his victories without much bloodshed.” More? How about the American news commentator Walter Lippmann? • 1933: “The outer world will do well to accept the evidence of German good will and seek by all possible means to meet it and to justify it.” • 1968: “Nixon is a very much better man today than he was 10 years ago ... I do not reject the notion that there is a new Nixon who has outlived and outgrown the ruthless politics of his early days.” ■ - This could become the world’s all-time longest newspaper story. The great ones are all recorded amusingly in the book: Churchill, Lincoln, Leonardo da Vinci, Buckley. The book is not just entertainment. It is socially useful work.

In politics especially, a citizen has to have some way of figuring out who is worth listening to. Anyone who has been listening long enough knows that sheer “expertise” — that is, the possession of a lot of information and experience — is not enough. There just must be some insight. But how do you figure out who has insight? The outcome of a predicter’s predictions seems one factor to consider. However, Cerf-Navasky

must be considered for adults only. Suppose kids find out too early that the adults most revered by adults for their understanding are working in an impenetrable fog. How are we supposed to convince the kids that they should read stuff by and about these people anyway? A closer: Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, in 1944: “I think there is a world market for about five computers.”