08/18/2026
That's me in 2019, right after a magazine published a piece where I confidently predicted the future.
I said there would be 75 billion connected devices by 2025.
We ended up with about 21 billion.
I was off by 54 billion. In print. With my face next to it.
Here's what I've thought about since: I wasn't reckless. I was citing the same number everyone else was citing. Every analyst, every keynote, every panel. It felt less like a prediction and more like reading the room back to itself.
That's the trap. Being wrong alone feels dangerous, so we get wrong together and call it consensus.
The part I got right had nothing to do with the number. The technology did arrive. What I didn't account for was everything human: budgets that got deferred, teams that were already stretched, projects that got approved and then quietly never started.
I've stopped predicting adoption curves. I now assume any new technology will take about three times longer than the room believes, because the limiting factor is almost never the technology.
Seven years is long enough to see your own confidence graded.
What's something you were sure about in 2019?