My 10 year predictions

Hey, why shouldn't I go out on a limb and make predictions? I know, I know, it's the wrong time of year: you are supposed to do this kind of thing around January First. Well, foo on that, I feel like doing it now.

Actually, what I really want to hear is your predictions. What will computing be like ten years from now? Here's what I think:

2015 - The state of computing

I'll be sixty seven years old plus some when the ten year anniversary of this post rolls around. If body and mind are still able, I expect to still be writing for this website. I imagine that writing may have new possibilities; speech to text will surely be much better than it is now, but I bet I'll still be using vi for most of my efforts. That's assuming the web hasn't gone all video by then - I doubt that it will, although I'm sure video will be a part of every site, including this one.

I think the dominant OS will be some descendant of Mac OS X. Microsoft will be an application and hardware vendor by then. If I'm right about that, the Microsoft stock I buy monthly now could be worth a lot less, but if I'm wrong I'll probably do all right from investing in the Dark Side. Either way has it good and bad points.

Whoever produces the dominant OS, it will be very different from today. For one thing, there will be no distinction at the application level between memory and any kind of storage. Programs will create and access data using URL's and not know or care where the bits exist. When you initialize data for the first time, you'll simply specify whether it is permanent, transitory, or something in between. The OS will decide what to do with it from there.

Applications will be browser based, but probably not Java. I think Java will fall out of favor and ideas like Ajax will ascend. The Web will be even more ubiquitous than it is today, though wireless may not be as popular as most people think it will be. If wireless does survive, it will be extremely low power and wide spectrum.

Language translation for text will be better than it is now, and built in to browsers, but will still make amusing mistakes and still render gibberish now and then. Audio translation will lag behind, as always.

No doubt I'll be totally wrong about everything.. what do YOU think?

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