A String of Predictions for the Future

I had planned to write a whole bunch of posts with predictions for the future all throughout the year. Suddenly, it's the end of the year, and I haven't had time to get around to it - and now, it seems like everything is coming true before I had a chance to say "I told you so". So, I thought, why not just package them all up into a New Year's post, all at once.

We cannot predict the future:
but we can  invent it.

What follows is a loose list of predictions of things I believe will happen: perhaps not this year, but over the coming years. You may have thought of them yourself - and certainly I dot necessarily take credit for having any of the ideas exclusively - but hopefully at least one of them you'll find interesting and bend your mind a bit.

Prediction:
The next car you buy will be the last one you drive.

I've talked before about the implications of the autonomous car to society: as technology is now as good as humans at driving, over the next few years cars will eventually move towards being self-driven. This means, the skill of driving will probably be irrelevant for our children - much like the skill of riding a horse is irrelevant in 2015 (where it used to be a critical life skill).

Just like writing in cursive was an irrelevant skill I learned as a child - or the ability to do long division ("You'll never always have a calculator in your pocket when you grow up", my teacher's used to say. *cough* iPhone *cough*) - driving will eventually be an anachronistic - and dangerous, and messy - skill.

What you probably haven't considered is the side benefit of the driverless car - the ability to afford a more expensive car. Because of the next prediction...

Prediction:
über will go driverless.

What everyone seems to miss about the Uber revolution is that sooner rather than later the idea will be people sending out their autonomous cars for other people to use instead of driving it themselves. In other words: after your car drives you home from work, you send it out for the night to make money for you by driving other people home (an "autonomous cab"). It only has to make one or two trips and your car pays for itself while you watch TV.

So obviously, the next trick is to maximize the quality of your car, while minimizing the need for repair costs: so you can afford to buy an amazing car. In addition, you'll want to keep the cost of kilometres and maintenance down (read: distance travelled, which is directly proportionate to gas consumption),  - which leads to the next obvious conclusion;

Prediction:
Electric cars will dominate (because: Solar).

As noted before in a post, we are on the bleeding edge of the move to electric cars. They are amazing to drive, represent huge savings in per/km usage - but are currently a pain in the ass to keep charged. However, as electricity gets easier and easier to harvest directly from the sun, the cost and accessibility of getting your car powered goes down: exponentially. 

Plus, the sun is easy to get just about anywhere. Why not drop-in solar-powered car chargers all over the place?

The catch is, the technology is still very new, and thus very expensive. How could you possibly mortgage a Tesla-quality car and a solar-powered charging mechanism? That's even easier to predict, because...

Prediction:
Apple will start the world's largest bank.

Apple has full-stack payment processing capacity, they have all of the control mechanisms (iPhones and Apple Watches) and $203 Billion in cash. They have more cash than the total net-worth of Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, Mark Zuckerberg, and Jack Ma combined.

Apple's greatest barrier to selling more of their products is that people can't currently afford more. But in fact, since Apple has enough money to give every person in the US $632 - they could lend each person enough money to buy another iPad. The sales profits of which would enable them to sell more. Ahhh, the delicious circular irony.

This is not a tongue-in-cheek prediction. The banks should be scared for their lives - because Apple doesn't have to rely on shaky mortgages and administration fees to start giving away money. All they have to do is turn their system on, and start giving money away so they can collect some more. They will cost less to use than a "classic" bank, and their overhead will be shockingly lower.

The only safety from humanity being completely owned by Apple is having an Android device. Oh wait, but...

Prediction:
Mobile and wearable platforms will start to converge.

Over the next few years, just like they did on the web, mobile app development will start to converge. This will mean, the disparate mobile technologies currently on the market will start to become more seamless. Your iPhone won't be completely different from your Android device - their apps will start to be more similarly engineered until they become one.

This is more than a prediction. I just bet my life on it, by starting a company (called "PerfectlySoft") to promote this convergence. This convergence will allow developers to write applications faster and more securely (using Apple's Swift language) - which means more development and platform agnosticism. This will inevitable lead to an important inflection point in technology...

Prediction
Form and function will increasingly separate (to drive the internet of things).

As mobile systems begin to converge more and more around "apps", the original vision of Tim Berners-Lee for a semantic web (devices communicating through a common framework) will start to become more pronounced. This will allow devices to inter-communicate more and more without human intervention.

For example, your fridge will automatically realize you are short on milk and throw it into your iPhone shopping list. Your watch will warn you when you pass by the grocery store to get milk - and while you are there, suggest you pick up cheese for your neighbour (and automatically bill your neighbour for the cheese through Apple loans). Your life will become more efficient, without sacrificing human interaction. Things will do more things for you. The boring stuff will start to do itself.

This natural data exchange of everyday objects will gradually disintermediate the need for human interpretation, meaning...

Prediction
Marketing websites will die as we know them.

Which is not a great realization for someone whose life has been premised on website development. My mom told me I should become a doctor.

Why would anyone sit down at a computer in the future to do basic searches for products or services? Why wouldn't you just use an App? Or just use Google, and skip the need for web surfing altogether? (It's already happening, isn't it?) Especially if your life starts to look after itself?

However, design and development skills will still be marketable, especially as new information flows become more important when...

Prediction
Personal satellites will come into vogue.

No, really - given the great reductions in cost to getting things into space, someone (Apple?) will start selling personal satellites which follow you around and harness all of your data. (OK, they probably won't move around, but they'll likely get sold as such).

Then you won't have to worry about cell or wireless coverage. The Internet will always be there - secured to you and you alone. And so will others, because...

Prediction
Google Maps will go live.

Of course, then you can log into your iPhone and watch your dog walk around in your back yard. Imagine looking down on your neighbourhood and finding yourself, and quickly finding a ball your dog can't find. It will be hard to get lost in the future - the world just isn't big enough any more.

Plus, the ability to see heat maps, topographical shifts, and more, will lead to remarkable new technological effects with data. On everything.

You can imaging the effect on politics and public safety (positive and negative), when anyone can find anyone at any time. Especially when the data of their life is overlaid on them because...

Prediction
Augmented Reality headsets will become commonplace.

Yes, I think everyone will be wearing a headset or eyepiece by the end of the decade. Well, maybe the flip-phone people won't, but I definitely will.

I mean - you will wear glasses that will overlay information on everything you see. We've been talking about it for decades - and it is as inevitable as the cell phone was after Star Trek's communicator was imagined.

I can imagine being able to play imaginary games all day as I walk around doing everyday things, having instant access to information on all of the people I meet, seeing data and information on walls everywhere I look and seeing people's thoughts above their heads as they think them (read: tweets).

Of course, we'll also be able to escape reality for entertainment - but probably not through Television or Radio. TV and radio will fade - Talk Radio will die when autonomous cars become commonplace, and television will die as...

Prediction
Virtual Reality becomes the new professional sport.

Escape rooms, livable stories, Dungeon and dragons games, and more. You and the family might take the afternoon to go slay some dragons, instead of bowling.

Why would you want to watch a few people kick a ball around, when you could watch professional dragon slayers swing a sword? And then watch them fight off Star Wars aliens, and then fight Roman Gladiators?

Don't believe me? Watch this;

This exists! Who wouldn't want to play this? Who wouldn't want to see a professional play this? First - these stadiums will start to come out of nowhere - then, the professional athletes will move in.

Conclusion

Anyway - just a string of thoughts as we leave 2015. Hopefully some of them resonate with you!

It's a truly exciting time to be alive!