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?

Wired is a contra indicator

[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.

What is so great about IM?

[Buskaatt]

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?

Re:Just like it was

[kansas1051]

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].

Re:One fix

[Salvance]

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)

Re:Wired predictions

[Andy Dodd]

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.