2014 Predictions Part 2: Science & Technology
Originally published at Quantum Matrix Scribe. Please leave any comments there.
So after giving my political predictions, let’s move on to something eminently more satisfying and cool: that which is in my headline.
Online services will get crappier
Perhaps it is only me, but the past two years have seen many great online services climb up the stupid tree, then fall down it and hit every branch on the way to-well, not the ground, but maybe the bedrock.
It’s a lot of little things. Twitter retired the 1.0 API which allowed web developers to organically integrate Twitter timelines into websites; the newer 1.1 API forced a lot of people to use the bog standard Twitter widget, which isn’t very customizable and looks ugly in many environments. (There is a way around it, using JavaScript, fortunately, but it took a lot of pain to find that workaround.) Twitter also recently started auto-expanding images in Tweets; have these guys seen the sickos on there? One of them may link to Fourier’s Gangrene (and no, I will not link to that because it’s a pretty gross image.) Facebook, meanwhile, keeps futzing with the layout, as well having the page dynamically update-a great obscenity generator when you’re in the middle of writing a comment and the whole page moves. (And let’s just not get started on the privacy crap.) Youtube implements DASH, preventing a video from actually loading and making it freeze all the time. And then Google+…
…
…just keeps being Google+, I guess.
Oh, and the rampant advertising…
It used to be that these services was useful, interesting, fun, and were only mildly annoying. But I’ve noticed that, especially in the last 18 months-2 years, they’ve gone downhill. I suspect a huge part of this is due to IPO’s, at least in Facebook’s and Twitter’s cases. Why? Because the incentive structure has shifted. Instead of delivering value to their users, these services are now focused on delivering value to their shareholders. There isn’t anything wrong with that, but it does lead to a lot of frustration for end users.
The thing is, these companies aren’t focused on delivering value anymore, and the shareholders, I fear, don’t realize that delivering value is the very way they make profits. In other industries, one way of making profits is by sucking up to the government teat and lobbying for special favors for yourself and special prohibitions for your opponents (affiliate link). That isn’t really viable in the social media sphere, however, at least not yet (thankfully; hopefully it will never be viable.)
Will it actually hurt these companies? To be honest…I doubt it. Yes there are always people who make #TwitterSuxSoBad and “Make Facebook Go Back To Its Old Non-Sucky Ways Group,” but they’re a minority. So I think in 2014 this trend will continue and we’ll continue to see more and more little annoyances mount. I also don’t think we’ll have any resolutions to privacy concerns from this year. While more people are aware of and upset over these things, and this will only increase next year, I doubt it will hit critical mass for anything significant to happen during the next year. Oh, sure, noises will be made to assuage folks and placate users, but anything dramatic? Not unless Google decides to unilaterally implement Lavabit-type encryption and tell everyone else to screw themselves.
Which probably wouldn’t happen.
Facebook will start to slow down
This is less of a prediction for next year and more of a prediction for 2015-2020, but what the heck, it will likely start next year. Whereas Twitter & Google will weather the various storms (controversial changes to blocking mechanisms, ending Google Reader) they’re facing, I’m far less certain about Facebook. Recently, a Business Insider writer wrote that Facebook is collapsing under it’s own weight. Milennials are dropping out of Facebook, and that doesn’t bode well for long-term viability.
I think next year we’ll see an uptick in stories about people leaving Facebook. (Lifehacker might even run an update on their old article about how to quit Facebook, or get a “minimalized” Facebook profile.) It won’t actually lead to an actual contraction in Facebook users, but growth will slow. Which will make shareholders more antsy than Barack Obama coming home after taking a selfie at a funeral with another woman.
Longer term, I think it spells doom. But then, everything ends. Facebook was launched in February 2004; it will definitely live to see it’s 10th birthday next year. When it finally goes I’m not sure; probably around 2019. Put your bets in the comments and let’s come back and see who wins.
We’ll see a 1TB solid state drive under $400
To me, this is a no-brainer, and kinda cheating because it’s so easy. Technology prices drop as people adopt these technologies; as demand increases, it becomes easier to make these things as economies of scale take over. (Distinguished economists can lambast me for what might be faulty economics.) Right now, a 1TB solid state drive (SSD) on Newegg costs between $540-$700 (there is one refurbished option for $150, but I think that must be some mistake.) These will definitely be under $400 next year, possibly as low as $320 (but not much lower than that, unless it’s part of a Newegg sale they have every three days.)
Also, we’ll probably see a 2TB SSD come out next year, probably costing around $750 at first and maybe bottoming out at $600 before the year is done.
2014 will be Linux’s year
Maybe I’m being way too optimistic, but I see a bunch of things coming together to benefit Linux.
A couple of things have been long-term developments. The first is really anecdotal, but in the past couple of years the number of people I’ve personally witnessed using Linux computers has jumped from absolute zero to about half a dozen. Granted, that’s small, and that’s just my personal experience, but it’s something. Next, there are way more Lifehacker articles on how to actually use Linux (usually Ubuntu because it’s supposedly very user friendly), and people out there are actually tinkering with this stuff. Third, Android, the most popular mobile OS in the world, is based on Linux; because of this, hardware manufacturers have had to rewrite their drivers to support the Linux kernel, and because of that Linux can now work on a lot more hardware combinations, without waiting for someone in the open source community to reverse engineer a driver. It used to be-back in 2007 when I first dabbled with Linux-that wireless was a hit and miss proposition. In 2013, I downloaded and installed Kubuntu and it worked perfectly. This is catching on and people are noticing.
Two other things, external to Linux, will help it along. The first is that, while Windows 8 is actually a great operating system, it’s also a total bust. It might actually be stalling Windows sales. In fact, Microsoft had previously announced it was ending Windows 7 sales next October; that decision has been reversed, no doubt because Windows 8 adoption has been about as real as one of the Surface commercials. Windows 7 is still a viable operating system. However, it does cost a lot of money.
And the other thing: Windows XP will finally go unsupported in April 2014. As they say on Twitter: #DOOOOOOOM.
According to NetMarketShare, on December 21st 2013, nearly a third of users were still running Windows XP. Most of those are either idiots, senior citizens and the like who can’t upgrade, or businesses with mission critical applications. (Ed Bott went over this pretty well at ZDnet.) Still, to me, that’s pretty insane that almost a third of people are using an operating system that is going to be 12 years old come next year. Granted, a huge bunch of that is in China (the above report was global) where nobody upgrades their blasted computers. Still, that’s incredible. And foolish. After April, Windows XP will be dangerous to use. Yes, there will still be security updates by third parties in the IT security business, but without official support from Redmond using XP will be dubious.
Enter Linux. While Windows 7 and 8 are costly, and can only run on modern systems (I think both require at least 2GB of RAM to operate, if I’m not mistaken), Linux is both free (usually) and runs on a wide range of hardware, including some really old stuff. Plus, because it’s open source, the code is there for anyone to see, meaning security holes are patched pretty quickly, instead of being held in secret at Microsoft’s engineering headquarters, so it’s more secure (generally, at least.) And for those who want support, there are paid support options. The most famous are probably Red Hat (whose Linux distribution is one of the major bases of the Linux family, next to Debian) and Canonical, who make Ubuntu, but Oracle and Novell also have their own Enterprise linux offerings (Oracle’s being based on Red Hat Linux.)
When XP goes down, people are going to have to move somewhere. Many are going to try Linux. And thanks to Android, Linux will work. So I think 2014 will be a good year for Linux and it might finally break out of the “only for nerds” trap it’s been living in for years. But that depends on a couple of things: good documentation, and if it comes preinstalled with Flash, MP3 codecs, and the like. If the documentation is terrible and if the free software fanatics prevent mainstream Linux distributions from coming with nonfree codecs, drivers, etc., then you can forget about any Linux gain. Nobody will go for that; they would rather pay out the nose than deal with an OS that ships without any support for their flash games or mice or monitors or printers (people still print, you know). So this is dependent on how much Linux teams work for it. If the effort is not made, the success will not happen. If the effort is made, I think Linux will see tremendous gains.
Now, what that will do I’m honestly not sure. It might make the Internet more secure….
Google+ is going to continue to have nobody on it
Sorry.
Bitcoin will crash
This is just a hunch, but not too long ago we saw China ban Bitcoin transactions (as well as Thailand and India, basically) and the value of Bitcoin plunged about 40%. That’s pretty damn volatile, and while I am not a monetary expert, I think that’s not good for a currency. If the value of your currency changes that much so quickly (and if you put in terms of it’s rapid growth over 2013, which I think was 50x- if you bought $100 worth in January it was worth $5,000 at the end of the year) it’s not going to be very usable.
Now I could be totally wrong about that, and also totally wrong about this, but I have a hunch Bitcoin will dramatically decrease in value next year and might go out. I think it will also bring down other cryptocurrencies, including Litecoin, Peercoin, and the so-called “Dogecoin,” which is actually real. Although it’s also hit the reputation of these cryptocurrencies already…
There are going to be some awesome technological advances next year
We’ve seen some incredible things the past year. Soylent, dataSTICKIES, massive curved TV’s, not to mention all these really cool technologies that modern scifi is ignoring.
I have no idea what specific technologies will emerge next year. But I really think that there will be some super-cool technological advances next year, whether those guys working on building a sun in New Jersey get anywhere, or the scientist who is refining the formulae for faster-than-light travel finds something, or something completely different.
One thing is clear: 2014 is going to be cool.