by It’s that time of year again. We will bravely sneak into 2009 and offer our predictions for the New Year with a quick look back at where we scored and where we failed with last year’s Magic Eight Ball.
Last year we did surprisingly well with our predictions and here is our self-evaluated scorecard:
We were right about WordPress. We now run on Movable Type.
We were right about TypePad — in that their blogging setup is still woefully out of date and strangely truncated and limited. There was no “October Surprise” as promised.
We were right about Blogger’s resurrection.
We were right about improvements for Spaces.
We were wrong about the USA invading Pakistan.
We were right Barack Obama would be the democrat nominee and we are thrilled to be wrong about his impending demise despite what Hillary Clinton hoped for and wished upon.
We were right John McCain would be the republican nominee.
We were right Macs became the best Windows machines.
We are still waiting for Google to grow up out of beta.
Here are some predictions for 2009:
1. Whenever Barack Obama is in political hot water, he will somehow punish the Gays to get back in the “good graces” of the conservative sector. The Gays are his new punching bag and beach ball. They no longer matter to him. He can use them as he wishes because they have nowhere else to go.
2. Apple will come out with embedded 3G technology in a netbook or two. Steve Jobs will die. Apple will be in a fluster, never recover, and never be the same again. However, they will, finally, get iChat right so it can do true, live, non-proprietary, video conferencing.
3. Sarah Palin will announce her intention to run for the Senate seat from Alaska in 2010.
4. Bill Clinton will embarrass Barack Obama. Obama will slap back and back him down.
5. We will not have national healthcare. Ever. The republicans will not allow it to move forward — because if it passes — then the republicans will have lost everything in the bargain.
6. Home prices will continue to crash. That will be a good and necessary correction for a falsely over-saturated market.
7. John McCain will vote more with the democrats than he does with the republicans.
8. The hardcopy book publishing business will become irrelevant. Electronic Home Publishing will be the new internet darling as thousands of new “publishers” come online to sell their own stuff. That is great news for book prices and authors and bad news for traditional media. Hardcopy books will die a slow and agonizing death as the Kindle 2.0 makes a spectacular debut.
9. Twitter will lose its relevancy as the current “Social Media” whore when people begin to realize every thought isn’t meant to be broadcast and recorded and no one can possibly follow 44,000 other people without felling themselves as a liar. The bird has no clothes!
10. “Social Media” will be replaced by “Internal Internetworking” as we lose interest in faked external connections with others and choose instead to artificially rewire our insides to create better health and longevity.
What do you think of these predictions? Right? Wrong? Misguided?
What predictions do you want to offer for 2009?
Mostly right on! I think people will continue to abuse Twitter because they are young or just don’t know better 🙂
Hi Gordon!
Twitter can be extremely powerful. I’d love to see it used as an automatic Amber Alert service or as a local “911” emergency broadcast portal for quick communication of facts.
Right now, Twitter does seem to be filled with kids chatting and lots of “tech dudes” filling up the air with trying to sell you something.
For Twitter to be successful it needs to move far beyond the tech and kiddie realm and into serious business use as a fountain for disseminating vital information.
Hi David,
Mostly agree except 8…still find it hard to accept…
Hi Katha!
Why do you think #8 is hard to accept?
Have you been following the biz news about publishing?
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/04/business/04publish.html
It’s already a bloodbath with more blood to be spilt.
I know David, this is called “hoping against hope…” but I also know that’s kind of wishful thinking – that’s why I said “hard to accept” which means I would finally accept it after a brief struggling!
I understand, Katha. You’ll only be losing the paper, though. The learning, the memeing, the ability to read new things will not change.
I agree with them mainly – again number 8 is the one I have most problems with. I cannot envisage my world without real books printed on real paper.
This is far more than just the “Luddite” in me – and I refer you back to this discussion on books –
http://urbansemiotic.com/2006/08/11/the-essence-of-a-book/
I agree with you, Nicola! We’ll likely have paper books for a long time, but they’ll be much more expensive than their electronic brethren and harder to buy. The publishers don’t want to pay for shipping and distribution channels for dead trees: Books are heavy! I expect the major booksellers to be 100% electronic in the next five years and the publishers will only have the dying mom-and-pop storefronts to do the paper selling.