Let’s Revisit Alex Hillman’s 2008 Predictions For Philly’s Tech Future

Way back in 2008, we wrapped up a little thing called Philly Internet History Week by taking some predictions of the future from Indy Hall co-founder Alex Hillman. Hillman tweeted the old link out yesterday, pointing out how on the nose he was, so let’s take a look at those predictions:

>>> “Our roads have 4’ wide potholes and traffic backed up along the Schuylkill ExpressDistress-way”

As this winter set pothole records, we gotta say he was right on this one. Though, additionally, those potholes were about a foot deep too.

>>> “Will city-wide wifi ever happen? Not if it’s the city behind it.”

What? You guys aren’t using that top secret city-wide wifi that’s been in operation since 2008? We mean … uh … what?

>>> “Apparently, public transportation isn’t any more reliable in the future. iSepta will settle a legal dispute with SEPTA by renaming their app to SorryYoureStillWaitingForTheTrainYouShouldProbablyCallACab.com.”

Might as well. As a side note, the SEPTA app, for what it actually strives to do, isn’t bad. We used the NJ Transit My Tix app recently, and while that had no schedules or information at all, you could buy tickets on it. It was barely useful, but perfect for the one thing it promised to do. Can we set that app and th SEPTA app up on a date and hope that a few years down the line we get total functionality with the option to buy tickets on your phone?

>>> “Comcast and Verizon will continue their skyscraper pissing match, spending all of their energy showing the skyline “whose is bigger,” while Verizon continues leaving customers wondering, ‘When on earth will FiOS get to my neighborhood. I heard it was coming in 2008.’”

FiOS still isn’t everywhere — and as a FiOS customer, for real, it ain’t that great — and we all know who won that pissing match.

>>> “Comcast’s twitter-loving evangelist, Frank a.k.a @ComcastCares, will inevitably burn out from personally replying to each inquiry. Luckily, in the future, Comcast has cloned Frank into an army of Franks, giving them an edge on customer support. That’s right. In the future, Comcast’s customer support won’t suck, but the prerequisite is the invention of cloning.”

ComcastCares Frank “resigned”, and the Twitter account is now run by Bill Gerth, which definitely sounds like the name of a clone in a porn movie.

So, five for five. That’s a pretty great prediction rate, you know, not getting one wrong and all. Also, it’s a lot better than our March Madness brackets are doing right now (you shall be avenged, St. Joe’s).

This entry was posted on Friday, March 21st, 2014 at 11:10 am.

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