Read about my technology predictions for 2009 and how I did for 2008.
As a Microsoft Regional Director and Technology Leader at Capgemini in Norway, part of my responsibility is to see and predict trends and change in the technology and software industry (I wrote this sentence without reading what I wrote last year, and to my surprise it’s almost identical). When I went back to look at my 2008 predictions, I realized that I didn’t really make any concrete predictions. So for this year I will actually make a whole bunch of concrete predictions, many which is very obvious, but all of which I’m bringing to the table to make a point of what’s going on.
We’ve always been pretty bad at predicting the far future, we still don’t have flying cars or personal robots that assist us – yet these are ideas that were thought to be with us a long time ago. Though we are bad at predicting the far future, we are much worse at predicting the consequences of change in the immediate future. Few predicted that everyone would have computers when it was first invented, who could have predicted that there would be more mobile phone subscriptions that citizens in Norway? This happened years ago, who knows what the next major change in technology evolution will be.
I’m pretty sure we can all say that 2008 was the year of Web 2.0 and Social Networking Services like Facebook and micro-blogging through services like Twitter. What the major players in 2009 will be is yet unknown, but here is my attempt to “predict” what will happen and how the shape of our industry will be at the end of 2009.
(Photo by rutty, licensed under Creative Commons)
The Obvious
Computers have become the essential tool and companion for millions of people in today's society. The price, quality and performance of our computers is essential for us to be successful in our jobs and tasks. If the computer keeps hanging, crashing and reboot, you’re not going to be happy. If you’re battery life is less than optimal, you’ll be plugged in more often than is effective.
So in 2009 we will have computers with 8-cores, that mean on a single CPU, you will essentially have the power of 8 individual computer processors. While the performance from multiple cores is not linear, it opens up new abilities for software programmers to utilize the simultaneous computation capabilities. Software has been lagging behind CPUs for a while now, but with innovations like the CCR and DSS Toolkit (technologies that forms the foundation for Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio) which is now available standalone separately from MRDS and the Parallel Extensions for .NET Framework will hopefully rectify some of this and make it simpler for programmers to do better CPU-cores utilization. CPUs will now enter 32 nm production and further reduce the power requirements and heat leakage/production.
More GPGPU’s (programmable general purpose graphics processors) will be made available and many custom computer builders will make their own super-computers in their homes. These super-computers will be used for both good and bad. GPUs will come with 16-cores and a total of 64 threads.
In terms of memory capabilities, we will see laptops that will take is into the range of 16 and 32 GB of RAM. Most laptops today is limited to 4GB, and if you’re running a 32-bit operating system you’re not even utilizing the full 4GB.
Windows 7 is now out in the first beta and is looking very strong. Microsoft has put a lot of effort into improving upon the Windows Vista foundation and have done a very good job so far. My prediction is that a lot of corporations and users will jump directly from Windows XP to Windows 7, and those who’s already on Vista will quickly migrate over to 7.
Computer prices have up until 2007-2008 been pretty stable, for the exact same money you could get an improved computer of which you had purchase some years earlier, but 2007-2008 changed this and made the whole computer landscape more fragmented. Today you can buy top laptops that are in the top-range of $1500-$2000 and in 2009 I predict we will see $199 netbooks.
The Problems
2009 will represent many new peaks of problems, just as 2008 did. The production of computers and digital equipment is not good for the environment and as more people have improvements in their ways of lives (China has today more dollar-millionaires than the USA) they will want to buy and acquire the latest gadgets and computers. It’s very important that we keep a pressure on the manufacturers to respect the environment and the safety of their employees.
That prices are going down is positive and makes equipment more available for poorer regions of the world, yet it will further drive the buy-use-throw mentality of richer countries. An $199 netbook doesn’t even account for 10% of the monthly salary of most of us, yet the countryside of China which has more than 800 million people have an average income of $560 a year. Yet their income is increasing at an annual rate of more than 10 percent.
As everyone goes online, we will see an increase in the need for education on netiquette for everyone. Who’s there to explain new computer owners how to use their computers and how to act in the online digital world? When you see how many individuals that are tricked in the daily life and have their money stolen or tricked from them – buying useless stuff and participating in “help programs” which could be a scam.
When we use a computer, we tend to be a lot more trusting than in the real world. We are more open to the idea of exposing ourselves and we gladly communicate intimate details to “strangers”. Part of this trust comes from a concept I’ve coined morphi. Read more about that on the link. I will write more on morphi in the future.
Identity thefts will become more common in 2009. In 2008 you had your Windows Live ID that protected your Live Messenger and Live Mail (Hotmail), yet in 2009 when Microsoft releases Windows Live Mesh, many will begin to store a lot more than communication on the Cloud. Considering the amount of personal information that can be stolen by guessing (or hacking) a users password, it’s scary that we still don’t have a good solution for this problem. We need a better architecture for authentication than usernames and passwords.
The Good
Never before will you be able to meet likeminded people on the net. You’ll quickly make new friends and share thoughts, experience and ideas on a global scale.
Your information will become to move into the Cloud and you’ll never lose anything due to a computer crash. All your photos, e-mails, communications, contacts and so forth will be stored in the Cloud. Settings and configuration of your applications can also be stored online, so when you get a new computer or mobile phone – they will be able to sync with the Cloud and retrieve your personalized settings.
More devices in 2009 will be GPS and wireless network capabilities built into them. You’ll be able to capture and stream video, photos and audio from the action where it’s happening and share it with your online communities. These new devices and the simple procedure of actually publishing video logs, I predict we will see an explosion of lifecasting in 2009. Lifecasting is the communication form of streaming your experiences life onto the net for anyone to see. They can become your third eye and share whatever you are doing. This cheap form of video distribution will open up the ability to watch virtually any sports event in the world for free, without a TV subscription or even a computer. You’ll be able to watch the local football game on your mobile phone on the bus – since someone at the match decided to share the game.
Another area we will see changes is the music industry. Music industry has messed up miserably with their online and digital efforts. They have tried to stop the unstoppable and ignored every opportunity to go forward and being innovative. If services like Last.fm and Spotify is any indication on what’s going on, I’m sure the labels needs to reconsider how they will distribute music and earn money.
What’s cool about Spotify is their online (“Cloud”) stored playlists. Additionally they have collaboration playlists, which allows multiple individuals to contribute to the same playlist.
Here is a scenario you will experience many times in 2009: You go to a party and connected to the stereo is a computer laptop. It’s running Spotify and music is streamed out through the speakers. You step up to the laptop and login with your own account and starts playing your private playlist of the best party-music in history.
2009 will mark the start of the death of the MP3 players. While this is not entirely the truth, it does represent an evolutionary step towards something new. Synchronizing music between computer and music players is something everyone hates. It takes an awful long time and it basically feels such a useless task. Manufacturers have for many years had the ability to earn extra money on top-range devices; getting 16GB of storage on your iPhone instead of 8GB costs you money. What if I tell you that storage on music players will go away?
It will all be streaming based and you will be able to access your full music library from anywhere in the world, directly on your digital entertainment device. I say digital entertainment device because I know there will be a huge array of gadgets available for us. Portable gaming machines, music and video players, communication devices, mobile phones – they will all be viewers into the online Cloud storage you accumulate.
As you might have figured already, I think Cloud-based Computing will be the biggest thing of 2009 and it represents a new form of software and services delivery. It will not replace anything we have today, but it will extend our ability to choose how we architecture and run our software.
The Bad
We are currently in a race towards point unknown. We’re in a race against the machines and we are doomed to eventually loose on all accounts.
It’s becoming increasingly complex and hard to work in the field of technology. The life of software programmers is especially hard with the increasing number of people with havoc and chaos in their intents. Hackers lure all around the web and they will try their best to exploit a failure in the solution we are building. Computer security is very hard and all it takes is one small mistake. While we won’t be writing bug-free computer software any time soon, there are ways of building mechanisms around that supports your solution with security, failure and so forth.
Yet what I mean with this race against the machine is that we have become an information based society. More of our daily jobs require us to know the latest frameworks, latest software and latest patterns & practices of doing our jobs. Yet, there are few corporations that have taken the steps to change themselves and realize that it’s not an easy task to keep you in-shape for the tasks of tomorrow.
Combined together with the fact that in 2009 we will produce a mind-blowing amount of information and you will receive more e-mails than before, we’re set for disaster unless we do something about it. What we will need is a personal digital assistant. Today we have non-intelligent spam-filters that can throw away some of the noise that comes over the network, yet our human brains are not good at distinguishing which e-mails are important or not. Not until we actually sit down, read through and analyze. This is something we hopefully can handle to our software-based assistants in the near future. I have hopes for seeing the beginning of such software sometime in 2009.
We will see more people that is required to take days and possibly weeks “offline” to recover from the stress it puts on us participating in this economy.
Privacy is a concern for many and in 2009 it will get much worse, yet it depends on your own personal actions. If you are participating in online communities, all that you write on the computer will potentially be accessible to everyone. Make sure you protect your address, phone numbers and other personal details and only share on a need-to-know basis.
Phishing will become an ever increasing problem as more new net-citizens arrive online. How we are going to solve the problem with education of sensible computer and net use is hard to tell, yet I think the computer manufacturers have a responsibility here. They can no longer get away with just throwing anti-virus and firewalls into the systems, there has to be sensible educational material directly available before the users connect to the network.
Conclusions
I’m not able to cover even the top layer of what’s going on in 2009 and I have so many other ideas to share. Hopefully I will get back to you all on this in a somewhat different form, later this year…
So to conclude my predictions, here are the highlights:
- Cloud-based Computing will be big in all its forms.
- Computers will become faster and better.
- Digital Entertainment Devices (including MIDs) will have a lot of focus.
- We will see the beginning of intelligent and emotional software.
- There will be many disasters (both nature and man-made) and everything will be covered by the media, so you can watch it anywhere.
- Hundreds of thousands of new robots will be deployed and the robotics industry will grow by billions of dollars.