If we're talking about the same time frame, 84 years ago, I don't think most people would doubt that it could happen. This is a period where there was an enormous growth in telecommunications, and I don't think most people thought it was obviously going to suddenly stop and stagnate for 84 years.

My guess is the idea wouldn't have seemed implausible even earlier. Once the telegraph came along, it probably seemed like at least a possibility.

However, if a wealthy individual 84 years ago who hadn't been involved in telecommunications decided to throw some money at it and said they were going to connect everyone 84 years in the future, people would probably be skeptical - and rightly so. Especially if the amount of money was less than many of the smaller players in the industry.

As the article points out (about the Zuckerberg effort), "One British charity - Cancer Research UK - is likely to spend more in that time on just one disease."

And "connect the world" is vague enough that it's easier to claim success with low hanging fruit. This is more like "I want to be able to instantly transfer anything anywhere in 84 years."

85% looks wildly optimistic too. And "giving it a shot" is not exactly new idea somebody needs to be convinced in - people are giving it a shot since the idea of medicine was born, which was probably before recorded history started. If the money they use for research bring fruit - excellent, but I'm not sure money is what limits us (and that 3bn is going to fix that if it were the problem), and certainly arbitrary date and bombastic goals is not what was missing from medical research field before.

I'd suspect that most innovations would have had plenty of experts and other people saying why they weren't possible.

But I think it needs stressing that being skeptical is not the same as being dismissive or ridiculing or having a hostile attitude towards things.

I think that the reason people tend to reject new ideas tends to be more on emotional terms rather than for truly skeptical reasons.

Take connecting the entire world. Even after the technology existed and had been deployed (the very early system that gave rise to the internet as we know it), people didn't look at that early version connecting a handful of places and think, "Wow, this could connect EVERYONE!" They didn't stand there, looking at the terminals of two connected computers, and imagine a connected world like the one we live in today. They didn't talk about ecommerce and social media global events being reported on in near real time. No one had to roll their eyes, because no one was making these grand claims.

I can't find the link now, but I read somewhere that it took YEARS after the Wright brothers had achieved first flight to get the attention of the world. People didn't see how transformative that thing could become, yet the proof of concept was there.

When you look at all the big tech moments in (recent-ish) history, the car, modern computation, the PC, aviation, you don't see people coming out with these grand declarations before the fact. And it's not for lack of intelligent, visionary people.

So it makes me wonder, whenever a person makes such grandiose plans, and they're not fiction writers, what's so different about them that they'd be able to see so far ahead?

Maybe they're different. How would I know? But history makes me skeptical.

The truth is the opposite: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12433966

Wrights were actually very secretive and they were reluctant to publish anything before they got the patent. They were so adamant about the patent that they didn't do any public demonstration of flight for years until they were literally forced by competing claims. In those times people making claims for "heavier than air" flights were numerous and it was hard to take anyone seriously unless they do demonstration. They not only chose not to do so until they got patent but also did almost nothing to enhance their technology meanwhile. Their contribution except for first flight is very marginal and their rest of the lives are dominated by nothing but patent worries, bringing massive lawsuits on others and getting royalties. They also made a very generic patent claim essentially asserting that any system that produces lift is covered by it. This produced a lot of friction in bringing new innovations to market leaving USA significantly behind of Europe.

In addition to this, there were flight enthusiasts all over the world, and particularly in France. They were hang-glider enthusiasts at the time, as that was the cutting-edge flight technology. One of the famous hang-glider pilots died due to his belief that a hang-glider ought to be controlled by shifting one's body weight, which led to a fatal stall. This further convinced the Wright brothers that "the control problem" was the most important problem to focus on.

A lot of people wanted to fly.

This is all tangential to your point, though, and wasn't meant to take anything away from it.

"Some day there will be, say, six great wireless telephone stations in a world system connecting all the inhabitants on this earth to one another, not only by voice, but by sight. It's surely coming."

Virtual and digital switching, or better, packet-based networks, remove that problem. At the heart of most messaging systems now is the directory -- either of individual addresses, or of systems on which those addresses reside. Hence: DNS, MXs, and the like, for email.

(This makes me realise that one way around the Global Directory of Everyone problem of current messaging systems is to split up the address space again.)

There is a line that can be crossed if I make a prediction and say that by 2100 humanity will become as powerful as Gods. That statement is ludicrous when judged by common sense. It is not unrealistic to the say the same of having ALL diseases cured by 2100.

I'm basically "rolling my eyes" at your comment.