Crystal Ball 2014

My Crystal Ball for  2014

Ingredients 
   So what am I basing my predictions on ? What is my list of ingredients ?

•    President Obama basically giving the world his middle finger and telling them (us ! ) He has no intention of stopping his spying on the whole wide world
• President Obama publically stating he's going to "lock up" all that information his various spy agencies are gathering on every citizen of the world , in one big place to limit access
• "Two People Can Keep a Secret , but only if one of them is dead" , a saying that frequently occurs in Heinlien novels indicating the likelyhood of any secret you're keeping , actually being kept. 
• The Usual MIx of 3D printers , Internet , and the fact that even a guy on disability like me now has a smart phone , probably everyone in the world will have one soon enough
• The notion that the internet needs to explode it's capacity by eleven fold in four years to handle all the "wearable" devices coming down the pipe. 

Predictions

1...    My first prediction is that China , which is already spending billions on hacking , will toss in another billion dollars to try and hack this "vault  " of information where all the spying records on everyone in the world NSA is gathering will be kept. A billion dollars ? Yeah , I'm basically going to assume they'll succeed. If you gather it , they will steal it  , supena it , write laws to let themselves use and abuse it , and all that stuff.

2... I predict , that the chinese will make it standard proceedure to go through their stolen data about every american that they got from the NSA , and look for the weak links to convert and coopt. You know , the ones with the gambling problems, the three mistresses, the cocaine addiction , etc etc.

3... I predict sometime in the next few years this "Vault" of information will be used to try and assassinate the president. Not likely by China or Russia , they don't want a war , but if NSA can't keep it a secret , why would you think anyone else could. Some rich Shiek in the middle east will get ahold of it and use it to conscript the pizza boy down the street , and possibly one of the secret service agents . No prediction on whether or not it will work , just that they'll try it.

4...I'm going to stick with last years prediction that manufacturing is dying and 3D printing will rule the world, though at this point most people would count this as more of a sure thing than a psychic's prediction.

5... This current trend of hiring forien workers on a temporary work permit to replace regular canadian workers will be shut down. Might take a year or two ... but the current outrage by the canadian public , and leaked remarks by Prime Minister Harper indicating he's not in favor of it either , seem to indicate a lot of movement in this direction.

6... I predict our smart phones will become "multi devices" . They all have micro-usb jacks , they all have blue tooth (meaning newly invented devices can be plugged in via these ports)  , and we're pretty much at the point where most everyone has a smart phone. Adding an app and possibly a piece of hardware to slip into your cell phone case is pretty much all you need. This nonsense about a special phone for the job just that. Infrared ports to turn it into "TV Remotes" Or any other remote control device , is next on the list. Along with radio controlling toys (like those toy helicopters that are popping up everywhere) . Yes , the blue tooth transmitter is a radio transmitter. Not to mention the whole dang cell phone is a radio transmitter.

7... The internet will be broken into national internets.  There may be back bones connecting them, or not , but the USA /NSA abusing it's monopoly on the internet has pretty much guarenteed people don't want nsa listening on their every phone call . This one may take several years though , thats a lot of internet structure to re-wire.

8... New phones, computers , and other gadgets will burst upon the market. And by "new" I mean "Not Made In The USA" . Sorry Obama , but when you publically tell everyone you've coopted every single american company to serve your spy agencies and you have no intention of ever stopping , you did this to yourself. This trend may not be as catastrophic as some people would imagine , since a lot of people don't care that everyone in the world is watching them (yeesh ... hasn't the facebook generation burned their fingers enough ? ) but still , it will have an impact. Microsoft is still going to be king for a little while longer.

9... Google , Microsoft , Yahoo , and most any USA company is going to take a hit on forien sales in 2014 , as contracts begin to run out and security advisors point to recent news articles . Anything to do with security will be the first not to be renewed. Later on , this trend will increase to a massive anti-USA ban .  US Companies are already parading to the presidants office to try and get him to assure forieners that their secrets are safe with him , but after his previous statements on the matter , it's a little bit late.

10... There is a prediction floating aorund out there , in a CNET article , that the internet desperately needs to expand capacity by eleven fold to deal with the coming flood of "wearable" devices.  I say to this prediction "No Chance"  Why ?  Because people are already struggling with 100$ internet bills (if you're a bell or rogers subscriber , and being ripped off) , they're not going to pay eleven fold to increase their bandwidth eleven fold.
   No , they're going to cut back .They're going to decide I have a smart phone that's connected to the internet. I don't need a smart watch as well.  I don't need to pay for my blue jeans to go online and tell everyone where I am. My fridge doesn't need to go online and automatically order groceries on my credit card without my permission , etc etc.