Here I Go Making Predictions Again
I think it has been a few years since I publically made some predictions on what I think will transpire as it relates to my world. So much has been passing before my eyes the past few years and I honestly felt very overloaded with what would stick and what would ultimately fall away.
Phone Numbers Will Become Outdated
I was watching A Christmas Story over the break and was laughing at some of the early 60s common technology used by the characters. In one scene Ralph’s mother used the one rotary dial phone to call his friend’s mother. What a drastic difference to today’s reality of cell phones, Skype and other VOIP technologies. If you think about it many of us are using Instant Messaging or Skype for audio and video communications. I predict this will eventually become commonplace in the coming decade or two. We won’t have to worry about phone number portability, just someone’s address and communication standards implemented by software. Devices wont matter either, it could be a small mobile device or a TV monitor mounted on the wall. Have WiFi and a camera will communicate.
Blue Ray Is DOA
I don’t have a Blue Ray player, I just can’t justify the cost. It’s a great technology, but was already dated as a video transportation medium when it became available. Why? Internet streaming is far more convenient and cheaper. If you need proof, look at Netflix, they are currently streaming more content than they are mailing. I stream online content much more than I rent DVDs and honestly I don’t remember buying my last DVD. I did watch one last night, but could have also streamed the movie if I wanted and it High Definition. My broadband was 3G though. That will change in the very near future to 4G when away from home as coverage increases.
Mobile is Already the Next Great Frontier
I got my first cell phone in 1995 I think. It was a bag phone and I got 30-60 minutes of talk time per month, roaming and overage charges were all part of the deal as well. Cell phones have been available since the mid 80’s, and obviously really started taking off in the last decade. The pace of adoption and use seems to increase exponentially each day. If you go back to my first point I hope you see why this is going to be important. We play games, chat, browse the Internet and sometimes even use old fashion telephone technology to talk to others. The recent adoption of tablets only strengthen my contention that mobile is where it is at. And that is a now thing not a future thing that is affecting real decisions by consumers and businesses alike. Just how this frontier is leveraged by businesses could spell success or failure.
HTML5, CSS 3 & jQuery Will Push User Experience
Not Silverlight and Flash. I consider both just desktop development platforms that serve specific niches with a high quality experience. The only thing that will hold the next version web experience is user adoption of modern browsers. My point here is IE 6, 7 & 8 just won’t cut it and honestly the vast majority of users just use the browser that comes with their computer and that is that. They never upgrade, they honestly do not realize they can upgrade. So until you see real adoption of IE 9, Chrome and Firefox the web will stay in the past.
Also notice I said jQuery. I am a jQuery fanboy and I personally believe it is the AJAX framework that already has the mass developer inertia needed to drive the next web.
Summary
These predictions are not confined to the 2011 timeframe. I think several will take years to become the defacto standard, like phone numbers. But I think all these things will have a big impact in our world in the coming years to come. So I recommend contemplating these predictions, how they might affect your decisions. A big part of being a leader in the future is being able to reasonably predict what the future holds. These are just some of my predictions.