189 comments were posted in the thread. Their predictions included:
- Ubiquitous mobile internet integrated into even very trivial consumer goods
- Ebooks defeating real books
- Rampant piracy
- Common electric cars
- Driverless cars
- China bubble will burst
- Google will go downhill
- Microsoft will become like IBM and have to sell off parts of the business
- Smartphones & cloud computing will make PCs redundant for most people
Of all these 9 predictions, I'd say first 8 were mostly false and the 9th was correct in spirit but still iffy in fact - Statista says that 3/4 of American adults own a computer.
In general, there seems to be a severe bias toward change. Either people were very optimistic about the changes we’d see by 2020 or they were quite pessimistic about the present trends & companies, calling them bubbles or unsustainable. In both cases, a prediction of "trends will stay the same" would have been more accurate than a prediction of "things will change drastically off-trend".
That said, it's a bit unfair to say that stasis/current trends continue is a better prediction, as it has the advantage of entropy. There is only one way for things to stay the same, but many ways for them to change. So even if things are likely to change, predicting stasis can still outperform any specific prediction of change, even if a prediction of any change would be best.
Here’s what actually changed over the 2010s, as I see it.
HARDWARE
- Phones got way better and changed the face of modern human life.
- 3D TVs fizzled.
- VR has fizzled so far.
- AR fizzled.
- CPUs improved, but more slowly.
- HDDs improved, but more slowly.
- SSDs got cheap.
- Displays got way cheaper.
- Cars got better infotainment systems and other features, but never drove themselves.
- Wireless power didn’t happen.
- Mesh networks didn’t happen.
- Ultra cheap RFID didn’t happen.
- Robots didn’t happen.
- Telerobots didn’t happen.
- Drone delivery didn’t happen.
- Flexible electronics didn’t happen.
- Nanotechnology didn’t really happen.
- Graphene didn’t happen.
- Ubiquitous computing didn’t happen.
- Non-silicon based solar didn’t happen.
- Silicon solar costs plummeted and installations went gangbusters.
- Wearable electronics didn’t happen, except for smart watches.
- eReaders grew.
- FPGAs never took off.
- Chips are still mostly silicon.
- The top CPU makers are still Intel and AMD.
- The top GPU makers are still NVIDIA and AMD.
- The top video game console makers are still Nintendo, Sony, Microsoft.
- Home internet remained mostly cable, not fiber.
- Computers remained x86, phones remained ARM.
SOFTWARE
- The dominant search engine is still Google.
- The dominant computer operating systems are still Windows and Mac OS.
- The dominant phone operating systems are still Android and iOS.
- The top video streaming site is still YouTube.
- The top map site is still Google Maps.
- The dominant office software is still Microsoft Office.
- The dominant social network is still Facebook.
- The top online retailer is still Amazon.
- The top cloud provider is still AWS.
- Internet Explorer died, and Chrome grew in share.
- Websites are lot better and slicker.
- Phone apps got way, way better.
- Cryptocurrencies didn’t take off.
- MMOs didn’t take off.
- Web anonymization didn’t happen.
- Web identity didn’t happen.
- Malware still exists.
- Spam still exists.
- Lag still exists.
- Functional programming didn’t take off.
- Telepresence didn’t take off.
- Mass outsourcing of software jobs didn’t happen.
- Linux didn’t take off.
- Prediction markets didn’t happen
- Dynamic pricing didn’t really happen.
- Micropayments didn’t really happen.
- Most of what was growing in 2010 continued to grow, most of what was shrinking in 2010 continued to shrink.
Some things changed, but most stayed on trend.