Speaker 1: Get in text with technology with tech Stuff from stuff
Speaker 1: works dot com. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff.
Speaker 1: I am your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer
Speaker 1: over at how Stuff Works, and I like technology, except
Speaker 1: at this time of the year. It's the time of
Speaker 1: the year when I stick my neck out, get ready
Speaker 1: for my head to get chopped off, and predict what's
Speaker 1: gonna happen in the following twelve months of tech I'm
Speaker 1: recording this episode on December seventeen, so technically there's still
Speaker 1: half a month of December left to go, but I'm
Speaker 1: looking ahead at This is the the last episode I
Speaker 1: believe of tech Stuff to publish in the year twenty seventeen,
Speaker 1: so when you hear the next one will be celebrating
Speaker 1: a new year. But first, let's before that all happens,
Speaker 1: let's let's kind of take some guesses. Um and and
Speaker 1: I decided this year to make some more specific prediction
Speaker 1: rather than the really general ones I tend to go with,
Speaker 1: because not only do I think you guys deserve more
Speaker 1: specific predictions, but it's also way easier to figure out
Speaker 1: if they came true or not. Here's the here's the
Speaker 1: secret folks. After I make these episodes and they go live,
Speaker 1: and a year passes, and it comes time for me
Speaker 1: to look and evaluate how well I predicted things. I
Speaker 1: have to do all that research. I have to figure out, well,
Speaker 1: did what I said, did it happened, Did it happen
Speaker 1: the way I thought it would, did it happen a
Speaker 1: different way? That requires a huge amount of research. And
Speaker 1: the more general the prediction is, the harder it is
Speaker 1: to nail down whether or not it happened. But if
Speaker 1: I make very specific predictions, then I have a much
Speaker 1: better chance of knowing right away if I'm right or wrong. So,
Speaker 1: for example, if I predict that in you and McGregor
Speaker 1: becomes the CEO of Google, I'm gonna know by December. Now,
Speaker 1: of course, the challenge there is to make predictions that
Speaker 1: are not patently ridiculous, because that's just wasting your time
Speaker 1: and I don't want to do that. So here's hoping
Speaker 1: that some of these predictions are interesting and that they
Speaker 1: are verifiable or falsifiable at the end of the year.
Speaker 1: Those are Michaels. So with that being said, let us
Speaker 1: go to prediction number one, which is that VR headsets
Speaker 1: like Oculus rift HTC, Vibe and others will have another
Speaker 1: lackluster year. We're not going to see a spike in sales.
Speaker 1: By the end of VR will not have made any
Speaker 1: real progress in home markets, and will likely see several
Speaker 1: products discontinued, although the Vibe and the Rift may survive
Speaker 1: just because they have larger corporate sans behind them. So
Speaker 1: in other words, I expect when I look at the
Speaker 1: analyst reports in December, that there won't be any months
Speaker 1: where VR headsets suddenly make incredible sales. We'll probably see
Speaker 1: some of those prices come down, and we'll probably see
Speaker 1: the prices of the various computers that you need in
Speaker 1: order to run VR at a decent clip, we'll see
Speaker 1: those prices come down too, But I don't know it's
Speaker 1: going to come down enough to make this a common
Speaker 1: household technology. And we're also starting to see a lot
Speaker 1: more development on the VR space with software, with experiences
Speaker 1: that you can have that will help. I don't think
Speaker 1: it's going to be enough. So I think by this
Speaker 1: time we're gonna be looking at a pretty similar situation
Speaker 1: as far as virtual reality is concerned. I find that
Speaker 1: sad I would love to see VR takeoff. I just
Speaker 1: don't feel like it's quite catching on. I think we
Speaker 1: might be past the point where it could really hook
Speaker 1: in to the general consumer market. Prediction number two. Microsoft
Speaker 1: mixed reality headsets, being the relatively new toy on the market,
Speaker 1: will get some initial buzz in the early part ofen
Speaker 1: but will largely suffer essentially the same fate as virtual
Speaker 1: reality headsets. And I think a R augmented reality has
Speaker 1: incredible potential to do really big business. I just don't
Speaker 1: think is going to be the year where it happens,
Speaker 1: so I don't expect big sales numbers now. Augmented reality,
Speaker 1: in case you've forgotten, is the technology in which we
Speaker 1: are able to overlay or augment our experience of reality
Speaker 1: with some sort of digital information. Typically, we're looking at
Speaker 1: the world through a screen, so we're getting like a
Speaker 1: live video feed of our surroundings through a screen, and
Speaker 1: on that screen we can overlay digital information and us
Speaker 1: augment our experience. But there are a lot of other
Speaker 1: variations on this, like things that are ad audible as
Speaker 1: opposed to visual, that sort of stuff. I just don't
Speaker 1: think that the mixed reality headsets are going to be
Speaker 1: a huge consumer uh piece of technology. Either. We might
Speaker 1: see it being used in industrial or business related endeavors,
Speaker 1: but I don't think it's going to become the hot
Speaker 1: new consumer product. I don't think you're gonna go home,
Speaker 1: put on your mixed reality headset and then do some computing.
Speaker 1: I could be wrong about that. It all depends on
Speaker 1: how the technology is positioned and how it's marketed, but
Speaker 1: I would be surprised if mixed reality really takes off
Speaker 1: in the consumer space. Prediction number three, We're gonna see
Speaker 1: autonomous car service rolled out for real z s, not
Speaker 1: just as a limited test case, in at least one
Speaker 1: market in the United States, before the end of now.
Speaker 1: This is similar to a prediction I made for seventeen
Speaker 1: where I said that Uber was going to try and
Speaker 1: do a truly autonomous test system in a major US
Speaker 1: market where there'd be no driver in the driver's seat.
Speaker 1: It would truly be an autonomous car with no human
Speaker 1: operator there to step in line. But that did not happen.
Speaker 1: I do think we're gonna see at least a limited
Speaker 1: rollout of autonomous car service in one market in the US,
Speaker 1: not as a test, but as this is our service
Speaker 1: moving forward in this market by the end of That's
Speaker 1: a not that bold of a prediction, I would argue,
Speaker 1: because we've seen some of this in prototype stages throughout.
Speaker 1: Uber was operating some autonomous vehicle services in Pittsburgh, in Arizona,
Speaker 1: in San Francisco, but all of those were with a
Speaker 1: human operator in the car as well. UM I think
Speaker 1: that before is over, some one, maybe not Uber, but
Speaker 1: someone will be operating a truly autonomous car service in
Speaker 1: a major market. I don't know that it will be
Speaker 1: a huge success, but I think it will happen, So
Speaker 1: that will be something to look out for. Prediction number four, Congress,
Speaker 1: it's going to give the nod to Disney and twenty
Speaker 1: first century Fox and say yes, Disney, you can acquire
Speaker 1: twenty one century Fox. This will take several months, but
Speaker 1: it will happen. Disney will then end up being the
Speaker 1: six owner of Hulu because they already owned thirty percent
Speaker 1: of Hulu and Fox owns another thirty percent of Hulu.
Speaker 1: But they're also going to go ahead and develop their
Speaker 1: own streaming service on top of their majority ownership of Hulu.
Speaker 1: So the landscape of two thousand eighteen December two thousand
Speaker 1: eighteen will be that the massive entertainment into Street will
Speaker 1: be more under Disney's belt than ever before. Disney will
Speaker 1: control all those assets that Century Fox had that were
Speaker 1: related to entertainment. Twenty first Century Fox of the company
Speaker 1: Murdocks Company will still have some of Fox's properties under it,
Speaker 1: but a large portion of that goes to Disney. It
Speaker 1: means lots of different things. It means that we could
Speaker 1: potentially see lots of those uh those Fox owned or
Speaker 1: Fox licensed properties from Marvel make their way into Disney's
Speaker 1: Marvel movies. That would include The Fantastic Four and The
Speaker 1: X Men and Deadpool and characters like that. But on
Speaker 1: a bigger scale, it means all sorts of things. It
Speaker 1: means an impact to streaming services. It means that we're
Speaker 1: going to see increasingly more of our entertainment come from
Speaker 1: a decreasing number of major studios, which isn't necessarily a
Speaker 1: good thing. We also will see that Star Wars New Hope,
Speaker 1: which was in perpetuity given to twenty first Century Fox,
Speaker 1: will now join all of its brothers and sisters of
Speaker 1: the Star Wars properties under Disney, which means potentially we
Speaker 1: could get a digitally remastered version of the cinematic releases
Speaker 1: of the original trilogy. In other words, before the special editions,
Speaker 1: we could get a fully cleaned up version of those movies,
Speaker 1: because Disney will own all of them. Before Fox had
Speaker 1: the agreement that they owned the rights to a New
Speaker 1: Hope and Us, there was very little hope that we
Speaker 1: were ever going to get that cinematic release, the one
Speaker 1: where Han shot first, or actually Han shot period um.
Speaker 1: That one we now could potentially get. That's a big one.
Speaker 1: I don't think we're going to get in, but I
Speaker 1: think it could happen. Prediction number five. After numerous heated discussions,
Speaker 1: Congress will overturn the FCC's decision in December to reverse
Speaker 1: the decision classifying broadband Internet as a public utility. That
Speaker 1: one was made back in. This is gonna be the
Speaker 1: result of lots of lawsuits and arguments in Congress. I
Speaker 1: think ultimately Congress is going to take a look at
Speaker 1: the ground swell of support in the United States among
Speaker 1: citizens to maintain that neutrality, to keep those rules in place. Uh,
Speaker 1: and we'll say, hey, we can't really risk going against
Speaker 1: the will of the people without putting ourselves in danger.
Speaker 1: Right now, if you are in Congress, you're probably looking
Speaker 1: at your position as being on shaky ground at best,
Speaker 1: because things are very tumultuous in United States politics, and
Speaker 1: as a result, even if you don't necessarily side with
Speaker 1: the net neutrality argument, your constituency might and that would
Speaker 1: mean that you have a vested interest in making sure
Speaker 1: that you kind of support it so that you don't
Speaker 1: have an angry mob of constituents at home who then
Speaker 1: will vote your butt out of office the next time
Speaker 1: a vote comes around. That might be an overly optimistic
Speaker 1: view of what is going to happen. But I suspect
Speaker 1: that we're going to see this decision from the f
Speaker 1: c C blocked in some way in and again. It
Speaker 1: may come from the courts, or it may come from Congress,
Speaker 1: but I don't think we're going to get through with
Speaker 1: those new considerations in place. Um. The FCC argues, by
Speaker 1: the way, that net neutrality will still be a thing,
Speaker 1: it's just it won't be an official regulation. The government
Speaker 1: won't be enforcing net neutrality, but the internet service providers
Speaker 1: will maintain net new trality out of self interest. That
Speaker 1: might possibly be true if in the United States we
Speaker 1: had a true free market with internet service providers. If
Speaker 1: you had multiple choices for an I s P within
Speaker 1: your market, then you could argue, all right, well, net
Speaker 1: neutrality isn't protected. But if one company decides to act
Speaker 1: in a way that is contrary to net neutrality, I
Speaker 1: could just stop my service with them and go to
Speaker 1: a competitor. But that's not the way it works in
Speaker 1: the United States. Most regions in the US that have
Speaker 1: broadband access have at most two I s p s
Speaker 1: to choose from, and most of them only have one.
Speaker 1: So if you only have one choice, there's nowhere else
Speaker 1: to go. So the argument that the free market will
Speaker 1: maintain net neutrality to me seems disingenuous because there's not
Speaker 1: really a free market in the I s P business
Speaker 1: in the United States. So I suspect that ultimately this
Speaker 1: is gonna get overturned. Prediction number six. By the end
Speaker 1: of two thousand eighteen, the percentage of cord cutters in
Speaker 1: the US will be such that will see thirty million
Speaker 1: people cutting the cord. Total. Now, in seventeen, that number
Speaker 1: was at twenty two point two million. We had twenty
Speaker 1: two point two million chord cutters by seventeen. That's not
Speaker 1: throughout the year, but in total that was up from
Speaker 1: sixteen point seven million in twenty sixteen. So I think
Speaker 1: that trend is not just going to continue. I think
Speaker 1: it's gonna pick up a little more speed. So it
Speaker 1: they gained a little bit more than five and a
Speaker 1: half million cord cutters in twenty seventeen, I think we're
Speaker 1: gonna go closer to seven point eight million in eighteen.
Speaker 1: So that's gonna knock us up to thirty million total.
Speaker 1: Thirty million people who have cut the chord and they
Speaker 1: no longer subscribe to traditional cable or satellite television. They
Speaker 1: will they might subscribe to a virtual subscription on a
Speaker 1: smart TV or a console or some other solution, but
Speaker 1: they will abandon the traditional satellite or cable option. That's
Speaker 1: my prediction for cutting the chord, and that the never chords.
Speaker 1: Those are people who are of adult age who have
Speaker 1: never paid for traditional cable or satellite. That number is
Speaker 1: going to go up to just because you're gonna have
Speaker 1: more people reach the age of eighteen who still have
Speaker 1: never done that and don't have any plans to do it,
Speaker 1: So that number is going to keep going up too,
Speaker 1: just as a result of younger generations reaching the age
Speaker 1: of maturity and not having ever bought a cable or
Speaker 1: satellite package for television. But we're also going to see
Speaker 1: more and more households that have been doing that cut
Speaker 1: those ties, and that, as a result, is also going
Speaker 1: to have massive applications across the entertainment industry because you're
Speaker 1: gonna see advertising react as a result of that. If
Speaker 1: you have fewer people watching your ads, then those ads
Speaker 1: have less value and that's going to have this ripple
Speaker 1: effect throughout the industry and it will be really interesting
Speaker 1: to see where things go from there. I don't think
Speaker 1: it's going to be massively disruptive by the end of
Speaker 1: but it's going to continue this trend of disruption that
Speaker 1: I imagine we'll see hit its peak and maybe another
Speaker 1: four or five years and uh, at that point, who
Speaker 1: knows what will come next, but I think the landscape
Speaker 1: will be drastically different. Well, I've got a lot more
Speaker 1: predictions about ten coming up, but first let's take a
Speaker 1: quick break to thank our sponsor. All Right, we're up
Speaker 1: to prediction number seven. There will be at least one
Speaker 1: and probably more than one security breaches on the scale
Speaker 1: of the Equifax breach. In because while we pay a
Speaker 1: lot of lip service towards security. It's way easier to
Speaker 1: talk about being secure than to actually take the steps
Speaker 1: and make sure we are are doing it. And plus
Speaker 1: we're human beings and we're wacky you, So this, I
Speaker 1: think is a gimme. I would be shocked if we
Speaker 1: get through without another massive security breach making the news.
Speaker 1: It maybe that it's a breach that a company tries
Speaker 1: to cover up. That seems to be the m O
Speaker 1: for a lot of companies. It never works out well
Speaker 1: for them. It always eventually will find its way to
Speaker 1: the public, and then it's way worse at that point.
Speaker 1: Equifax is a great example. The The initial UH vulnerability
Speaker 1: was found in March. The earliest evidence of an attack
Speaker 1: was found in May, and no one talked about until September,
Speaker 1: and by more than a hundred and thirty million accounts
Speaker 1: had been breached and accessed and potentially all that personal
Speaker 1: data is now compromised. So I suspect we're gonna see
Speaker 1: something along those lines again. Don't know who will be
Speaker 1: the target, could be anybody, don't know what vulnerability they'll use,
Speaker 1: could be anything, but just from the fact that no
Speaker 1: one ever seems to really get their head around how
Speaker 1: to practice good security tells me that this is going
Speaker 1: to happen. In the case with Equifax, the company was
Speaker 1: even aware of the vulnerability before the first attack apparently happened,
Speaker 1: but failed to act to solve that. Despite the fact
Speaker 1: that the company has a policy of fixing such problems
Speaker 1: within forty eight hours of discovering them. That just didn't happen.
Speaker 1: With the Equifax data breach, I suspect we're going to
Speaker 1: see something along those lines. I'd rather not. I I
Speaker 1: have been personally affected by some of these. The Yahoo breach,
Speaker 1: the Equifax breach. It's all gonna happen again, though. Uh,
Speaker 1: just because there's no such thing as a perfect secure system,
Speaker 1: and there's way too many examples of companies that just
Speaker 1: don't take the right steps to address vulnerabilities once they
Speaker 1: are found. They drag their feet because fixing problems is
Speaker 1: expensive and it takes time and it takes energy away
Speaker 1: from doing business. But if you don't do it, the
Speaker 1: amount you're going to have to spend in order to
Speaker 1: correct the problems that will happen will dwarf anything you
Speaker 1: would have spent just fixing the problem in the first place.
Speaker 1: So I would love to be proven wrong on this,
Speaker 1: hopefully December, I'll say, wow, we got through without any
Speaker 1: major breaches. I would love to be proven wrong. I
Speaker 1: just don't think it's gonna happen. Prediction number eight. Apple
Speaker 1: next iPhone, which I'm betting will not have a number
Speaker 1: associated with it. So it's not going to be the
Speaker 1: iPhone eleven. It will be called something else, maybe just
Speaker 1: the iPhone It will be an incremental upgrade to iPhone ten.
Speaker 1: So it's not gonna be some sort of massive evolution
Speaker 1: of the iPhone ten. Now, Johnny, i'ves Sir Johnny Eyes
Speaker 1: has once again taken the helm of design over at Apple.
Speaker 1: He's personally involved. However, I don't think his influence is
Speaker 1: likely going to be seen that much in the products
Speaker 1: that come out next year. I don't think that's going
Speaker 1: to really be a major component for another generation or so,
Speaker 1: because it takes more than a year of work to
Speaker 1: produce these products. So the next iPhone, the iPhone whatever
Speaker 1: it will be called, but I don't think it will
Speaker 1: be called the iPhone eleven, is already well in the
Speaker 1: development stage at this point. It's got to be because
Speaker 1: by the time September rolls around, it has to be
Speaker 1: ready to go to manufacturing plants and be produced in
Speaker 1: large numbers. That means that it already has to be
Speaker 1: well along the development cycle. That being, and since Johnny
Speaker 1: I've just came back over into the design section and
Speaker 1: got really hands on with everything, I think that means
Speaker 1: we will not see a direct evidence of his involvement
Speaker 1: of his influence, at least not beyond what we see
Speaker 1: in Apple products in general. Uh, this next generation is
Speaker 1: going to take another generation before that happens. Prediction number nine.
Speaker 1: We're gonna see a rise in cord cutting, which will
Speaker 1: have a big effect on advertising, but we'll also see
Speaker 1: a rise in ad blocking online. We're gonna see more
Speaker 1: and more people installing ad blockers and developing ad blockers.
Speaker 1: This is going to encourage more sites to use ad
Speaker 1: blocker detectors. If you've we use an ad blocker and
Speaker 1: you've gone to one of those sites, you've probably seen
Speaker 1: a pop up up here and saying, hey, we see
Speaker 1: you're using an ad blocker. Please don't do that. If
Speaker 1: you want to look at our stuff, white list our
Speaker 1: sites so that we can make money. Sometimes you can't
Speaker 1: even view the original content until you have white listed them.
Speaker 1: Or pause your ad blocker, whatever it may be. This
Speaker 1: is likely going to inspire more people to file lawsuits
Speaker 1: against such practices. There's an argument going on that says
Speaker 1: it's a violation of privacy for a web page or
Speaker 1: a website to look into what your browser has in
Speaker 1: order to serve you up this information of Oh, I
Speaker 1: see your using an ad blocker. They said, well, that's
Speaker 1: a violation of privacy because you're staring at what I'm
Speaker 1: using on my computer and I didn't give you permission
Speaker 1: to do that. This is still unraveling as I record
Speaker 1: this podcast, so we're probably gonna see that continue in.
Speaker 1: It's gonna be a big mess, and this is going
Speaker 1: to bring the question everyone is worried about closer to
Speaker 1: the foreground. It's going to bring this question up that
Speaker 1: people are going to have to grapple with, which is
Speaker 1: how do you make money creating content on the Internet
Speaker 1: in a way that does not alienate your customers. I
Speaker 1: have a vested interest in this question. This podcast is
Speaker 1: ad supported. Without those ads, there's no revenue. Without revenue,
Speaker 1: we I don't get paid, we don't have a space
Speaker 1: to record in, we don't have money to host these podcasts.
Speaker 1: These podcasts stop getting recorded, the company goes away. That's
Speaker 1: our source of revenue. So we want to be able
Speaker 1: to do this. I love my job, I love doing
Speaker 1: what I do, but I can't just do it for free.
Speaker 1: I don't get paid in songs and sandwiches. I can't
Speaker 1: pay my rent with any sort of good will from
Speaker 1: you listeners. I need I need cash money you. It's
Speaker 1: a hard knock life out there, So we as creators
Speaker 1: have a responsibility to come up with ways that allow
Speaker 1: us to make money uh off of our ideas and
Speaker 1: do it in such a way that is not too
Speaker 1: intrusive or irritating or otherwise off putting. That's our responsibility.
Speaker 1: It's also the responsibility of the advertisers to come up
Speaker 1: with methods that are effective, that give you the information
Speaker 1: you need to act upon those advertisements so that this
Speaker 1: whole cycle works. If it doesn't, then obviously something's broken
Speaker 1: and eventually the system collapses. Well, this is true across
Speaker 1: the entire web. It's not just podcasts, but on regular websites.
Speaker 1: And I look, I'm a web user. I find ads
Speaker 1: really really irritating as well. I was using a browser
Speaker 1: to look at content the other day, I did not
Speaker 1: have an ad blocker in place. I'm reading an article.
Speaker 1: A paragraph and a half down into the article, I
Speaker 1: get an enormous full screen overlay of an ad playing music,
Speaker 1: completely obscuring the article I was trying to read. That
Speaker 1: is obnoxious. Nobody wants that, And it's that sort of
Speaker 1: stuff that continues the argument, Hey, I want to use
Speaker 1: an ad blocker because otherwise my experience is terrible. That's
Speaker 1: a valid argument to make. But on the other hand,
Speaker 1: if you don't have the ads, you can't pay to
Speaker 1: have that content, you can't create the content. You're not
Speaker 1: gonna do it for free. So we're gonna see this
Speaker 1: really kind of become a battleground in this This is
Speaker 1: gonna be the the lead. We got to sit down
Speaker 1: and fix this because it's broken right now and nobody
Speaker 1: is coming out a winner. We want to have something
Speaker 1: that is giving value to our customers, is giving value
Speaker 1: to the advertisers, and that allows us to make the
Speaker 1: stuff we want to make. I don't have the answer
Speaker 1: to what that is. By the way, I am a
Speaker 1: lowly content creator. I know what I hate. I hate
Speaker 1: I hate really obnoxious ads. I don't hate all ads.
Speaker 1: Some ads I find either entertaining or helpful. A lot
Speaker 1: of ads that are based on my browsing behavior I
Speaker 1: actually kind of like because I end up seeing stuff
Speaker 1: that I'm interested in but I might not have ever
Speaker 1: known about. So those I actually enjoy. But uh, and
Speaker 1: I have. I've clicked on those ads and bought stuff
Speaker 1: that way. But you've got to be really careful how
Speaker 1: you do that too, because obviously if you do too
Speaker 1: much of that, it becomes kind of creepy, right. It
Speaker 1: feels like someone spying on you and getting to know
Speaker 1: everything you like, and that doesn't feel great either. So
Speaker 1: there's definitely some sort of line we need to figure
Speaker 1: out to follow as an industry and hopefully come out
Speaker 1: with a solution that works for everybody, because otherwise we're
Speaker 1: just going to continuously have this battle where people create
Speaker 1: different types of ad blockers just to ignore ads entirely,
Speaker 1: and ultimately that's going to lead to an entire industry
Speaker 1: crumbling in on itself because it can't support itself anymore.
Speaker 1: The advertisers will pull out because they're saying, no one's
Speaker 1: seeing our ads in the first place, and then no
Speaker 1: money comes in, and then without money, you can't run
Speaker 1: a business, or so I'm told. I don't know. I
Speaker 1: still buy everything on the barter system. Three walking birds
Speaker 1: to the Wooden Nickel. I say, prediction number ten. We're
Speaker 1: heading toward a subscription service crash and which will see
Speaker 1: such a saturation in the market for subscription based entertainment services.
Speaker 1: I'm talking about stuff like Netflix and Hulu and Amazon
Speaker 1: Video and all the others that are coming out. There
Speaker 1: will be a general backlash, and I think we'll get
Speaker 1: through before all of this kind of shakes out, but
Speaker 1: things will start to heat up towards the end of
Speaker 1: with more consumers getting disenchanted with how many different competing
Speaker 1: services there are and what they're expected to do in
Speaker 1: order to get all the content they want. So by
Speaker 1: the end of I expect there's gonna be all these
Speaker 1: different articles about here's the list of services I have
Speaker 1: to subscribe to if I want to be able to
Speaker 1: watch the things I would be able to see if
Speaker 1: I still use pay TV, right, because that was the
Speaker 1: that was the beauty of this Originally, everyone was thinking, Hey,
Speaker 1: when we get to this world, I'll be able to
Speaker 1: subscribe to just the things I want. I won't be
Speaker 1: subscribing to a cable package where I get four dred channels,
Speaker 1: of which I will watch three, and on those three channels,
Speaker 1: I'm maybe watching five shows total, So I'm paying all
Speaker 1: this money for five shows. Wouldn't it be great if
Speaker 1: I had a service where I could just pay for
Speaker 1: those five shows and not anything else and save money
Speaker 1: and frustration. Except what we're getting is all these different
Speaker 1: subscription services that sort of approximate that pay TV model
Speaker 1: with massive gaps in every single service. Every service has
Speaker 1: gaps that other services kind of fill in, and then
Speaker 1: you think, well, for me to get the experience I
Speaker 1: want to have to subscribe to eight different services, I'm
Speaker 1: not saving any money, and it's just frustrating as a consumer.
Speaker 1: I think by the end of we're going to see
Speaker 1: that frustration build to a high point. And in twenty nineteen,
Speaker 1: I would argue we're gonna start seeing some of those
Speaker 1: subscription services phase out because people will just start to
Speaker 1: object with their wallets. Prediction number eleven. By the end
Speaker 1: of eighteen, we will reach the point in America where
Speaker 1: more retail dollars will be spent online than in physical
Speaker 1: brick and mortar stores. So there's gonna be the act
Speaker 1: foul tipping point where online revenues overall are going to
Speaker 1: be higher than traditional stores. Now we haven't hit that
Speaker 1: point yet, but will be that tipping point, and there
Speaker 1: will be no going back after we hit that. Now,
Speaker 1: that does not mean I suspect we'll see tons of
Speaker 1: real places shut down in ten. We're gonna see some.
Speaker 1: We've already seen several stores kind of go belly up
Speaker 1: over the last few years. That's going to continue in
Speaker 1: twenty eighteen, but I don't think it's going to be massive.
Speaker 1: I don't think this is where we see the general
Speaker 1: stores just turning upside down throughout the course of the year.
Speaker 1: The trend will continue, but it will be I think
Speaker 1: another decade before this effect really starts to impact stores
Speaker 1: in a way that causes massive closures, which obviously leads
Speaker 1: to lots of other problems. You have entire towns or
Speaker 1: city centers that will be essentially vacant because the stores
Speaker 1: that would have occupied those spaces will no longer have
Speaker 1: the revenues to support themselves. They'll they'll go bankrupt, they'll
Speaker 1: go out of business, and so further down the road,
Speaker 1: we're gonna have this issue with what do we do
Speaker 1: with all that that real estate? What happens to all
Speaker 1: those spaces? I mean, we may be getting all of
Speaker 1: our stuff online, what happens to those physical locations that
Speaker 1: used to have stores in them? And I'm sure we'll
Speaker 1: come up with different solutions to that problem. I'm sure
Speaker 1: different cities will try different approaches. Some may reclaim that
Speaker 1: real estate and turn it into something else, whether it's residential,
Speaker 1: They may re zone to residential neighborhoods, they may turn
Speaker 1: them into public spaces. Um maybe you we'll just see
Speaker 1: a whole bunch of Pok restaurants opening up everywhere, which
Speaker 1: I'm totally cool with. I love Pok. So now that's
Speaker 1: the way things are going. If I can't walk three
Speaker 1: blocks without running into fifteen Pok places, hey fine by me.
Speaker 1: Prediction number twelve. Google will start to roll out WiFi
Speaker 1: based internet services to some cities, similar to how it
Speaker 1: rolled out fiber, but with the goal of having faster deployment.
Speaker 1: Because here in Atlanta, Google Fiber has been a thing
Speaker 1: on the way for like four years. They still haven't
Speaker 1: laid fiber in my neighborhood, and to be fair, they've
Speaker 1: backed off on a lot of the places where they
Speaker 1: said they were going to deploy, but Atlanta was one
Speaker 1: of those where they had already made the commitment and
Speaker 1: just hasn't rolled out very quickly. It's not entirely the
Speaker 1: company's fault. They've encountered resistance everywhere you turn. So I
Speaker 1: think they're gonna try and switch to a wireless approach,
Speaker 1: a gig a bit wireless approach, um. But I imagine
Speaker 1: there're still going to encounter some similar issues, mostly involving
Speaker 1: where they can set up transmitter towers, because that's a
Speaker 1: big thing, even in Atlanta. Now you've you'll see different
Speaker 1: areas in Atlanta opposing the construction of a new cell tower,
Speaker 1: for example. Um. But I don't think it's going to
Speaker 1: be nearly as tough as it was to get clearance
Speaker 1: for stuff like utility whole access. That was a crazy
Speaker 1: battle Google had to fight over and over and over again,
Speaker 1: and largely did so I think as a way of
Speaker 1: setting a precedent for other companies. I don't think Google's
Speaker 1: intention was to really become a massive Internet service provider
Speaker 1: across multiple cities in the United States. I think it
Speaker 1: was more about, let's set some rules that other companies
Speaker 1: can follow in the future to make this a more
Speaker 1: competitive space. It just hasn't really happened because, as it
Speaker 1: turns out, if you want to be an I s
Speaker 1: P you need a whole lot of money to get
Speaker 1: into that game, and most companies just don't have that
Speaker 1: kind of capital. So it ends up being the game
Speaker 1: of a few major UH companies in most regions. If
Speaker 1: you're lucky, you have a few. Most of us only
Speaker 1: have one or maybe two. All right, I've got a
Speaker 1: few more predictions, but before I jump into those, let's
Speaker 1: take another quick break and thank our sponsor. Prediction number thirteen.
Speaker 1: By the end of automation will have eliminated more jobs
Speaker 1: than it creates. Now, that's not necessarily the endgame. I
Speaker 1: do think automation is going to create more jobs along
Speaker 1: the way, and maybe ultimately we'll see things even out
Speaker 1: or even see automation create more jobs than it displaces.
Speaker 1: But I think, in which I view as the short
Speaker 1: term of this journey, we're going to be hard strapped
Speaker 1: to make more jobs than it displaces. I think it's
Speaker 1: gonna be pretty bleak for a lot of people, and
Speaker 1: not just in the blue collar industries. I think in
Speaker 1: the white color industries. We're gonna see a lot of
Speaker 1: of bots and AI programs and algorithms replace what traditionally
Speaker 1: would go to people, you know, like human people being things.
Speaker 1: They're going to be out of a job. It's gonna
Speaker 1: be rough. It is not good, uh, at least not
Speaker 1: in the short term, especially not for those people. It
Speaker 1: might be good for the companies and that it could
Speaker 1: help them cut some of their costs and thus improve profits.
Speaker 1: But while that's good for a very few people, it's
Speaker 1: bad for a whole bunch of others. So I don't
Speaker 1: want that to happen. I'd like to be proven wrong
Speaker 1: on this one, but I suspect, at least in the
Speaker 1: short term, that's what's going to be. Like Now, maybe
Speaker 1: we will find creative ways to make new jobs for
Speaker 1: those people and find ways to train them for those
Speaker 1: new jobs. That seems to be like the optimist approach
Speaker 1: to this view of the future, the idea that robots
Speaker 1: and other forms of automation we'll just take over jobs
Speaker 1: that are difficult, deadly, dangerous, or dull, and we humans
Speaker 1: will be freed up to do wonderful other jobs that
Speaker 1: are much more rewarding and less dangerous and less um
Speaker 1: you know, less mind numbingly dull. But we have to
Speaker 1: create those jobs, and we have to figure out how
Speaker 1: to make sure people can do those jobs. If it's
Speaker 1: someone who was doing menial labor and they suddenly are
Speaker 1: being put into a position that is asking much more
Speaker 1: of them, we have to be sure that we give
Speaker 1: them the tools they need in order to do that job,
Speaker 1: which includes training and education. I'm not convinced that we
Speaker 1: have put those those uh pieces in place. I think
Speaker 1: we're doing the automation before we've got the tools to
Speaker 1: help people affected by the automation to do something else,
Speaker 1: and it feels very reactionary to me. So maybe I'm
Speaker 1: a pessimist in that sense. Maybe there actually are far
Speaker 1: more tools than I'm giving it credit for. But I
Speaker 1: feel a lot of empathy for people who are displaced,
Speaker 1: whether it's through automation or some other corporate maneuver, and
Speaker 1: I often feel that any sort of solution that we
Speaker 1: create for those folks tends to come after a big
Speaker 1: wave has already affected a bunch of people, and that
Speaker 1: just means that people are suffering during that time. I
Speaker 1: hate that, uh, But then I'm very squishy person less
Speaker 1: squishy than I was a year ago, but that's due
Speaker 1: to weight loss prediction number fourteen. The trend that started,
Speaker 1: I would argue, really got started in of women stepping
Speaker 1: forward to reveal how they had been mistreated, abused, or worse,
Speaker 1: will sadly continue in now. I say sadly not to
Speaker 1: suggest that these women shouldn't come forward. They absolutely should. Rather,
Speaker 1: I say sadly because I suspect the problems women have
Speaker 1: experienced are deeply ingrained in our society in general and
Speaker 1: the tech world in particular. So I expect we're going
Speaker 1: to see a dozen or more major stories about harassment
Speaker 1: or worse in the technosphere in twenty eighteen. Now. My
Speaker 1: hope is that through these stories, we can shake things
Speaker 1: out to make a better environment for everyone moving forward.
Speaker 1: In other words, I'm not sad about people getting called
Speaker 1: out on bad behavior. I think it's necessary. I think
Speaker 1: we have to have this reckoning, as some people call it,
Speaker 1: so that we can get rid of some rotten foundation
Speaker 1: and build a better future for everybody. And I'll go
Speaker 1: further with this argument. I think it's important because it
Speaker 1: means for very long time, and women know this, and
Speaker 1: minorities know this people who are like me, who are
Speaker 1: straight white males. It's it's easy to ignore this. There
Speaker 1: are voices that have gone unheard for way too long,
Speaker 1: and those voices have value, and they can make contributions
Speaker 1: that can change our world in phenomenal, meaningful ways if
Speaker 1: we listen to them. But we haven't traditionally, with a
Speaker 1: few major exceptions, and I would love to see those
Speaker 1: exceptions just become the rule so that we as a
Speaker 1: whole benefit. It's not just women are doing better in
Speaker 1: the in technology, or minorities are are more represented in
Speaker 1: various fields. It's we all get to benefit from the
Speaker 1: genius that various people possess, regardless of their gender, or
Speaker 1: sexual orientation, or ethnicity or any of those other things.
Speaker 1: Because ultimately, the way I view the past, where we
Speaker 1: have not listened to people very much, we being my
Speaker 1: fellow straight white male dudes, uh, means that we missed
Speaker 1: out on a ton of stuff that we could have
Speaker 1: really used. Um well, we there's no telling how many
Speaker 1: amazing ideas were never are brought forward because no one
Speaker 1: was listening. I want to see that change. That means
Speaker 1: that in the short term, we're going to have a
Speaker 1: really Rocky Rocky Road and not the ice cream. We're
Speaker 1: gonna have lots of major upsets, and I think it's
Speaker 1: necessary for us to get to where we need to be. Um,
Speaker 1: it's not gonna be pretty, but it's going to be necessary.
Speaker 1: Prediction number fifteen. Star Citizen, the video game that has
Speaker 1: been in development since two twelve, will not emerge from
Speaker 1: beta in it seems like it's the safest bet ever,
Speaker 1: so if you don't If you're not familiar with Star Citizen,
Speaker 1: it is a game that started going under development in
Speaker 1: two thousand eleven. A kickstarter in two thousand twelve raised
Speaker 1: a good amount of money, and since then the total
Speaker 1: amount of money raised to develop this game is somewhere
Speaker 1: around a hundred and seventy million dollars a team. The
Speaker 1: game still hasn't come out. It's still in alpha various
Speaker 1: stages of the game or in alpha. Because there's no
Speaker 1: full game in alpha that's available at all, there are
Speaker 1: various parts of the game available in alpha. The game
Speaker 1: itself is supposed to be a persistent science fiction game
Speaker 1: where you can have your own spaceship. You can actually
Speaker 1: purchase spaceships with real money. You can spend real world
Speaker 1: money to buy a spaceship in the game. Different spaceships
Speaker 1: cost different amounts, and then you can tool around space.
Speaker 1: And there's all this other stuff that will potentially be
Speaker 1: in the final game, but because there is no final
Speaker 1: game yet, we haven't actually seen it happen. There's been
Speaker 1: some really cool stuff incorporated into the alpha, like a
Speaker 1: real time facial capture technology that allows you to have, uh,
Speaker 1: your character have the same facial expressions you have. Your
Speaker 1: webcam picks up your facial expressions and transmits them to
Speaker 1: your character's face, which I understand is a supremely creepy
Speaker 1: thing to see in person, but it's kind of a
Speaker 1: cool technology, but it's it's one part of an overall
Speaker 1: game that doesn't really exist yet. I say that by
Speaker 1: two thousand eight teen's end, it still will not be
Speaker 1: out of beta. In fact, I'll be amazed if it's
Speaker 1: in beta and not just still in various stages of alpha.
Speaker 1: But there's no way I think that that game comes
Speaker 1: out in which is unfortunate for people who have been
Speaker 1: waiting for so long. Prediction number sixteen. There will be
Speaker 1: a bitcoin value crash in two thousand eighteen, but the
Speaker 1: cryptocurrency will recover at least to the point where it
Speaker 1: returns to at least ten thousand dollars per bitcoin. It
Speaker 1: hit that in November two thousand seventeen. It's skyrocketed and
Speaker 1: then dipped in value, and it's fluctuated quite a bit
Speaker 1: since November two thousand seventeen. Sometimes in two thousand eighteen,
Speaker 1: I think this value is going to drop significantly, talking
Speaker 1: like down to five thousand dollars per coin or less.
Speaker 1: But I think it's going to recover and grow back
Speaker 1: to at least ten thousand, maybe eleven thousand dollars per
Speaker 1: coin by the end of two thousand eighteen, maybe more
Speaker 1: than that. But I do think there's gonna be uh
Speaker 1: what they call a market correction or what other people
Speaker 1: would call a massive crash and value. Uh that's just
Speaker 1: my prediction. Now, by the end of two thousand eighteen,
Speaker 1: it may turn out that there was no crash at
Speaker 1: all and the bitcoin value just kept going up. That's
Speaker 1: why I'm making this prediction specific, so that way, at
Speaker 1: the end of the year, I can take a look
Speaker 1: at the value of bitcoin and I can say, oh,
Speaker 1: I got it right, or no, I got it totally wrong.
Speaker 1: Prediction number seventeen. We're gonna see a big, serious push
Speaker 1: in podcasting in two thousand eighteen. It's really going to
Speaker 1: become a massively major form of media in twenty eighteen.
Speaker 1: This is fueled from huge successes like S Town and
Speaker 1: the serial series, as well as some of the old
Speaker 1: standards that have been around for years, like Cough stuff
Speaker 1: you should know Cough. Expect to see a flood of
Speaker 1: new shows. Some of them are gonna be limited series
Speaker 1: with a set number of episodes, stuff like Cereal and
Speaker 1: S Town, where it's a season you get maybe six
Speaker 1: or eight or ten or twelve episodes and that's it.
Speaker 1: Others are going to be more open ended, and we'll
Speaker 1: publish until people stop listening or the host decided to
Speaker 1: do something else. But we're gonna see more development of
Speaker 1: programming in this space, similar to what you might see
Speaker 1: in television or radio. That's gonna be a big, big
Speaker 1: thing in and U. That's kind of insider baseball. I think,
Speaker 1: all right, I got one last prediction. I thought I
Speaker 1: had seventeen, but I have eighteen. Final prediction is we're
Speaker 1: gonna have more bots, either voice activated assistants or having
Speaker 1: those voice activated assistants incorporated into more technologies. We're gonna
Speaker 1: have more automated customer service representatives and other implementations of bots.
Speaker 1: Just more bots that we interact with on a on
Speaker 1: a social level, whether that's through some sort of exchange
Speaker 1: where we're trying to buy something or get some customer
Speaker 1: service or whatever, or we're trying to interact with it
Speaker 1: in order to control the technology around us, whatever it
Speaker 1: may be. We're gonna see a whole lot more of
Speaker 1: that in two thousand eighteen. We're gonna see a growth
Speaker 1: in the use of bots as a point of service.
Speaker 1: I think that's a real area of development. If you
Speaker 1: are in computer science and you're looking at different areas
Speaker 1: that you might want to explore, working to create better,
Speaker 1: more adept, more useful bots. That's a growth industry right now.
Speaker 1: I don't know if it's gonna be a growth industry
Speaker 1: for more than maybe five or ten years, but for
Speaker 1: right now, it's really a valuable space. And that's it.
Speaker 1: Those are my eighteen predictions for two thousand eighteen. Hey,
Speaker 1: that worked out and didn't plan on. That just happened.
Speaker 1: So a year from now I will revisit these and
Speaker 1: see if I was you know, on target or if
Speaker 1: I was way off base. And I'm sure there are
Speaker 1: going to be things that happen in eighteen that will
Speaker 1: dwarf all of these predictions. It's going and it's going
Speaker 1: to seem obvious in hindsight. I'm gonna say, why didn't
Speaker 1: I predict that Elon Musk would turn into a light
Speaker 1: being from Alpha Centauri and rule us from his base
Speaker 1: on the Moon. I don't. It was so obvious that
Speaker 1: might happen, but I didn't predict it. Here. If it
Speaker 1: does happen, I'm totally calling that a prediction, by the way,
Speaker 1: because that would be amazing. I look forward to two
Speaker 1: thousand eighteen with you, guys. Thank you so much for
Speaker 1: being with me on this journey through two thousand seventeen.
Speaker 1: I hope that we continue to explore technology together in
Speaker 1: all its forms, and I welcome you to write to
Speaker 1: me let me know what you would like me to cover.
Speaker 1: Maybe there's a particular technology that interests you that you
Speaker 1: want me to talk about, or maybe there's a company
Speaker 1: you've always wanted to know the inside story about, or
Speaker 1: a person that you think is instrumental in technology that
Speaker 1: I should profile. Maybe there's someone you would like to
Speaker 1: be a guest on the show. I would love to
Speaker 1: hear from you. Email me the address for our website. Well,
Speaker 1: website our podcast is tech Stuff at how stuffworks dot com.
Speaker 1: You can contact me on Facebook or Twitter. The handle
Speaker 1: of both of those is tech stuff hs W. We
Speaker 1: also have an Instagram account. Follow that give us some
Speaker 1: love over there. And remember I record on Wednesdays and Fridays,
Speaker 1: and I live stream my recording sessions. You can check
Speaker 1: that out at twitch dot tv slash tech Stuff. Just
Speaker 1: pop over there. You'll see where the schedule is. When
Speaker 1: I record on Wednesdays and Fridays, you can join the
Speaker 1: chat room and you can watch as I stumble my
Speaker 1: way through the world of technology. And that's it. Happy
Speaker 1: New Year. I'll see you guys in two thousand eighteen
Speaker 1: really soon. For more on this and thousands of other topics,
Speaker 1: is a how staff works dot com