Mark Anderson's 2010 predictions | Hacker News Reader

Mark Anderson's 2010 predictions

tapsns.com

19 pointsilamont9 comments

Perhaps some would find this more interesting:

http://www.fastcompany.com/blog/linda-tischler/design-times/... (Mark Anderson's 10 Predictions For 2009)

Wall computing "fundamentally changing the way we collaborate at work"?

The technology is certainly available (if Microsoft Surface and some of the high-end videoconferencing systems from Cisco and Tandberg count) but it's not widely used ... yet. The fundamental change will occur when prices come down, and/or killer apps are available, IMHO.

I wonder if (when pricing is reasonable) we will see surface used in conference tables, etc. Something clicked when I saw a demo of people exchanging things across a table by pushing documents around on the surface of the table. It's hard to tell if it's one of those technologies that looks great but even when it is ubiquitous turns out to be underused.

That's not so impressive, right?

"After 8 years of nothing but messages of bad news and fear, the psychological lift of Obama’s inauguration will lead to a short term rebound effect on the market".

Ahh, I miss the naivety of the ancient days of late 2008. In fact the market dropped from ~9000 at inauguration day to ~6500 by March. Obama's approval rating dropped from around 80 at inauguration to less than 50 now. And bad news and fear, as it turns out, still exist.

"It will be a big year for applications that can play on big screens... video games, movies, etc." -- as a prediction, shrugworthy.

"Similarly, the big news in the mobile world won’t be a slicker, newer cellphone -- it will be smart phone applications" -- this prediction wasn't too bad.

"China’s GDP is likely to plummet in 2009" -- nope, it grew by something like 8%

"This year we’ll see the first computer with no moving parts" -- trueish, though I thought that netbooks sans moving parts were already on the market in 2008.

Wall computing: somebody has already mentioned this. "Carry-along computers will be hot" -- reasonably true. "Led by Europe, LTE (Long Term Evolution) will be the preferred technology for 4G." -- I don't even know what this means.

"Not to be left behind, the less developed world will finally see widespread availability of broadband" -- y'see, as a prediction this one is hard to fault in that it's a long term trend and I'm sure there's some places in the third world that have acquired broadband over the last year. Still, I wouldn't say the last year has seen enormous progress on that front.

"The Internet Assistant will be born" -- hmm, not really. And if a product which could book me a flight, a car, a hotel, and make dinner reservations automatically did exist, I wouldn't use it, since I wouldn't trust it to get me the best prices.

"he was optimistic that having a new, competent, team in Washington, that valued science, technology, and innovation, would improve the country’s overall mood" -- a giggle seems like the appropriate response here.

In conclusion, there's a few accurate predictions here, but they're just identifications of trends which should have been reasonably obvious in 2008. And then there's the impossibly naive political predictions which, the less said about the better.

> I wouldn't use it, since I wouldn't trust it to get me the best prices.

This is the fundamental problem with AI: if it's not as smart as a human, people won't like or trust it; but if it is as smart as a human, people especially won't like or trust it.

Sort of the uncanny valley for intelligence. It astounds me how many people don't trust programs/automations when it is almost provably better at performing a given task. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncanny_valley

In this case I think it's more a case of incentive structures, and not trusting the agent's motivations.

In this particular case the problem is that the virtual valet would, unlike a real valet, be funded primarily by kickbacks from whatever services he winds up booking for me, so I've got no reason to believe he's making decisions in my best interests instead of his own.

Basically if I'm going to trust someone else to make my decisions for me, I want a real flesh-and-blood person that I can shout at if things go wrong.

And then there's the impossibly naive political predictions which, the less said about the better.

I think we should talk about how naïve some people were (and continue to be). Maybe it'll make people less trusting of people and institutions inherently untrustworthy. Of course, you could also call that hope naïve in and of itself. Oh well.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com