Behind the Reel: What Seems Impossible

My speaker's reel contains many fleeting moments that are really significant to me, so I'm elaborating on them in a quick series of posts.

At 2:12 in the reel you'll see this familiar image, which starts a quick montage about innovation: One of the things that makes Rethinking the Impossible such a fun theme is that there is a mother lode of "that's impossible!" quotes that have aged poorly, especially around technology. They include:

• 1895, Lord Kelvin: Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible. (8 years before the Wright Brothers flew)
• 1959, IBM to the eventual Xerox founders: The world potential market for copying machines is 5000 at most.
• 1977, Ken Olsen, founder of DEC: There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in his home.
• 1981, Bill Gates: 640K ought to be enough for anybody.

If you like those, head here for a fun spin.

But it's the non-geeky barriers that I find more interesting. They usually involve social norms and expectations so firmly rooted that they appear immovable. Take, for example:

• Why exclude women [from voting]? …Because their delicacy renders them unfit for practice and experience, in the great business of life, and the hardy enterprises of war, as well as the arduous cares of state. (John Adams, future President)
• TKTKTK
• Anyone who thinks the ANC will form the government of South Africa is living in cloud cuckoo-land (Margaret Thatcher)

That last one is a feeder for a Nelson Mandela quote, "It always seems impossible until it’s done." (Though it seems Pliny the Elder said it earlier.)

Reeling it in

Those examples are famous and world-scale, but we know that the impossible strikes at all scales, from "nobody will buy this product" to "I can't imagine jumping from this high up."

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