Wild Predictions for a Wired 2007

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?

Just like it was

[advocate_one]

back in the Viking times... why else do you think they called it Greenland then???

As the ice melts, Greenland becomes literally green.

Marketing

[hypermanng]

They were trying to establish a viable colony and needed to attract more colonists. "Hostile Frigid Waste" wasn't working, so Greenland it was.

Re:Wired is a contra indicator

[truthsearch]

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.

Re:Just like it was

[Anonymous Coward]

Errr No.

From wikipedia:

"The name "Greenland" comes from Scandinavian settlers. In the Norse sagas, it is said that Erik the Red was exiled from Iceland for murder. He, along with his extended family and thralls, set out in ships to find the land that was rumored to be to the northwest. After settling there, he named the land Grænland ("Greenland"), possibly in order to attract more people to settle there. Greenland was also called Gruntland ("Ground-land") on early maps. Whether Green is an erroneous transcription of Grunt ("Ground"), which refers to shallow bays, or vice versa, is not known. It should also be noted, however, that the southern portion of Greenland (not covered by glacier) is indeed very green in the summer."

Re:What is so great about IM?

[thebdj]

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 another person or group of people? Can you thread the information into a cohesive timeline?
Logs have timestamps. Marvelous little thing that tells you the date and time a message was sent. Forwarding messages might be possible. Worst case you copy and paste. Most chat systems also offer chat room options. AOL IM offers you the ability to create a room and invite the people you want to it. This can be accomplished and logged with the above.

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?
Obviously a lot. IM is coming into increasing usage. We have a Jabber server at work for all internal communications, it is used more than the e-mail system or the phones are. I actually have to get up from my desk once a day just to make sure that people are really in this place. I do not know how big it will be with inter-office communications, especially considering a lot of companies headed by older execs still don't use e-mail well. (Trust me, plenty of offices are still sending TONS of paper memos.)

Re:Apple laptops?

[Orange Crush]

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:Wired predictions

[Migizi]

LASIK isn't all it is cracked up to be. Most people do have improved vision but not 100% and it does require tune-ups. It also diminishes night sight and gives the patient tunnel vision. Implants have been used in most of the European countries for a few years and they don't have the loss of night sight or tunnel vision issues that LASIK has. I believe the last time I read about implants they were also cheaper, safer and a longer history of use.

One third of the people I know who got LASIK have tunnel vision and loss of night sight. Another one third took over 6 months to see any benefits and only the last third said they had no issues but do require tune-ups.

GOOG up to $1000?

[Pendersempai]

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.