Credit card sized cell-phones, VoIP transition, OLED maps, and rented music
As quoted from the Wired Next Fest:
2006: Samsung releases a smartphone as thin and light as a credit card, thanks to advanced hard drives and processors the size of postage stamps.
2008: It’s a wireless world: More than 700 million users are plugged into Wi-Fi worldwide, a sevenfold increase in less than four years.
2009: Digital identity cards are issued to all citizens – not as an antiterrorism measure but to fight spam. Email not linked to an ID is universally ignored.
2011: On-demand music, movies, and television programming make cable and broadcast networks obsolete.
2012: Cars are officially smarter than people: XML programming lets a BMW call a mechanic and explain what’s wrong when it malfunctions.
2014: Paper 2.0: Organic LED screens become cheap and available, replacing traditional magazines and tourist maps.
2017: All phone calls – cell and landline – route their calls through the Internet.
2019: 300 channels? 1,000 channels? Wrong. There is only one channel on television – yours.
2024: Media consumers no longer own discs or even bits – all they buy is rights. Reason: Authorized music and movies can be streamed anywhere, anytime.
Given that I have heard others prognosticate that the VoIP transition for land-lines will be around 2015, that seems to line up nicely with the 2017 above which includes all cell calls as well.
If they are right about the music rights issue for 2024, then perhaps Microsoft’s Janus DRM is going to take over the world after all. Steve Jobs is insistent that people want to “own, not rent” their music, is he living in yet another reality-distortion-field?