2012 : The Not-So-Magical Crystal Ball

artical = none , personal opinion

I suppose, since I am such an opinionated guy , and I have my views on the future , I should write them down , and then later on see how I fare as an Oracle of Future Sight.

Looking into my not so magical crystal ball I see ...

The European Union will fail or get a Federal Government. Or even just something that acts like a federal government. Something that only deals with banking issues will still be subject to stronger governments (like Germany) telling weaker ones like Greece "You spent all that money on WHAT ??? We're not giving you a single mark more !"

The price of Tablets will continue to drop. When they fall to below 200$ for one that I can actually draw on (ie: take a stylus to the screen and lines are drawn on the screen , none of this fake playing with a mouse or drawing thing off to the side) then I will buy one.

All the high school , college , and University students will go back to school in September. I'll be able to get a job in mid august , two weeks before this date , because the Employers know 10% or 20% of their work force is about to up and vanish and an old guy like me who aint going no where in September will suddenly be a very attractive hire. (that one's for my wife who thinks I'm going to be unemployed forever. )

Cyberwarefare , which is currently a nation vs nation affair , will trickle down as electronics get cheaper , and hackers will be using this kind of junk on random personal computers like mine. Not because I have anything valuable on it , but because I have an internet connection and they think they can hijack it and host a porn site there without me knowing and rake in a few bucks before I start wondering why my usage is so high and start investigating. Oh wait... arn't they already doing that to people ? Hmm...that might not count as an actual prediction ...

Now that Microsoft is run by a board of directors who can be sued if they mess up , instead of a single guy who is a majority share holder who can change the direction of the company on a dime and give you the middle finger if you don't like it , they will lose their domination , slowly , and eventually fall away and die. Look for some version of Linux to be picked up by the big boys and turned into a "for profit" distribution. Not neccesariy "100$ for a copy of Linux-For-Profit" though , they may simply charge for extra add ons, like customer support, like charging companies a licensing fee to make software for their operating system , etc etc. (Ubuntu is one of several versions of Linux trying to go down this road)

Star Wars The Old Republic will be the one MMO to Rule Them All ! (not sure how that one will fly , but I'm a fan so I'm putting that in anyways. Hey , over a million subscribers it can't be that bad a game.)

Diablo III's real money auction house will get them sued six ways from Sunday and that game will sink like a stone. Or at least remove the auction house. A dollar to sell a virtual item , and another dollar from the buyer as well ? The only one making money there is the company that makes it.

The internet will be broken into regions and you must deliberately allow connections from other regions to talk to your computer. For example , you may get a message on your screen "A connection from Northern China would like to talk to the application Trust_Me_I'm_Not_A_Virus , do you accept the connection ? (Y/N)"

All operating systems will eventually get a little button on the bottom right of their screen that will let them disconnect or reconnect to the internet just by pressing it. Especially in Canada where they currently charge you by the gigabyte for your connection.

Large Corporations will continue to advertise the heck out of exceptionally bad deals and make you sign up for years and years , and people will think this is normal , while small corporations will continue to offer exceptionally good deals , but won't be able to afford any kind of advertising budget so it will be strictly word of mouth . But once you join these small companies, you'll never be able to bring yourself to go back to The Big Guys.

At this moment , they have call centers that just go out onto the internet and find forums of their competitors and post bad reviews , or good reviews for their own products. Artificial Intelligence, which you now see in voice recognition for example "Emily" when you phone Bell Canada , will take over this task and all the forums, shopping sites, and reviews of anything anywhere , will be spammed to death by a new generation of intelligent bots.

We will go through a phase where people in India (and other countries) will run our personal robots to clean our house and do our dishes because we're too lazy to do it ourself and Artificial Intelligences arn't smart enough to do it for us. This will end when AI's become smart enough to do it.

We will finally see Honest Lawyers when Artificial Intelligences take over the job of being a Lawyer. Of course by then , Artificial Intelligences and robots will have taken over literally every job possible , leaving me to wonder how the government will choose between putting a nation on welfare , or enacting protectionist laws that forbid automation of certain tasks. Where will they draw the line, I wonder ?

And for my friend Wireless Toaster , who sometimes can sound Paranoid, I agree with *SOME* of what he says. That being that those Canadians who are entrusted with powerful government positions and influence, such as CSIS , The Police , and even Members of Parliament , can and probably do face "hostile operations" by foreign governments. When you think about it , there are a lot of nations in the world that don't much like Canada , and why wouldn't they hire a couple of hookers and provide some free drugs to get the information they want ? Why wouldn't they blow a wad on a member of parliament or two to sway a couple of votes in their favor ? Especially for something obvious like flat out giving Country X aid money ? I think they will do this. Heck , I think they are already doing it. They'd be stupid not to.

I predict ... I will actually live long enough to retire at 67. In fact, I'd bet real money on that. Feel free to try and collect off of my corpse if I'm wrong :)

I predict our Natural Governing Party , the Liberals , can only shrink so far. There is definitely a number of core supporters that will not be swayed. That's not to say they'll ever be in power again , or ever climb back from their current third party status. In fact, it's possible they may yet fall a little farther. But there is a lower limit to how far they'll fall.

The founder of Wiki-leaks will be extradited to the USA , where he will receive the death penalty under certain laws that have not yet been written that will allow the USA to kidnap anyone off the street of a forien nation they decide they don't like , try them for Treason against the USA despite the fact that they're not only NOT a US Citizen but have never set foot in the USA in their entire lives, and execute them. And it will be a total mockery of justice. The literal classical kangaroo court. This assumes some USA paid assassin doesn't sneak into his well publicized current location and put a bullet between his eyes.

I predict the islamic terrorists will continue to exploit the poor and the starving of the world to produce an endless supply of terrorists to throw at whoever they decide they don't like. Despite the fact that this is in fact on contravention of the religion they claim to believe in. (suicide is against the rules, tutt tutt). I also think they will continue to make really stupid and obviously false Hadiths (sayings of the Prophet , such as singling out the USA by name when the Prophet makes no claims as to being able to see into the future, in fact he denies such abilities, saying he can only read and write even when he is possessed by the spirit of Islam - The angel Gabriel , and certainly is just an ordinary man at other times) This will continue for as long as there are corrupt and weak governments who do not serve, or protect, their people , and have large tracts of land that are only technically theirs , but they dare not actually send police or sometimes even the army in there for fear they'll be wiped out. The solution to this mess is to declare those uncontrolled tracts seperate nations , aquire their own governments , and then ,free from the corrupt central government , allow them to tend to their own protection. Because right now they are simply not permitted to protect themselves and that just makes them lambs to the slaughter.

not so sure about western nations negative population growth. Technically we are shrinking in population , but it's by such a small amount we could withstand it for many centuries, and it only really started in the 1950's when birth control made the big times. Is one or two generations actually important , or just a passing fad ? I think this issue is too long for me to see the answers to in my life time.

Newspapers will increasingly become less and less relevant as they become more and more mouth pieces of the corporations that own them (what do you think a large newspaper chain is going to do to the political party that decides to raise taxes on large coroperations ?) and bloggers with no affiliation to anyone in particular will become more and more the broker of honest news.

Electric bicycles will become the norm, and will eventually branch out into electric cars. A thouand bucks for a bike compared to 20 000 for a gas guzzling car ? And they already exist today I'm simply predicting they'll become more wide spread ? I'll let you do the math.

and I guess that's it for this year. See you next july.