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Wild Predictions for a Wired 2007

Posted by Zonk on Tue Jan 02, 2007 10:41 AM
from the not-that-wild dept.
The Internet Technology News
An anonymous reader writes "Wired has put up its predictions for the coming year, in technology, internet, and entertainment news. Despite their claim that they are 'wild' predictions, a lot of them make some sense. Some of their calls: 'Google Stock Hits $1,000 per Share. Internet Traffic Doubles to 5,000 petabits per day by the end of 2007. And 80 percent of it is peer-to-peer file sharing, mostly Skype video and BitTorrent. BitTorrent on TiVo: Speaking of, digital video recorders get BitTorrent baked in, bringing internet video to the living room. Spam Doubles: No-brainer -- but no one cares because we're all using IM, especially at work. Second Life Ends a Life: Skullduggery in Second Life -- probably digital adultery -- ends in a real-life murder. Year o' the Laptop: Half of all new computers sold in 2007 will be laptops and 20 percent of those will be Apple's MacBooks." What do you folks think? How many will Wired have called correctly by the end of the year?
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  • Beatles back catalogue... (Score:3, Funny)

    by advocate_one (662832) on Tuesday January 02 2007, @10:46AM (#17431868)
    The entire Beatles catalog is licensed exclusively to iTunes for a year.

    Jacko getting short of cash again???

  • One fix (Score:5, Insightful)

    by SnarfQuest (469614) on Tuesday January 02 2007, @10:47AM (#17431872)
    Internet Traffic Doubles to 5,000 petabits per day by the end of 2007. And 80 percent of it is peer-to-peer file sharing, mostly Skype video and BitTorrent.

    Change that "spam", and then I'd believe it.

    • Re:One fix (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Salvance (1014001) * on Tuesday January 02 2007, @11:07AM (#17432084) Homepage Journal
      There's a lot that's either just so blatantly obvious or lame that it's hard to believe they consider these "wild". I'd hate to see Wired's parties ... To try to be a little more "wild" with predictions, here are mine ... I'll bet at least one pans out:
      1. Gootube is sued by a consortium of Music Publishers, and caves hard to copyright protections
      2. RIAA creates their own music sharing program cloaked as an offshore company, then gathers IPs and sues thousands of file sharers
      3. Steve Jobs will step down amidst some scandal, either stock options or due to random trysts with Apple interns
      4. The OLPC project will be featured on Sesame Street, and become the hot holiday product of 2007 for small children
      5. Yahoo will make at least 2 ridiculously overpriced purchases, at least one will either be Facebook, or a floating dirigible high over Texas (similar to the banana over Texas [neatorama.com] ... which surprisingly is a real project)
      • 1. Possible, but I think Google is perceived to be so influential that the RIAA/MPAA will actually want to work with them (while still threatening to sue).
        2. They already gather IPs and sue. No need for a cloaked company.
        3. My bet would be Jobs made sure to stay clean. The problems are mostly with past execs, not himself.
        4. Sesame Street doesn't feature products.
        5. This one is probable. Yahoo is definitely concerned with becoming stale and is constantly looking to buy things ups. They'll make some uber-

        • Re:One fix (Score:5, Funny)

          by slashbob22 (918040) on Tuesday January 02 2007, @12:54PM (#17433372)

          4. Sesame Street doesn't feature products.
          Really? I bet the Letter E would have something to say about that.

            • Are you saying Sesame Street was involved with Enron?
              Sure was. They also support:
              C) The C Programming Language
              D) Democratic Party
              E) Enron
              1) The BBC

              I think we can all see that Sesame Street isn't as innocent as we all thought.

  • Wired predictions (Score:3, Funny)

    by Paradoks (711398) on Tuesday January 02 2007, @10:47AM (#17431882) Homepage
    Ah, Wired wildly predicting things; it's as if we've never left 1994, much less 2006. Bring on the memories.

    • Re:Wired predictions (Score:5, Funny)

      by Rob T Firefly (844560) on Tuesday January 02 2007, @11:14AM (#17432158) Homepage Journal
      Ah, Wired wildly predicting things; it's as if we've never left 1994, much less 2006. Bring on the memories.
      But they're doing it in only one or two fonts per page now, written in mostly non-fluorescent ink. Progress!
    • I will say, IMHO, that Wired is a big let down.

      I remember when it was first announced I thought it was going to be kick ass until I read it and found that it was somewhere between a lame Omni (which isn't saying much) and a geeky Maxim.

      Pop culture's attempt at try to make technology seem hip... great.

      Meanwhile all the screaming fanbois they have on stock really kills any chance for progressive writing.

      Yawn...

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Andy Dodd (701)
      I find it amusing that at least one of their "predictions" came true in even better form years ago.

      "Implantable contact lenses" - why implant something when you can just fix the cornea itself? I had LASIK performed five years ago, and it wasn't even that new then. It has improved even more in the past five years too. Corneal implants for those with cataracts have existed for even longer.

  • Wired is a contra indicator (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    So many social revolutions seen through the lens of that San Francisco circle jerk of media. So many people lead to the slaughter of the bubble by these losers. And someone at wired must work for Second Life because they've been over-hyping that non-event forever.

    • Re:Wired is a contra indicator (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Rachel Lucid (964267) on Tuesday January 02 2007, @10:52AM (#17431926) Homepage Journal
      Second Life is catching on as more computers are able to handle 3D-Rendering. A good friend of mine who'll be working at Google shortly got completely hooked on it a couple months ago and won't shut up about it now.

      So, sure, I'll buy the whole second-life prediction.

      • Re:Wired is a contra indicator (Score:4, Informative)

        by truthsearch (249536) on Tuesday January 02 2007, @11:05AM (#17432070) Homepage Journal
        More and more people are trying second life. But the retention rate is extremely low. A fair percentage of daily users are only trying to make money. The vast majority of people check it out, don't see anything very interesting, and leave.

        I gave it a fair shot. I logged on just about every day for three weeks. I explored and explored and explored. I found no reason to stick around.
    • Have you ever played Second Life?

      Neither have I but the people I know that play it are -exactly- the type that would get wrapped up in a virtual world, commit adultery & then kill as a result of it.
  • not while we can be milked for support... the women aren't gonna drop us and fend for themselves...
    Artificial gametes made from female eggs are sold over the internet, making fathers biologically irrelevant.
    • Plus, I would think that for (the mostly male) scientist community, creating female replicants would higher in the priorities list.
      • Troll maybe... but then the modder really counts equally as troll

        Who knows what the future will bring - maybe the Tleilaxu will turn out to have it right - not sure axolotl tanks are really the way to go though.... (and if you miss the reference you could try wikipedia but I'd recommend forgoing that and actualy read the Dune books - the prequels aren't too bad either)
  • back in the Viking times... why else do you think they called it Greenland then???
    As the ice melts, Greenland becomes literally green.

    • Marketing (Score:5, Informative)

      by hypermanng (155858) on Tuesday January 02 2007, @11:03AM (#17432054) Homepage
      They were trying to establish a viable colony and needed to attract more colonists. "Hostile Frigid Waste" wasn't working, so Greenland it was.
      • Maybe North Dakota should hire the same marketing firm. They just keep getting stuck on Dakota, but it's going to take a lot more than that to convice people that it's not damned cold.

    • Re:Just like it was (Score:4, Interesting)

      by kansas1051 (720008) on Tuesday January 02 2007, @11:04AM (#17432062)
      back in the Viking times... why else do you think they called it Greenland then???

      The Vikings (Erik the Red) called it Greenland to encourage immigrants to move there. Although some contend "Greenland" comes from a bad translation of Gruntland ("Ground-land"). See Wikipedia [wikipedia.org].

    • why else do you think they called it Greenland then???

      To attract more people to come and settle there [wikipedia.org]; it wouldn't sound as attractive if they had called it Glacierland or NotSoGreenOtherThanTheSouthernMostTipInMidSummerLa nd.

  • A Bit Premature (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Silver Sloth (770927) on Tuesday January 02 2007, @10:52AM (#17431928)

    Greenland Becomes Green

    As the ice melts, Greenland becomes literally green.
    It will take a few more years (or even decades) yet. It might not even happen, we should stop calling it 'Global Warming' and start calling it 'Climate Change' otherwise it gives this idea that everywhere will become some sort of tropical paradise. We Brits could do with some warming but, if some of the predictions about the gulf stream are correct, we'll actually get colder.

  • they forgot to mention... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by teh_chrizzle (963897) <kill-9@NoSpAm.hobbiton.org> on Tuesday January 02 2007, @10:52AM (#17431940) Homepage

    that this is the year of linux on the desktop and that this is the year that sun's "whatever the hell we are calling thin clients this year" breaks the MS stranglehold on the corporate desktop.

    i don't think either will happen, but some crackpot makes that prediction every year. this year, it would appear that cackpot is me :-)

  • Apple laptops? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by NineNine (235196) on Tuesday January 02 2007, @10:53AM (#17431948) Homepage
    Half of all new computers sold in 2007 will be laptops and 20 percent of those will be Apple's MacBooks."

    I doubt this. But then, Wired has always been even bigger Apple shills than Slashdot is.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by Orange Crush (934731)
      I doubt this. But then, Wired has always been even bigger Apple shills than Slashdot is.

      Apple's laptop market share doubled [appleinsider.com] in the first half of last year from 6% in January 2006 to 12% in June 2006. I don't know what their market share is up to since 6/06 but predicting 20% for 2007 doesn't sound unreasonable to me.

    • Re:Apple laptops? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Keyslapper (852034) on Tuesday January 02 2007, @11:26AM (#17432252) Homepage
      Actually, I'd be surprised if it was only 20%.

      I'm not an OS hound at all, I've used Linux, FreeBSD, Windows (Every version since 3.1 - except '98) and finally, MacOSX. FreeBSD has always been a favorite, and I've always lamented the fact that there weren't more paying jobs that focused on the *BSDs.

      I've developed (for my bread and butter) on 5 flavors of Unix (not including Linux or any *BSD), and am currently doing so on Windows.

      Now, that doesn't make me an expert on any one of these platforms, and certainly doesn't make me privy to any special information, but it seems to me that the changes Apple has made in just the last couple years are huge gains. You can now do anything with MacOSX that you could once only do on Windows - and a great many of them are considerably easier with OSX.

      The change to an Intel architecture has opened the way to VM development, which essentially puts Apple ahead of MS in terms of feature availability - while MS has added video and photo management features to Vista that are suspiciously similar to iPhoto and iDVD, they still don't have anything like GarageBand or Sherlock (which, by the way, is an AWESOME app). This is the point where MS will start to lose, unless they stop playing the "Me Too" game, using Apple as their R&D lab and start playing to their strengths. MS is still ahead in the hardware game, though with Apple's shift to Intel, this is a somewhat slimmer lead. Vista has been labeled a MacOSX wannabe (without the stability) by a number of sources, some of which are typically pro-MS. MS needs to get their own R&D and design teams, and start making their UI more flexible - and stable. Until they start focusing on flexibility, stability, and (more effectively) on security, they'll continue to struggle to stay just one step ahead.

      I think this will be the year the balance starts to tip. I don't know if it will stay tipped, or if it will tip to anything near equivalence, much less anywhere near the level Apple actually deserves for all their hard work and creative innovation, but it will tip.

      And BTW, I've been waiting for the new year myself to upgrade to a Macbook Pro, simply for the "extras" that Apple does so much better, and the VMs, which will finally let me have the OS of my choice on a laptop. Of course, storage for all these VMs will now become something of a hassle (WinXP, Vista, Ubuntu, Knoppix, FreeBSD, etc.) ...

      Before anyone suggests you can still get those OSes on a VM in Windows, keep in mind, you can't get MacOSX on a VM in Windows yet. Even so, I happen to like the look and feel of the Apple notebooks better than pretty much anything I've seen from Dell, Gateway, or any of the other big PC makers.

  • Rats. (Score:4, Funny)

    by TripMaster Monkey (862126) on Tuesday January 02 2007, @10:53AM (#17431954)

    Still no flying cars.

    Damnit...

    I was promised flying cars...

  • interesting, not necessarily agreed... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by jimstapleton (999106) on Tuesday January 02 2007, @10:56AM (#17431964) Journal
    Year o' the Laptop Half of all new computers sold in 2007 will be laptops and 20 percent of those will be Apple's MacBooks.
    With the popularity of notebooks, I can see this, except for the 20% by Apple, I doubt they'll surpass 10-15% at best.
    Print to Web A major newspaper gives up printing on paper to publish exclusively online.
    Not sure that this'll happen, unless you want to stretch the definition of "a major newpaper".
    HD-DVD Wins HD-DVD is the clear winner over Blu-ray in the DVD format wars. Oh yeah, and the PS3 is a bust.
    The latter was more-or-less already true before 2007 started. The former... It's too early to tell, never underestimate the power of marketing dweebs at selling crap.
    Implantable Contact Lenses Synthetic corneas will be approved by the Food and Drug Administration, allowing the shortsighted to have artificial contact lenses transplanted right into their eyes. No more popping out!
    Not really a surprise or news. I thought it had already been done, but I guess I could be wrong. Not like it'd be the first time.
    No More Dads Artificial gametes made from female eggs are sold over the internet, making fathers biologically irrelevant.
    Still 5+ years off. Also it's not really an online type thing until they get a USB medicomaitc or something like that. It's still going to require the wom(an|en) in question to go to a lab and/or doctors office.
    PaedoSpace Sex offenders start their own social networking service. It's popular on Capitol Hill.
    That's hardly insightful or news. Already done, it's called congress.
    DNA Database for Athletes To stamp out doping, the Olympic Committee orders all athletes to submit DNA samples to a global database, which matches blood found in doping forensics to cheats. Forensics include needles, tubes, bags of blood and skin cells on stacks of 100-euro notes seized at doping clinics.
    Got bridge? Want one? This won't happen.
    Online Sitcom Picked Up by Network Encouraged by the news, the internet becomes home to 5,000 clones of Friends, shot by friends using their friends but unwatched even by their friends.
    Wired, meet youtube, youtube meet wired.
    MySpace Spaces Out MySpace splinters as teens head for niche sites. New services that control profiles across multiple social networking sites begin to take off.
    Possible, but I doubt it. Most people are too lazy to move.
          • Problem is, that's going to plateau. At some point they'll reach that point where to gain any inroads they have to start replacing all the corporate Dells, Compaqs and IBMs - then their growth will slow dramatically, "rightly" or "wrongly".
  • I'm a luddite I admit, but what makes IM so great?

    There's no way to archive the messages is there?

    Is there a way to catalog the information into a searchable index?

    How can you "forward" an im to another person or group of people? Can you thread the information into a cohesive timeline?

    I definitely have uses for irc (which is kinda like im I guess) but if it were my sole means of electronic communication I wouldn't get anything done. What am I missing?
    • * No archive = harder to trace those solicitations from congressman to page
      * You don't forward the thread, you simply invite them into the chat

      But, I agree. IM has it's place, but it is the same reason that our cell phones (which we carry around with us all the time) have voicemail. IM is the phone call and E-mail is the voice mail. I don't see either of them going away (maybe morphing into something better, but not going away).

      Layne
    • I'm a luddite I admit, but what makes IM so great? There's no way to archive the messages is there? Is there a way to catalog the information into a searchable index? How can you "forward" an im to another person or group of people? Can you thread the information into a cohesive timeline?
      By running a quick text search on my Gaim logs, which are stored in bog-standard HTML files, I see that someone asked me that very question in 2003.
    • Meet Google Talk paired with Gmail! Everything you asked for an more (and they even come together... need an invite, let me know!)
    • There's no way to archive the messages is there?
      Is there a way to catalog the information into a searchable index?
      How can you "forward" an im to another person or group of people? Can you thread the information into a cohesive timeline?

      And a more important question...

      If all of this functionality was put into an IM client would it still be IM or would we just start calling it eMail?

      This isn't much unlike the "death" of the PDA. The PDA isn't dying, it's migrating. The current common form of the PDA m

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by thebdj (768618)
      I'm a luddite I admit, but what makes IM so great?
      Instant gratification? Even e-mail is not as instantaneous as IMs are. Far less spam. Granted IM is getting spammed, but not at the rate that e-mail is.

      There's no way to archive the messages is there?
      GAIM [sf.net]

      Is there a way to catalog the information into a searchable index?
      See my previous answer. If you log, you can search those logs using GAIM. Not real hard. Tons of other programs offer this option as well.

      How can you "forward" an im to anot

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by Qzukk (229616)
      How can you "forward" an im to another person or group of people?

      I use bash.org for that.

  • Only IM at work -- NOT (Score:3, Insightful)

    by PeeAitchPee (712652) on Tuesday January 02 2007, @11:00AM (#17432010)

    Spam Doubles: No-brainer -- but no one cares because we're all using IM, especially at work.

    Sorry, wrong, *buzzz*. Email will continue to be the corporate IT bedrock it's been for the last decade. While IM is great for those young folks with a short attention spam pushing around uber-important stuff like "OMG?!?!? He dumped her? Shes gonna like be sooooo drunk tonite!" -- and I'll admit it even has a place augmenting email in certain areas of the enterprise -- corporate america already has billions in infrastructure built around this more persistant method of communication. I for one have noticed that if I leave "on" an IM client at work I get pestered to the point where I just end up keeping it off, and eventually unstall it.

    • While IM is great for those young folks with a short attention spam

      Was that intentional? How does one have a "long attention spam"?
  • Spam Doubles: No-brainer -- but no one cares because we're all using IM, especially at work

    I just stopped using one of my accounts at work because of spim. So yes, people care.
  • I'd say over 50% of the forecasts will turn out -- but only in the USA. Some of them are already USA-specific anyway (eg TiVo) and WIRED notoriously has a set of blinkers that restrict its vision to the contiguous 48 states (and sometimes just to Californyaa). The real skinny:
    • Google Stock -- who gives a flying f*ck anyway except the tiny number who own some?
    • Internet Traffic -- bandwidth is always in demand, but it will be 80% taken up by spam
    • BitTorrent on TiVo -- more likely BitTorrent will be throttled

  • Congress (Score:3, Funny)

    by RockoTDF (1042780) on Tuesday January 02 2007, @11:24AM (#17432234) Homepage
    I highly doubt with a democratic congress in charge things are going to be getting any worse for us in the areas of privacy and the government any time soon.

  • GOOG up to $1000? (Score:3, Informative)

    by Pendersempai (625351) on Tuesday January 02 2007, @07:20PM (#17437698)
    Do they really believe their Google stock prediction? The market thinks it's pretty unlikely. If you agree with Wired, put your money where your mouth is. Here's the link to GOOG call options with a $750 strike price, a 1/18/08 expiration, and a price of only around $5.60:

    http://finance.yahoo.com/q/op?s=GOOG&m=2008-01 [yahoo.com]

    Stock options are contracts you buy that let you purchase a share of the stock at the strike price on the expiration date. In practice, this means that you are making a bet that the stock will pass the strike price by the expiration date; if you are correct, you win the difference.

    So if Wired's prediction comes true, you'd earn $250 ($1000-750) for every $5.60 you spend on the option -- a 4364% return on investment. Not bad for a year's investment.
    • Internet Traffic Doubles to 5,000 petabits per day by the end of 2007. And 80 percent of it is peer-to-peer file sharing, mostly Skype video and BitTorrent.


      How many petabits are wasted on "Frist Psot" posts one wonders......

      Layne
    • And I'm goin' win the big lottery!

      I already did. I have several e-mails to prove it. Someday I'm going to have to call and ask when they are sending the money.

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