Getting it for free

Some fun quotes:
"Television won't be able to hold onto any market it captures after the first six months. People will soon get tired of staring at a plywood box every night." Daryl F. Zanuck, movie producer, 1946.

"The problem with television is that the people must sit and keep their eyes glued on a screen; the average American family hasn't time for it." -The New York Times, after a prototype demonstration at the 1939 World's Fair. (source)

There's a ton of these types of predictions made.  For every device that became a sensation, there were a brace of scholars who insisted it was a fad.  And vice versa.  Malcolm Gladwell's Tipping Point was essentially a treatise on this, that tiny, unexpected factors can make a Tamagochi interesting and a mutant Pepsi disgusting.

One would think people would stop making blanket predictions, or at least mediate their claims with some acknowledgement that they could be entirely wrong.  But what fun would it be for me if people did what made sense.

The article linked to above seems to ignore the fact that there are thousands upon thousands of pictures of cats with corrupted english out there.  It seems to ignore the fact that there are people with government jobs who find enough time to download BOXES OF PORN.  Or start blogs.

The fact is, you cannot underestimate people's capacity to waste their time.  Sometimes $1.99 is worth two hours of digging through torrents.