[00:07.61]What didn't come to pass
[00:10.20]by Vivienne Parry, former presenter
[00:13.05]of Tomorrow's World
[00:15.02]1 Forecasting what life is going to be
[00:16.88]like years down the line is a dodgy business.
[00:19.87]Even the experts don't always get it right.
[00:22.80]Take Bill Gates, for example.
[00:25.07]In 1981, he firmly stated that "640k of memory
[00:29.85]ought to be enough for anyone."
[00:31.92]So it's more than a bit embarrassing for him
[00:34.79]now that,even on a standard issue home PC,
[00:38.24]you need 200 times that amount of memory
[00:40.93]just to run his own company's software.
[00:44.17]Fortunately for Bill,
[00:45.47]others predicted that the technological
[00:47.26]future would involve giant computers
[00:50.08]that were the size of cities,
[00:52.21]whereas what we actually have
[00:54.56]are ever-shrinking models that you can tuck
[00:57.29]neatly into your pocket,
[00:59.24]which are hundreds of times more powerful
[01:01.48]than their lumbering predecessors.
[01:03.89]Nano-technology is definitely the way forward.
[01:05.67]
