The beginning of any year seems to be the best time to make any predictions.
At first glance, it seems like there’s no harm in putting out a little list among the glut of year-ends and year-to-come lists. If you make a prediction that seems unlikely, you can easily attribute it to enthusiastic wish-fulfillment or to copious amounts of holiday egg nog you consumed. If a prediction turns out right, you’ll be commended and your family members will throw a parade in your honor.
Plus, taking one’s informed analysis and extrapolating it to appealingly logical conclusions is a good thought exercise that can be shared (and expounded on) by readers.
But what if the pundits (including us) are completely, wacked-out-of-the-jambalaya wrong? If so, readers usually make sure no one ever forgets about it.
PC World recently compiled a small list of some of these predictions and they made us cringe. The list shows that high levels of brainpower and deep insider status do not prevent certain people from making terrible guesses. Indeed, we find that those who have a stake in the outcome of some technologies can be as blind as anyone.
For example, in 1946, 20th Century Fox movie exec Darryl Zanuck foolishly declared that the young medium of television was nothing but a passing fad:
"Television won’t be able to hold on to any market it captures after the first six months. People will soon get tired of staring at a plywood box every night."
Mr. Zanuck was a successful producer for years and (maybe quite sensibly) believed that transferring the power of a giant screen into a smaller one would be impossible. But he refused to understand that other entertainment options would rise in its stead and drive the tech forward.
In 1995, ethernet pioneer Robert Metcalfe had a similarly embarassing quip: "I predict the Internet will soon go spectacularly supernova and in 1996 catastrophically collapse." Years later, Mr. Metcalfe ended up blending up a copy of his statement with liquid and had to eat his own words. Literally.
Which brings us to the punditry of 2009. Who will eat tech crow in the next year? We looked for some interesting predictions in the interwebs and placed them below. We have some of our own ideas about these predictions, but we want to first gauge your thoughts about them.
Let us know in the comments about which ones you think are more likely to come true or not, and then we’ll reply next week with some brief thoughts on each. If you find more interesting predictions from other pundits, please send them our way.
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"Having thousands of friends becomes ‘so 2008’ and defriending becomes the hot new trend, driven by overwhelming rivers of newsfeeds." – Charlene Li, Altimeter Group
"There will be more than 40 Android mobile devices next year, and the Android platform will be outselling the iPhone by July." – Matthaus Krzykowski, VentureBeat
"Android Will Have Less than 20% the Sales of iPhone in 2009." Louis Gray, louisgray.com
"iTunes will go completely DRM-free." – MG Siegler, VentureBeat
"A Nano version of the iPhone: the iPhone has been extremely successful. It’s only logical that Apple capitalize and create a cutesier version." – MrGadget.com
"Blu-Ray becomes the de facto standard as prices of players drop as low as $70 and Blu-Ray Media prices drop to $15 by years end." – GeekTonic
"Power consumption in U.S. data centers will not decline by any appreciable degree . . . Too few data center managers have any clue what their electricity bill is, and even fewer have figured out that being "green" is as much about smart expense management that saves jobs as it is about some obscure "carbon footprint." — Don Tennant, Computerworld
"Apple TV will evolve into an actual TV." – Jason Schwarz, seekingalpha.com
"Venture capital funding will drop sharply." Anthony Ha – The Industry Standard
"Windows 7 Will Get A Better Reception Than Vista." — CRN
"The thing we think of as a netbook should really be something else—a flat-panel, touch-screen tablet that can do photos, music, movies, e-mail, games, and full-function Web browsing . . . I’ll be surprised if we don’t see a great Web tablet in 2009." – Farhad Manjoo, Slate.com
"Wired.com writers Daniel Dumas and Brian Chen will both surpass the dreaded $100 cutoff for stylish emo-inspired haircuts, and Alexis Madrigal will sport huge, Unabomber-style facial hair as he loses himself while writing a book. Also, Microsoft will release a Zune Phone, Wii Punch-out! will be considered a disappointment, and President Barack Obama will pretend to enjoy playing with a Microsoft Surface computer, with Bill Gates looking on." — Jose Fermoso, Wired.com
Lead photo: bitterjug/Flickr
With the holidays and our year-end app lists (
