Technology Predictions For The Year 2020

I've decided to put together a series of posts on my predictions for the future, mostly just for fun, but it will be interesting to see how much of this comes true. Over the next several months, you can expect to see a dozen or so posts dedicated to what the world will be like in the year 2020, 2050, and 2100 (assuming the world doesn't end in 2012).

I'll start with technology predictions in the year 2020. I'm a software engineer by trade, so I am in touch with the technology industry in general. However, I am by no means an expert in all things computer-related. Since technology will obviously play a major role in many aspects of life, I'll try to limit this post to specific technologies, instead of how they will play a role in our daily lives.

Internet
When talking about current technology, the Internet is obviously at the top of the list. Email and the world wide web play an incredible role in our lives, something that we couldn't imagine living without - and other network technologies, like FTP, SSH, P2P, and online games are invaluable tools for business and entertainment needs.

My prediction is that this trend will continue to grow over the next 10+ years, with no major change in architecture. HTML will continue to be the markup language behind the web, with javascript still leading the client-side web. HTML will evolve, much like it is today with HTML 5, including more powerful and standardized tools for multimedia, games, and social connectivity, but the general design will remain the same.

Cable companies will continue to dominate the personal high-speed market, and they will find a way to make one more major leap in speed, to approach 50 Mbps for the home user, which will be enough to satisfy the majority of the market, the same way 12 Mbps is good enough for people today. New paradigms will be discovered, but none will be practical enough (aka cheap enough) for the average consumer.

Spam will continue to be a problem, with junk email continuing to represent over 90 percent of overall email traffic. Email clients will continue to improve spam blockers and filters, so the average user will not have to deal with the problem. Since people won't notice a problem, there will be no real motivation to deal with the spammers, and the dirtbags will continue writing their malware to spread their garbage, finding new ways to get at least some of their messages past spam filters. This will be dealt with eventually, but not yet by 2020.

Automobiles
With so many people concerned about fuel efficiency due to potential environmental (real or imagined, up to you to decide) and political reasons, I believe the first major step toward a cleaner car will be taken by 2020. Assuming the Cash for Clunkers nonsense fails, which it will, the current government will want to try again, this time with something that is actually realistic. They will take steps to ensure that American car manufacturers have the appropriate incentives for finding cheaper ways to build alternative fuel vehicles, and that the industries that would produce the fuel can do it at a reasonable price, one that would allow them similar profits as gasoline. Ingenuity has never been a problem in this country, so as long as the profits are there, people will find a way to make it happen. Once manufacturers and fuel companies can make the same money selling cleaner cars than they could selling gas guzzlers, there will be no reason not to. We obviously won't be off gas by 2020, but I predict that we will see the light at the end of the tunnel.

Television
TV has evolved quite a bit lately, and in the next 10+ years, I predict this will continue to grow. Flat/wide screen TV's will be the standard, and traditional boxes will be difficult if even possible to find. On-Demand will grow exponentially, as cable companies discover new ways to increase their bandwidth. Instead of a few dozen possible movies, cable companies will offer hundreds, even thousands of movies and shows available at the push of a button. This technology will not quite be integrated with the Internet, but it will be close.

Regarding the Internet, sites like Hulu and the networks' own sites already provide many of their shows online. This trend will continue to grow, and more and more shows will be offered over the web - not replacing On-Demand, but rather supplementing it. More people will be hooking up their TVs to either an Internet connection or as video output from their laptops, leaving the TV set as the primary mode of watching shows and movies.

Overall, today's television experience will not be significantly different from 2020 - there will just be more options.

Cell phones
20 years ago, cellular phones were as big and heavy as bricks, and were ridiculously expensive. Today, you'll find phones the size of credit cards with cheap plans. Texting has become as popular as talking, and QWERTY keyboards are pretty common. Web browsers are available, but the user experience is simply not as good as real life. My prediction is that cell phones will continue on their course of replacing home phones, and become more web-friendly.

Right now, the iPhone probably has the best web interface out there - it's the closest thing I've seen to a real web browser on a mobile device. This type of responsiveness and user experience will start to appear on other brands, and will soon become the norm. Apple will continue to lead innovation, and will produce a new method for viewing the web using their phone - a video projector, so the iPhone can project its video onto a wall where it can be more easily viewed and shared. A mouse or other pointing device will be usable via bluetooth to control the browser, to make it more like a true web experience. You won't be able to do anything really cool like touching the projection itself or projecting a hologram over thin air, but this will be a major jump in the usability factor.

Conclusion
Technology has been moving in leaps and bounds over the past 20 years - new ways of thinking have evolved, causing incredible breakthroughs in all industries. I think we're due for a time of improvement, but not paradigm shifts, over the next 10+ years. We'll continue to get faster, better, and cheaper, but the technologies themselves won't change too much by 2020. We won't have the flying car, the transporter, the holodeck, good speech recognition, jetpacks, hover boards, or anything like that, but we will continue to experience worldwide communication, faster access to information, and so many of the other amazing things that have developed in the information age.

Tags: tech predictions

Comments:

Add Comment

Name:
Email (optional):
Website (optional):

---

---