Outside the Beltway

Never Make a Prediction on the Internet

James Joyner · Thursday, April 24, 2008 · 1 comment

Roger L. Simon counsels, readers to “Never make a prediction on the Internet,” noting, “Used to be you made a prediction in print and it was gone in a day – lost in the morgue of some newspaper or the bowels of the public library. Nowadays, it’s written in indelible digital ink that can make you look almost instantly ridiculous.”

True. On the other hand, there was once a relatively limited amount of print space, which highlighted the predictions. Nowadays, so many of us are making predictions that the sheer number may cancel out the harm caused by permanency.