Benny's House Consensus as a guide for AD decisions.

what consensus?

Mostly for entertainment purposes, but sometimes you are at a party and you overhear a person talking about this iPod idea, and it gets you thinking about investing in Apple at a moment when it's stock is pretty low.

I remember hearing that we were within 5-10 years of people having their own phone number and no matter where they were they could get a call. Stupid me, I didn't think about a mobile phone, couldn't figure out how they'd route calls to the nearest phone. Even when mobile phones came out I never thought it'd catch on. How many people would want to be carrying around an oversized purse with a full sized phone and all of the corresponding equipment in it (I actually did know a few who did)?

As far as the videotapes go, I had a friend who worked at the first video store in Corvallis. He was talking about what a huge business it was going to become. I thought it'd never catch on as well. I'm thinking he thought BetaMax would win. A bunch of years later I had a friend at HP who said to give it 4-5 years and video stores would die because of cable and other providers were going to get in the on demand biz. I finally believed him.