Nothing but end-of-year predictions could provide a journalist with such a glowing opportunity to be wrong. For instance: This will be remembered as the year that YouTube erupted onto the scene, to the surprise of your hapless author, who had predicted nothing of the sort. The embarrassing thing about unforeseen eruptions in your backyard is not having noticed the volcano. (It was behind an unruly shrub. Totally happened at Pompeii, too.)
Not to be deterred, the end of another year calls for another look into the crystal flat screen. Among many other seismic shifts, here's what the next few years will bring:
1. The Internet will be everywhere. Wireless Internet is great, but what would it be like if instead of always hopping from one hot spot to the next, we could Google with impunity from anywhere, just like we use our cellphones? Internet-enabled cellphones are already here, of course, but much of the current technology is expensive and slow.
What we're going to see in the next few years, however, is affordable broadband Internet access that's wireless across entire cities, indoors and outdoors, accessible from phone, handheld gadget or laptop.
My prediction: This is going to make everybody completely insufferable. We're all going to be sitting on Wikipedia, pulling up answers to trivial questions that arise over lunch ("Did shrubbery really figure into Pompeii?"). Nobody will not-know anything ever again, except "why?"
We're going to be recording fights with our significant others on our cell-phone video cameras, then, while making dinner six months later, using the same video-cellphones to pull up the recordings on YouTube, shout: "See? You DID say I can't cook perogies!"
2. The Internet will know where you are. Right now, instant-messenger programs keep track of your status: whether you're busy or available. Many users use the programs to indicate what they're doing at any given moment, be it writing an essay or recycling a Christmas tree. The next step is for your gadgets to report on where you physically are, in real-time. (GPS cellphones that are coming onto the market will only help in this regard.) Now, imagine a MSN Messenger that automatically displays what street your friends are on, or a Google map that pinpoints exactly where they are as they noodle around town. (Your kids, being smarter than that, might prove harder to track.) It's just around the corner; you may begin freaking out about privacy today.
3. The Internet you know is going to look pretty quaint. Before too long, the thought of watching online videos in little windows is going to be one of those goofy memories, like brick-sized cellphones and TV's that weren't "Instant-on." The videos you download from YouTube, iTunes, and their ilk are eventually going to fill your computer screen -- though you'll also have the option of shrinking them to fit your handheld or blowing them up for the living-room TV. As the convergence of Internet and television chugs along, expect to see more and more full-length TV productions appearing online. Already, you can view entire seasons' worth of marquee series like Lost, Grey's Anatomy and Ugly Betty, available for free at http://dynamic.abc.go.com. (CBS and NBC have similar offerings, but can't be viewed outside the U.S.; to a certain extent, the Internet already knows where you are.)
