Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin
Ask HN: 2011 Predictions
57 points by zmmz on Dec 4, 2010 | hide | past | favorite | 66 comments
As we near the end of the year, one realises how busy 2010 has been. There is already a post to show off what has been done, but I am interested in what changes and trends you predict will happen in

-the general IT fields (mobile hardware, net neutrality and other broad topics)

-your domain specifically (ie, what disruption can we expect where?)

-your life (what are you working on?)



Camera and facetime for the iPad.

iPads and macbooks coming in colors.

Web of things will kickoff with arduino and programmable toys that can be controlled from and ipad/iphone.

Geolocation businesses are the new black. One can possibly disrupt eBay or craigslist.

Facebook IPO will be the best evar in terms of hype and money made. Just to deflate at the end of the year and leave the tech world in ruins.

Google IS the cloud.

Mac mini 'soapbar'. More power that fits in your hand.

Firefox 4 will never catch up to Chrome. Too late. Too sad.

Ubuntu thinks about re-branding in order to pass the 10% market share. They are that good.

Apple TV? They slowly got the trademarking and patents issue solved. They'll go for a screen now, a real TV that streams and record your shows/movies.

But not until 2012...


> Google IS the cloud.

I disagree with this. Google was the cloud. Google had an early advantage in the cloud game with their internal infrastructure. Google devs could produce apps on a platform not available to the rest of the world. As publicly available tools mature to the same level, anyone will be able to produce the same kind of robust, infinitely-scalable cloud apps. Actually that's already happening, to some degree.


Web of things

that term will not take off


Year of the Linux desktop?

I'm just curious about actual numbers now. Did it reach 1% already?


Does the desktop really matter, though? 2010 is clearly the Year of Linux on the Computer that Fits in your Pocket. Android's gains in smartphone share are nothing short of phenomenal. I think something like 25% of Q3 smartphone sales worldwide were Android...that's incredible. Linux is actually important in the consumer space, right now.


His prediction was specifically about Ubuntu brand, which is mainly known for Desktop.

I really want to see the Bug #1 resolved, but I am not that optimistic.


Firefox 4 beta is already faster than Chrome.

http://arewefastyet.com/


I don't think OP was referring to JavaScript speed, but to user adoption. Chrome is rising fast and Firefox share is pretty stable. Chrome's got the momentum.


Those graphs compare only the JavaScript runtimes on two standardized tests; hardly a measurement of overall browser performance.


Software: I expect Android to become a very widely-implemented operating system and to become popular in not only phones and tablets, but more types of embedded devices and netbooks, even if this isn't what Google intends.

I expect Flash to become very insignificant, much in the way Java currently is on the web: good for a few complex applets here and there and on legacy sites, but most people could care less.

The Web: I expect the governments to try to continue to gain more control over policing the web, as well as corporate back deals.. but I don't think web will be much more different from now until next year except that more of it will go over cell networks instead of through the home broadband connections.

Hardware: More people will opt for Tablets and phones for the majority of their computing needs.

Programming: I can see projects like Google App Inventor leading to a plethora of new applications and interest in development.


It's could not care less.


General IT

=============

* I think the biggest trend is we’ll see computing further redefined. As tablets, Chrome based netbooks and more advanced smartphones flood into the market we’re going to see a bunch of people who realize they just don’t need a home PC anymore.

* In business I think we'll see a big increase in user-focused design. Too many corporations are running into problems with employees using web based solutions on their own to avoid the cumbersome software the company used (that was built based on corporate requirements rather than user friendly ones)

* In startups I think you're going to see the VC industry try to self regulate in the hope of preventing a bubble. So you'll start to see a coordinated effort to lower valuations and force startups into business plans that become profitable faster. ===========================================

My Domain (Mental Health Care & Education)

===========================================

* Mental Health: I think you'll finally see the cloud start to move into solutions that are HIPAA compliant (meaning they meet privacy standards).

* Education: Schools are reaching a cross roads where the teachers unions can no longer bully the districts into keeping teachers they can't afford (because there's simply no money left). With those schools trying desperately to teach more kids with fewer teachers I think you'll see a boon for technology.

=========

My Life

=========

My professional goal for the next year is to push more and more cloud based solutions (which I believe in more and more) and to try to use my connections to get cloud solutions to support the above mentioned confidentiality rules.

My personal/professional goal is to play around with the Kinect and try to find a way teachers could use it to give more interactive lectures (we already have projectors so if the teacher could control the content while lecturing I'm thinking there's a lot that could be accomplished)


dude i am with you on this one not only teachers but stage presentation in general


- General IT

I see phone apps becoming more important than they are now. Apple TV will flop again, but the concept will start to gain traction with cable boxes (BT, Sky and Virgin Media already have this in the UK - I see them integrating the ideas into their set top boxes to cut people like Boxee out).

- your domain

Next year will be the year of cybersecurity. All the boxes you saw this year that deal with identity management will be rebranded as cybersecurity boxes next year. Bruce Schneier will eventually learn the difference between CNE and CNA and will finally start to talk sense on the subject (it took him about two to three years to get airport security mostly right, he's been doing cyber for about a year).

Someone will release a big bug in something important. A bunch of information will be stolen from somewhere. We'll all act like it's something new, when it's not really.

Sorry, I'm highly cynical about my industry.

- your life

I'm hoping to work on iuguy 2.0 once minklinks is out of the way. With luck and the will of the FSM I may well spawn before the year is out. Minklinks will go live at worst in 2011. iuguy 2.0 may follow in 2012.


the wakemate will finally ship


Will a copy of Duke Nukem Forever be included? Word on the street is that it will be released in 2011 as well.


My prediction: Duke Nukem Forever will NOT be released in 2011.

(would be cool if it did though)


I have friends working on this. I'll ask.


Wait what? Wasn't the original shipping date in 2009?


I don't think anyone has ever laid out an official release date.. "it's ready when it's ready" was always the mantra.


http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1185478 said the first batch was supposed to ship last March. I'm glad they've reined in their marketing to reflect reality (they also added a compatibility list, much more honest than the "all phones" claim which was never feasible).


> The next batch of units will ship no later July 30th, 2010. Based on your pre-order date (11/24/2009), you should expect your WakeMate no later than 07/30/2010, but probably significantly sooner.


This post got me started thinking about computer hardware, and I made some predictions for the next five years, along with technical explanations of what they mean and why they're likely:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1970884

tl;dr summary: More cores; optical off-chip interconnect; network-on-chip interconnect; 3D integration for better yield, as well as memory bandwidth and latency; tighter integration of CPU and GPU. Widening gap between server and desktop/mobile processor designs. Also solid state drives, but that's pretty obvious.


2011 is going to be the another year all about web 2.0. I think there is going to be an increase in popularity for mobile web development using html5, css3, javascript and frameworks such as PhoneGap and Sencha Touch. The ever increasing number of mobile platforms will have developers looking for ways to maximize their exposure with minimal effort.

I also think there is going to another generation of social networking apps that build on top of Facebook and Twitter giving us new ways to analyze and use social data.

Overall I would say get yourself into some web development


2011 will be the year of the dealpool.

Myspace deadpools. Digg deadpools. Flickr deadpools/shut down by Yahoo.


Myspace? Sure. Digg? Maybe. Do you care to elaborate on Flickr though?


i understand the first two but flickr seems to me as a stable thing. bandwith/storage prices continue to go down and so their profits grow.


Flickr is far from dead. Photographers use it religiously.


- A solid Android powered iPod Touch competitor in the ~$200 price range. Amazed nothing like this has taken off yet

- A new Zune HD, this time powered by full Windows Phone 7 without the phone stuff. Only makes sense to compete against the iPod Touch (which vastly increases the reach of iOS and the App Store).

- I'd love to see Apple make an unlocked iPhone 5 starting at $229 or so for the base model and drop the iPod Touch. If you really don't want a phone, you could just use it without a sim or new plan. This would also give them a leg-up against Android or Windows Phone 7 based iPod Touch competitors. Sadly, though, I don't think this one is very likely to happen.


PCs are going to be like trucks: http://video.allthingsd.com/video/d8-steve-jobs-on-the-iphon...


A new paradigm / abstraction in programming languages, like macros, OOP, closures, will be adopted by early adopters in the industry. Will improve coding productivity by 50%.


The curious thing is that they are already here, e.g. Python/Ruby vs Java. According to Clayton Christensen it takes a paradigm shift of over 5x improvement before anyone notices.

I dont think the shift will be programming language based because the decision makers dont pay attention to programmers. (I'm speaking the enterprise world here, not startups.) But I hope you're right, not me. :-)


Right, I'm thinking that X will happen to Python/Ruby like Python/Ruby happened to Java.

A 5x improvement is a lot to ask for...I don't think that Python/Ruby offers 5x over Java, and to get 5x over Python/Ruby will be very hard. Even describing software in reasonably precise English probably doesn't offer 5x over the state of the art.

On the other hand, 50% is definitely feasible. The form this will take is a combination of, among other things:

- Moving away from the dynamicism of Python/Ruby: by sacrificing just a little bit of the dynamicism (like assigning to a variable by string name) you can gain a lot in terms of what IDEs can do and what compilers can do to optimize.

- New constructs that replace the dynamic metaprogramming in Ruby/Python with static metaprogramming, like Lisp's macros and F#'s type providers.

- Merging OOP with functional programming by unifying FP's abstract data types and pattern matching with OOP's classes and runtime dispatch. The resulting system will be something like multimethods or predicate dispatch.

- Testing tools will get more powerful. Randomized testing will play a more important role. We'll get statistical analysis in IDEs that can sometimes pinpoint the line that's causing a bug by running the randomized tests and computing the correlation of "line n was executed" with "the test failed".

- Last but not least, the days of ASCII based programming are over.

> I dont think the shift will be programming language based because the decision makers dont pay attention to programmers. (I'm speaking the enterprise world here, not startups.) But I hope you're right, not me. :-)

I agree. As usual the enterprise world will lag a few years behind...around the time they adopt Python/Ruby/F#/etc, the startup world will have new languages and tools.


Actually I agree with you completely. The 5x improvement is what it takes BigCo management to notice you. However startups are getting the 5x advantage all over the place. Nimble platforms plus smarter people plus stripped down organizations give you your 5x.

I have been inclined to think for quite a while that a good IDE / compiler combination would achieve a lot with a language Python. (I've been doing my Python development with an ordinary editor.) Python 3 allows type specification, but doesnt do anything with it. Have the IDE get feedback from the execution profile to advise the programmer on possible type errors.

Testing tools: I would like a tool that can read a method and some annotation to generate a set of unit tests.

Given your list I think it results in way more than 50% improvement.


Gamification is going to take off.

Everything in your life will be quantified and if you want recorded.

You can see actual stats and progress in your life.

A lot of boring things including our jobs will become more fun and merit based rewards at work will accelerate in growth around the world.

We talk a lot about this on our wiki at http://gamification.org .


I expect something big from Microsoft - something really really big.


Their service packs are typically very very big. I'm sure there'll be at least one in '11 :)


I don't understand why you say that. If the last ten years are any indication then nothing big will come from ms.


Last ten years are indication to me that something big should happen right about now, or else... the spiral from the top down continues.

All of the competition aside (across various spectra in competes in), let's just look at Microsoft itself. It's a beast with huge muscles that lost focus. It's numerous heads are biting all over, but with lost focus and strength. It needs to toughen up and straight it's shit together, and now is the time more so than ever.


I think we would have heard about it by now... I don't think they have nearly the culture of secrecy like Apple's, yet look how far in advance things leak out from there.


If I were Microsoft I would want to be releasing a 'cloud only' device next year, all apps and data on the cloud. That would be pretty big.


Except when you make 75% of your revenue off of slow moving IT departments who use complex VPNs and Firewalls.


Slow moving IT departments, by definition, will not move to cheaper alternatives overnight, but they will move eventually.

When they do, they better move to your cheaper alternative.

When they don't move at all, there always is the rest of the market that might move there. For example, if you buy cloud box, your Internet provider could give you 'free' Office in the cloud, just like they give you 'free' antivirus now.

I do not think this is an outrageous prediction. Both Google (Chrome OS) and MS (Office Live) are already moving there. One could even (weakly) argue that iPads and iPhones just cache cloud-based executables; Apple 'only' needs to fix its data storage solution. My bet is that that is what their rumoured new data center is for.


Well, different market. I was thinking more of home users.


id rage will ship 2011 and it is going to be huge


Green energy.


Next year austerity and rising interest rate will take root in major economies, forced by runaway inflation in food, gas and commodity prices - caused by massive printing by US/Europe/Japan/China. This will result in money in flight from risky investments (emerging countries, startups, expansions) to safe investments, which will cause job losses in many of those sectors. Healthcare and Food industries will grow. Entertainment, Advertising, Construction and Transportation industries will wither.


This is a curious expectation, but it feels right to me (with a degree in economics). Recessions are usually preceded by inflation, not followed, However, wars are usually followed by inflation. Since 1960 inflation has been over 600%, energy about 850%. My expectation, is that a huge amount of money has been pumped in to the economy to pay for the wars and the bail-outs. The money is being absorbed by the wars and the trade deficits. I think the current situation is unstable and it will blow up, perhaps in 2012. Certainly any austerity program that hits the middle class hard, and all the Rep. proposals do, will trigger political thrashing and immense hardship, something approaching the severity of the Depression, or we will get the typical end of war inflation.


I agree with you, but I think your terminology is inexact when you say:

"The money is being absorbed by the wars and the trade deficits."

Wars do not absorb money, they absorb wealth -- money is paid to make a bullet, and after the bullet is shot the money remains to decrease the value of all money, and the bullet is gone.

Trade deficits can move accumulated wealth (or money) around, but they also don't absorb it; a foreign country might absorb money, if they decide to stockpile it.


It felt awkward when I wrote it. You are right. The wealth is absorbed/destroyed, but the money is still there with fewer goods to purchase, hence inflation (eventually).


Your thoughts about inflation are interesting, as I've been expecting them year after year. I'm now convinced there's an effort to spin plates for want of a better word on a more or less global scale. If one major economy goes down it would drag others down with it. I don't think we'll see hyperinflation in the conventional sense, but to put it into perspective we have seen massive inflation in specific targeted areas (food, drink, petrol) in specific economies. I think there may be interesting arbitrage opportunities for some next year resulting from this, but I don't see a major hyperinflation event occuring (at least not on the scale where oil went up to nearly $200) next year.

2012 maybe (but not for the UK due to the Olympics - yes I believe that event alone will cause a loss that will cost us dearly in the long run but may delay the inevitable).


That reminds me: there will likely be a default by a major country next year that will drag every economy in the world along with it. My belief is that it will be Ireland, which will affect UK tremendously, since a lot of the Irish debt is held by UK.


Wow, Ireland is in a world of hurt. External debt is 10x GDP. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_external_d.... The US is at 94%, but Europe is way worse. Luxembourg is 38x. Could that be correct? Where is all this money roosting? For the US it's China, Japan, and OPEC, with China way out ahead.


I think it is almost more meaningful to compare Luxembourg to lower Manhattan than to other countries.

Its 'problem' is that it has a huge banking sector for its 500k inhabitants. That brings in lots of money (Luxembourg is the richest country in the EU), but also imports risks.

I do not know where their banks invest their money, but chances are that a fair amount of it is in euro, and that they have been bringing down their investments in the weaker euro countries.


It can't default because it has already received the necessary funds from ECB and IMF. My take Spain is next.

Anyways, lets not turn HN to ZeroHedge :)


I will bet on Portugal, dragging down Spain in it fall.


I'm down for either Portugal or Spain. Ireland will be bailed out and everyone will be fine, but by the time we get to Portugal there'll be no money left. On the other hand, Spain may have such an impact that the sudden realisation that this is the last bailout may well tip countries over the edge.


I wouldn't bet on inflation. Inflation is most directly caused by people's expectations about inflation - and the market's expectations as seen in the difference in price between inflation protected securities and securities that aren't inflation protected (the TIPS spread) is still that inflation will remain low.


My prediction:

Overall price inflation in the USA will remain low.


I am curious to know your reasoning. In a post in this thread I was leaning towards inflation in a few years, with the other possibility being a long recession or Japanese style stagflation. The downside would come from an austerity program hitting the middle class.


Japan style stagflation? Japan has been suffering deflation during its recent period of stagnation. Indeed, the Japan central bank has long worked hard to insure that inflation in Japan remains roughly 0%, and they have on average succeeded at this, with some years the yen increasing in value and some years decreasing - but generally these changes cancelling out. Indeed, many people like Milton Friedman have blamed the bank's insistance on 0 inflation for playing a role in Japans economic problems.


Because deleveraging of the banking system produces a deflationary shock. The Fed is trying to offset this, but for political reasons can only partially (people would cry "currency debasement!" - and already do).

Scott Sumner has written some things on this: http://www.themoneyillusion.com/

The fact that interest rates are very low is also a hint that maybe inflation expectations are not very high.

A good source for the relevant interest rates: http://www.bloomberg.com/markets/rates-bonds/government-bond... (yield column). You can also compare to Japan there.


What do you consider "safe" in a super-inflationary environment? Safety is generally regarded as being cash or bonds, but those become the absolute worst asset classes to hold during very high inflation.


Things that are in short supply that are either essentials or are regarded to be able to preserve its worth. Food, water, gold, silver, platinum, strong currency, high art, etc.


General IT: Sales of MSFT's Kinect will surpass XBOX sales.

Web Development: Python will get a library/framework that is a paradigm shift in writing apps for real-time clients. Something that ties together Twisted's reactor with Django's approachability with socket.io.

Personal: I will finish building my house, then focus on shipping a single side-project.


IT:

- Increasing success of Android

- New FB feature of being able to split up who your messages go to by groups, massive profit for Facebook.

My Domain:

- A lot of move in fashion towards more sustainability, the biggest changes will be in five years though, not one:

- I've written about it at changingclothing.recojeans.com, more specifically changingclothing.recojeans.com/eco-friendly-clothing/




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: