Thought it would be fun to have a little companion thread to the recent one by Black Celebration. What are some notable times where you have been totally wrong about something?
I remember back in the noughties when the iPhone was being rumoured, but no one knew what kind of a beast it was going to be. At the time phones were getting more fancy and complicated: so I was convinced Apple were going to reclaim the phone market with something that was simple, stripped down, small, functional, sturdy and cheap. And I was looking forward to it because that suited me fine (I had previously been a fan of the ipod Shuffle).
Anyway, I was obviously totally and spectacularly wrong. The iphone turned out to be the most expensive and complicated phone yet. Now every phone seems to have a million ‘apps’, is as big as a brick and costs the same as a car (OK, slight exaggeration) . We live in an online, touchscreen world. And it was the iphone that took us down that path.
I held out getting a smartphone for years, but it’s just too inconvenient now to get by in today’s world without one. Everything from banking to shopping vouchers to theme park tickets needs you to be online with a smartphone.
So I was absolutely 100% wrong about the way things were going. What about you?
Let me break your duck, Arthur. I would say the thing I was wrong most about was being introspective and socialphobic. For years (decades) I found social interactions mortifying and embarrassing – putting myself forward into the public spotlight was not something I enjoyed at all.
Then I became an English language teacher to professional Germans – bankers, post workers, police etc. I had no choice but to manage a class and speak with confidence to people who were expecting to learn from me.
And I found I could do it – in my own rather clumsy, humour-laden way at first. But it worked – people listened, did what they were asked to do and put their trust in me and I learned to put my trust in myself. Now I kind of love spouting my mouth off in public – will ask questions of the head on our organization in front of hundreds of colleagues, and enjoy the interactions that public encounters bring. Talking to people I don’t know is enormous fun, because I learn so much through seeing the world through their eyes.
I think I wish I had started this years ago. But I am glad I can do it now.
I can definitely relate to that! I spent years as a shy and retiring sort, and it was only in my thirties really I started pushing myself out of my shell a bit and charing meetings at work and stuff like that.
I think my end point is a bit different from yours though. Being outgoing and sociable has only served to convince me over the years that I’m actually quite insular after all. It’s not shyness that’s the problem, and never really was: it’s that I get worn out and frustrated by interacting with too many idiots – sorry, “people” – in the wider world and prefer my own company a lot of the time! My family understand and tend to know when I need time to myself.
I’m very much the same, Arty. I think it’s very healthy to accept one can be a happy introvert, despite so much pressure all around to be extrovert. Nothing to do with “shyness”.
I used to find alcohol made people and events seem more interesting and tolerable. Once I gave it up, I often found myself longing to be able to say “sorry, totally uninterested” and walk away, but, oddly, I don’t think that’s considered socially acceptable by normal people. Now, luckily for me, I’m going deaf so have a great excuse for not listening.
But is that your “work” persona, @salwarpe ? I tend more to the shy and retiring, in real life, loathing crowds and parties, yet, at work can relish leading the room in meetings and engaging with strangers.
Yes, I think it is my work persona to an extent – we are who we are because of the people we interact with and the cultural norms that dominate. My AW self is different again from my work self and my home self.
But these things, whilst contextual, are not completely compartmentalized. They are stretchable. We are never static. We make ourselves anew as we break habits and try out new ways of being.
Responding a bit to both you and Arthur, introverts are said to get energy from being alone with themselves, extroverts from interacting with others, drawing and sharing energy from those interactions. I still value my time alone, to stretch out the hours in being, unencumbered by responsibility to others. But more and more, I also treasure the opportunity to give attention and listening to others, to enter their world and try to understand how it is not to be me.
Lovely stuff, young salwarpe.
In 2005, I worked as a designer of portable media players (“mp3 players” to the masses) and designed the electronics for the first commercial lossless player (24/96 capable, no less). It had a postage-stamp sized TFT colour screen and a scroll wheel.
Two Californian nutters came to the office with their idea of an internet streaming video site, and told me I should be designing the next-gen mp3 player to have a bigger colour screen and WiFi connectivity.
“Who on earth wants to watch videos on a screen the size of a matchbox?” I asked, as I threw out these timewasters.
Apparently they set up some Silicon valley startup called Youtube. You might have heard of it.
This is exactly the kind of thing I was looking for! Sounds very similar to my own view in the noughties – I couldn’t see the appeal of tiny screens, not to mention the lack of knobs, buttons and other tactile ways of interacting with a device. But I was swimming against the technological tide. I still miss the iPod Shuffle actually – there isn’t really anything like it available today, as everything needs to have a touchscreen and be able to stream music wirelessly and all that gubbins I don’t need.
I also advised Mrs F not to bother attending a job interview at a small firm called Cambridge Silicon Radio, as Bluetooth was rubbish and would never catch on.
She’s been there for nearly 20 years.
You’re now starting to make me doubt all the technical “help” and “advice” you’ve given on these pages over the last few years…. 🙂
I’m a ‘completer-finisher’, not an innovator, someone who can take someone else’s idea and turn it into a product. So no great predictor of the future.
I turned down jobs in the development of wireless power transfer (now used everywhere from tooth brush to mobile phone) and flexible flat screens (I would have been paid in shares… Samsung later bought the firm and everyone’s now a millionaire).
Yebbut more importantly you know the catalogue no of Swagger.
I could probably do ‘Catalogue Numbers of Ensign Records’ as my Mastermind specialist round. I am very dull.
I’d watch that. These things are important.
Does CHEN refer to Chrysalis Ensign? Asking for a friend of course.
I think it actually is for Chicken Jazz, the label run by Mike Scott to release Another Pretty Face singles and early Waterboys.
CHEN1 to CHEN4 were The Waterboys, A Pagan Place, This Is The Sea and World Party’s Private Revolution.
No snoring at the back!
My friend says thanks . That’s not dull at all. One for storing away.
but, but, Bluetooth still is rubbish!
Yep, as I remind her every time I have to reconnect her wireless earbuds to her phone. She gets paid more than me and yet the product is still faulty. See also: Microsoft Windows, Apple iOS, etc.
“Sorry, Richard, that’s a nice offer. It’s been fun but I really, really need a proper job right now and I don’t think managing your new record shop is for me.”
…. and from that moment, Lodestone got his name. And proceeded to live up to it for the rest of his life. The End.
Very cruel, very true.
I remember telling a mate that Blur were the most obvious one-hit-wonders I’d seen, on the basis of “There’s No Other Way”
I’ll excuse you for that one. I think a lot of people made the same mistake. If it helps, I said the same about Primal Scream around the same time (can’t remember which song it was, but it was before Screamadelica came out). There were a LOT of indie acts suddenly discovering a groove/dance/baggy element to their music around that time.
I did the sound for Blur very early on, around the time of their first single, and they showed little sign of lasting beyond one album.
I next saw them on the Rollercoaster tour with MBV, Dinosaur Jr. & JAMC, after they’d been touring America and come to blows, and they were so bad I left the venue and went to the pub.
For Tomorrow came as a total surprise.
A side topic, but I’m always fascinated how close genius and chaotic amateurishness can be sometimes. Some of the most amazing acts are just a hairsbreadth away from being a total mess, but some simple stroke of fortune, a tweak or a hook in a song, lets them cross that line into greatness. Sometimes it’s the capable bands, the safe hands, the virtuosos, who can be dull and uninspiring, and it’s the wayward, messy ones who have that uniqueness that makes them great.
I think the most forensic example of this is the Beatles’ Get Back film – hours and hours of uninspiring jams and lazy playing, but then somehow it all coalesces into 20 minutes of greatness when they get onto that rooftop at the end.
And apologies for bringing up the Afterword’s favourite band again, but if you’ve ever listened to any Pink Floyd bootlegs you’ve got to be impressed by the way they honed such shabbiness into the tightly compressed works of art they created in their great run of albums in the 70s.
I saw Radiohead very early on at UCLU. Creep had come out at least once but wasn’t a hit yet. We loved it. They turned out to be pretty awful apart from Creep (I was 18) and I was convinced nothing would ever come of them. So I got that wrong, but am still no fan.
The other thing is the insults we used to bandy about at school in the 80s. Bloody hell were we wrong.
I saw Duran Duran in 1980 in Liverpool supporting Hazel O’ Connor “This is going to be our first single, Planet Earth”, I was pretty sure they would disappear without trace.
Behold what they have done…
Nice one @black-type
Similarly, I saw Jamiroquai third on the bill supporting Corduroy and Mother Earth at a venue in Ilford. They were so transparently shit that the audience were laughing at them instead of applauding.
Next time I saw them was arriving by helicopter onto the main stage at Glastonbury.
Saw the same tour at Sheffield Poly and was completely the opposite, Id gone to see Hazel but I thought the D’s completely blew her away. During O’Connor’s set the Durans came into the audience to watch her set and I saw the super cool Nick Rhodes step in a huge pool of vomit.
Can’t remember too much. I thought they were ok, but “the single” did not sound like their best song and I felt it would fail completely.
Around the same time I saw The Teardrop Explodes (supported by The Thompson Twins!) and they played the unreleased at the time “Reward”. Sounded like a right mess …
Was invited onto Radio Bristol to be a panel member for their round-table show reviewing new single releases.
Predicted confidently that one of the records was a ridiculously crass attempt at a hit single but thankfully the record buying public would see through their plan and consign it to the bargain bin of chart flops where it belonged.
Sadly the masses were very much taken in and went out and bought Tubthumping by Chumbawamba in their droves….
I thought Trump would lose first time out.
I thought the Spice Girls would never sell any records.
I thought Cristiano Ronaldo would never have an end product.
I thought far, far, far more people would die in the pandemic.
I thought I was (at least partly) an introvert.
I thought people would relatively quickly tire of Facebook.
I could cite a million more like the above. The problem with having lots of views is that you have to accept that inevitably many of them will be proved incorrect. The world is a surprising place, and things rarely move in quite the way you forecast they will. It’s nice in a way, it takes the pressure off.
What I’ve generally been right about is people. I’ve been fortunate with friends, and I married the single best human being I’ve ever met. I’m grateful to have had it that way round; I can always find some different opinions, but good people are gold dust.
I can’t believe the same guy who this week has compared the Beatles to Scouting For Girls has failed to include that in his list of Things He Was Wrong About. This was a chance to repent and you failed to take the bait. Tsk tsk. 🙂
Interesting what you say about good people and good friends. I’ll never understand those types who seem to have no filter for friends, and just invite everyone into their circle. I’m sure they must eventually see the folly of their ways when they are stuck with some people they’d rather be rid of!
My own tuppence worth is that while shared values are important, it’s also great to have people you can actively disagree with and have divergent interests, as it keeps things from getting samey and challenges your presumptions. My closest group of friends are all absolute football nuts and I can’t stand the sport, as an example. We also all love music and movies avidly, but disagree on many, many specific examples of these (I still can’t believe one of my oldest friends is a Coldplay fan, for one).
Have you ever actually stopped and looked at the lyrics of any Scouting For Girls songs, Arthur? They’re so lovely (they’re so lovely, they’re so lovely, etc).
Funnily enough, Coldplay are the other contemporary act to whom I would compare your mob.
Yeah yeah yeah….
An occasional colleague was the camera racks engineer at the Virgin Records event when The Spice Girls were first presented to the company. She said they were pretty awful, raw and unpolished.
A friend of mine said, quite close to the election, that Trump would win and once she’d said it, it was obviously right. Horrifying actually.
Thanks for amusing me with all the things you were wrong about @Bingo Little.
Respect!
And thanks @Arthur Cowslip for such a very entertaining thread.
Who wants to hear someone bragging about how clever they were to make an accurate prediction.
It’s far more entertaining and more therapeutic to confess to your errors.
Today I just happened to watch this.
I thought the Afterword wouldn’t last.
Neither did I. I thought it would bland out and become a haven for old guys who just like Steely Dan and The Beatles and all the women would leave. Oh wait…
Nobody thought it would become a haven for fantasy golfers.
Perhaps this should go on the I Was Right thread…right from the start in 2007 I thought the iPhone was absolutely brilliant in every way, and I lusted after one. I finally got an iPhone 4 in 2010, and I now have a 13 Pro. No doubt other phones do the job just as well, and there are certainly plenty that are cheaper, but I don’t care. I am a Lodestone of Rightness.
I still remember Stephen Fry’s glowing review of the iPhone when he got his hands on one. He used to write a technology column for The Guardian (I think). I remember he said the touchscreen was life changing, and i think he also pointed out that this was the first time anyone had thought to show the chain of text messages in a conversation instead of you just seeing the most recent message or the one you were currently typing (incredible to think now you didn’t used to be able to see a conversational chain of messages: and I’m sure that simple innovation revolutionised the way we now chat via text on WhatsApp and stuff like that).
It was preceded by the iPod touch (which I already had), so to me it was just an iPod Touch you could make phone calls on
And it wasn’t quite as big an immediate success as they initially thought. I was working in a semiconductor foundry in New York state and we were making several chips that went into the first version. At the end of the year we had quite a large surplus of spare chips that turned out to not be needed
I knew the iPhone was going to be good because the bloke who founded the mp3 player firm I worked for, left to join Apple, and he was obsessed with mobile phones. He’d import the very latest model phone, then take it to bits (years before ‘teardown’ videos were a thing) in our lab.
Everyone’s heard of Jony Ives but nobody ever hears about the backroom boys.
I thought wifi was all bollocks and would never happen.
We had the Stockholm Jazz Festival here recently and it was the biggest one they’ve ever arranged.
When I looked at the programme, I was very impressed. Not only were there a lot of concerts: 293. They were using 80 different venues, including suburban ones like Cafebio Tellus and Bio Reflexen where I am a volunteer.
However, prophet of doom that I am, I was convinced the festival had over-stretched itself and it would all end in tears.
How wrong I was! 30, 707 visitors: the most successful jazz festival ever.
I got to one gig: the opening night at the Fasching Jazz Club with the magnificent saxophonist and composer Jasmine Myra from Leeds.
You have to admire a jazz combo that has a harpist. Jasmine and the other six members of her superb band create music that is very distinctly their own. Melodic, restrained and spiritual.
She commented that they were honored to play a club at which so many wonderful jazz musicians have played. Stockholm is indeed very lucky to have Fasching.
And enough hipster jazzers to keep it going.
Sometimes it is great to be wrong.