Since everybody is talking about predictions for 2010, I thought I would bump it up a notch. Anybody care to make some predictions about what we'll see in the coming decade (2010-2019)?
I'll try a couple.
- Major changes will happen in Iran, one way or the other. The current trajectory they are on does not seem sustainable for a decade.
- Ubiquitous computing will finally arrive, with smart cards/RFID on our bodies seamlessly interacting with computers in our environment. As you walk up to your refrigerator, for instance, you're logged in and presented with a customized display. Same goes for the car or the entertainment surface at the Dentist's.
- Flat panel displays will not drop to rock-bottom. Instead, a new generation of 2160 and 3240p 3-D panels will appear for consumer setting. Rock-bottom 10-20 inch panels will stabilize in the 50-100 range and stay there. Sorry, no panel/OLED wallpaper, at least not cheaply in the coming decade.
You guys have any?
Google succeed in forcing the mobile providers to be commodity data pipes. They scream blue murder, try to cartel up, but Google breaks the cartel and several big names are forced out of the market.
Ebooks defeat paper books. All high street bookstores go bust. Rampant book piracy throws the copyright war into overdrive. Despite international treaties and draconian law, the pirates win.
Electric cars become fairly common. A destructive feedback loop starts for gasoline fuel: lower demand, lower profit, vendors go bust, less availability, monopoly prices, lower desirability. The gasoline economy is brittle because it has high fixed costs, a complex supply chain, and its power source isn't fungible. As with film versus digital cameras, the result is an exponential crash in the desirability of gasoline cars, with mass conversion to battery-electric and collapse of the oil industry. Government greenhouse warming policies will continue to be useless, but they'll be eclipsed by events. The big panic will be the overstraining electricity grid. Residential grids were not specced to fuel everybody's car at once.
Driverless cars will appear. As they move down from the high end to the mainstream, they'll make taxis cheap enough that private car ownership starts to become quaint. Eventually, driving your own car will be considered selfish risk-taking, and banned on public roads.