Saturday, December 15, 2007
Prediction: users win in 2008
I seriously considered going to Mark Anderson's Strategic News Service dinner at the Waldorf last week, but I had to be out of town. Fortunately Stephen Wellman wrote up the dinner's highlights, including Anderson's 10 predictions for 2008, in Information Week.
Prognostication is useful, if only to externalize our current assumptions. John Perry Barlow calls it "predicting the present." Predictions can range from no-brainers, e.g., gravity will remain a major force in 2008, to extreme long-balls, e.g., a major discovery from Africa will reverse global warming.
Anderson sets expectations low when, in the year that oil broke $98 a barrel, he says that it'll break $100 in the next twelve months. His prediction for 2007 was $70. So clearly Anderson tends to stick close to shore. Of his ten predictions for 2007, the five that most clearly happened were of the safe variety. So it is very encouraging, like wow, waaaaay good!!! that three of Anderson's 2008 prognos are about more user control, to wit:
But I'm optimistic that parts of Anderson's three "users win" predictions above will come true. Perhaps 2008 will be the year the Silicon Curtain falls after all.
Thanks to Tim Karr at savetheinternet.com for spotting this!
Prognostication is useful, if only to externalize our current assumptions. John Perry Barlow calls it "predicting the present." Predictions can range from no-brainers, e.g., gravity will remain a major force in 2008, to extreme long-balls, e.g., a major discovery from Africa will reverse global warming.
Anderson sets expectations low when, in the year that oil broke $98 a barrel, he says that it'll break $100 in the next twelve months. His prediction for 2007 was $70. So clearly Anderson tends to stick close to shore. Of his ten predictions for 2007, the five that most clearly happened were of the safe variety. So it is very encouraging, like wow, waaaaay good!!! that three of Anderson's 2008 prognos are about more user control, to wit:
1. Users revolt. . . . [they] want to connect and any interruptions in this process on the part of marketers or advertisers will be met with swift and harsh response on the part of all users.and
2. No more walled gardens. "Net neutrality will prevail. The box guys -- the Nokias, Apples, Microsofts, etc. -- will prevail over the pipe guys (the carriers)."
5. Countries will have to behave better and the fake Internet will collapse. This means that Web censorship will begin to go away. "Real Net access is on the path to becoming a basic human right."Sorry, Mark, 2007 was not the year of the alternate fuels vehicle, and from my experience with unified communications and speech recognition (which both continue to recede into the future after decades of "year of" predictions) I'd bet electric and hydrogen cars still will be minor phenoms in December 08. [Tesla Motors, which aspires to make electric cars, is an Anderson/SNS sponsor, and Info Week should have said so!]
But I'm optimistic that parts of Anderson's three "users win" predictions above will come true. Perhaps 2008 will be the year the Silicon Curtain falls after all.
Thanks to Tim Karr at savetheinternet.com for spotting this!
Technorati Tags: MarkAnderson, NetworkNeutrality, savetheinternet, WalledGardens
Comments:
Post a Comment
