I predict another long year

December 29, 2005 2:38 PM

Look...look into the LCD Ball. Divine the great spirits of tech and gaze into 2006. The new year is only a few days away, how hard is it to guess into next week?
posted by MiltonRandKalman (22 comments total)

Makes me want to run away and hide from computers.
posted by strangeleftydoublethink at 2:47 PM on December 29, 2005

I wonder if the predictions related to AOL Gore will affect the value of the Moon Sapphire.
posted by Gator at 2:48 PM on December 29, 2005

Steve Jobs loses popularity? WRONG! I predict Steve Jobs will take over the planet and install himself as The Great Hive-Mind. Problem is people will hardly notice the difference.
posted by tkchrist at 2:58 PM on December 29, 2005

Man, I am just not excited about video anything.
posted by selfnoise at 3:00 PM on December 29, 2005

If you don't want to read all of the links let me summarize.

Google: DOOMED!
Apple: DOOMED!
Technorati: DOOMED!
Mediamap: DOOMED!
Internet Consumers: DOOMED!

BioScience: RICH!!
Amazon: RICH!!
Video: RICH!!
Cellphones with useful blinky magic: RICH!!
Apple on cellphones: RICH!!
Things that use 'media collaboration': RICH!!
Things that use RSS: RICH!!
Media collaborating Apple cellphones with useful blinky magic, video and RSS: PHAT RICH!!

Writers of Prediction Lists: RICH!!
posted by MiltonRandKalman at 3:09 PM on December 29, 2005

Hey MiltonRandKalman, did any of those lists happen to say "Schoolgirl Report: RICH!!"? 'Cause that would be sweet.
posted by schoolgirl report at 3:17 PM on December 29, 2005

My prediction: Idiots who use the word "blogosphere" will forget to breathe and asphyxiate.
posted by Dean Keaton at 3:19 PM on December 29, 2005

My predictions for 2006:

• Dell will become the first computer company to sell a metric hojillion computers
• Google will buy a bunch more servers
• Microsoft will almost release a major update to Windows XP
• Cellphones will get more built-in functionality
• Apple will update the iPod. Oh, and one more thing...
• They'll update the iBook too.

Now where's my tech news writing gig.
posted by boaz at 3:19 PM on December 29, 2005

Another blog search engine will release a list of top 100 bloggers. Every blogger on the list will blog the news in the form of: “Wow, I’m honored to have made it onto the top 100 list” with a link back to the list maintainer’s blog. The list maintainer will in return blog: “I’m honored to see that the list has been covered by such a high-profile blogger” with a link back to the winner’s blog. The link incest will continue for weeks until it has propelled the list maintainer himself into the top 100, at which point the list will be declared a sham and the blogosphere will erupt in outrage.

Proof positive that 2006 will be the next 1999.
posted by chrominance at 3:20 PM on December 29, 2005

Schoolgirl Report asked '...did any of those lists happen to say "Schoolgirl Report: RICH!!"?'

Yes, I came across horoscope fortelling your future full great treasures real and imagined. Or a pony...I'll have to double check my browser cache.
posted by MiltonRandKalman at 3:40 PM on December 29, 2005

Now, for some real predictions:

• Wi-Fi cellphones will not take off in 2006. This is a no-brainer. First, cellphone purchases are heavily subsidized by carriers who sell you minutes of time on their network, and so are not particularly interested in letting you talk for free on someone else's. Second, the vast majority of consumer-level and public-access point have no support for traffic-shaping, so calls will fade out every time Ernest at the next table decides to reload that Pamela Anderson picture.
• Second, VoIP of the telco-integrated variety will expand only gradually, especially as they find it nearly impossible to comply with Federal 911 guidelines. Eventually, VoIP providers will have to include GPS functionality in the phones they supply. Which they'll probably realize sometime in 2008.
• Using your computer to talk online via AOL, GoogleTalk, Skype, etc. will get bigger, but it already was pretty big, so eh.
• Video will not come to the blog, as the average blogger figures out a) that among the morass of competing video standards, those crappy flash players are the only near-universally supported one, b) that he really doesn't look as good as he thinks he does when flexing in front of the mirror, and c) that producing 5 minutes of video can only take less than an hour's work by sucking.
• More bloggers will start posting video segments from TV shows more, since that's pretty easy. This will lead to a new round in the long-running Corporate Cease and Desisters vs. Internet Whiners clash.
• More CEO's will do that blog thing like Mark Cuban. Heck there may be 5 or 6 by the end of 2006.
• The vast majority of CEOs will continue to be unable to plug in a computer without IT department help.

posted by boaz at 4:00 PM on December 29, 2005

Prediction: I will be a millionare.
posted by delmoi at 5:54 PM on December 29, 2005

2006 will be marked by three distinct trends — or Drifts, or Developments, Plagues, Fads, Fashions & certainly inescapable Realities: LARGE BREASTS, THIN WALLETS and ENORMOUS FEAR of BILL COLLECTORS. These will be the Primary Drive — energies behind everything else that happens in 2006.

(With apologies to Hunter S. Thompson.)
posted by chasing at 6:23 PM on December 29, 2005

what's with the Al Gore fixation?

I second the telephony stuff going way mainstream, and i've heard that the next mac mini is going to be a tivo/dock/etc, so maybe linking tv, computer, stereo, phone, and dvd is it for 06?

And, of course, delmoi will be a millionaire ; >
posted by amberglow at 7:18 PM on December 29, 2005

oh---not tech-related, but the Senate goes Dem in 06--definitely.
posted by amberglow at 7:19 PM on December 29, 2005

oh, one more--at least one movie studio experiments with torrents for their backcatalogue (maybe payment and then passworded or something)
posted by amberglow at 7:20 PM on December 29, 2005

Wow, Blake Ross (first link, and the lead developer on Firefox) is actually pretty funny.

In retaliation for Gore’s bold foray onto the Internet, George W. Bush will be the latest to come under fire for editing his own Wikipedia biography. Although Wikipedia will have implemented the most sophisticated algorithms to deter this kind of behavior, Bush will be caught because he will change all instances of “George” to “I”.

OK, really funny.
posted by mkultra at 7:27 PM on December 29, 2005

Robert Cringely PBS's resident geek always posts his predictions with a wrapup of his previous year
posted by bitdamaged at 7:52 PM on December 29, 2005

eek. walmart buys amazon?
posted by specialk420 at 10:17 PM on December 29, 2005

Due to a glitch in Windows Vista, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer will mix up his notes at PDC ‘06 and declare: “Developers, developers, developers….We’re going to f*%ing bury those guys!” Nineteen will leave on stretchers with furniture-related injuries.

That had me laughing out loud! If only because as a one-time MSer, I'm convinced that Steve Ballmer is clinically insane and he is so totally going to snap one day and go apeshit.

Also, I'm convinced Ballmer has almost single handedly led to the ruin of the entire internal culture, devolving it from an imperfect but still fairly idealistic environment of relatively geekery, into a soul-crushing morass where creativity goes to die, a well-appointed wasteland populated largely by little more than paper pushing no-talent hacks who cling to their utterly-unqualified-for jobs like barnacles, and whose only technical contributions are in delivering new, more efficient algorithms for sucking up and deflecting any real responsibility.

So really, anything that makes fun of Ballmer is all right in my book! :)
posted by hincandenza at 10:35 PM on December 29, 2005

This will lead to a new round in the long-running Corporate Cease and Desisters vs. Internet Whiners clash.

This is why I read MF.
posted by spazzm at 2:34 AM on December 30, 2005

Ten failed tech trends for 2005
posted by MiltonRandKalman at 11:38 AM on December 30, 2005