2015 Predictions Results

with dozens of other shows. He joined me and instead of making our own predictions, we actually looked over predictions other people had made and then evaluated them kind of gave our take on it. So I'm gonna go over those predictions again and and kind of talk about what actually happened during the course often. I should also add I'm recording this on December third, two thousand fifteen, so technically there is a month to go, or just about a month ago, before we end out the year. So

some of these that I say haven't come true. Maybe in the next several days will come true, but it's not likely um, and most of them actually are are pretty safe bets. It turns out a lot of people when they make predictions want to go the safe route. Um, So, without further ado, let's talk about some of those predictions.

The first group we talked about on that episode came from Samsung, and Samsung made some predictions that were, as Tom Merritt put, fairly aspirational, meaning that a lot of the predictions made by Samsung tied directly into products that Samsung offers, and obviously Samsung wanted to make prediction that kind of a dovetailed with their strategy. It wouldn't make sense for Samsung to predict, you know, these devices that we're making, no one's going to have a use for

them anymore, so we're just wasting our time. That would be a bad idea. But the first one that they predicted was that wearables would be seen as status symbols in the business world, that the businessman and businesswoman of two thousand and fifteen they would not consider their ensembles complete unless they were wearing a smart watch for example.

Tom and I both were pretty skeptical of this and pointed out that it was a little self serving no big surprise, as I already mentioned, and thought that perhaps it's a little premature to suggest that smart accessories are going to be seen as status symbols, even things like the Apple Watch, which had not yet launched when we recorded that episode. And as it turns out, I'd say we were mostly right. I don't see smart watches as being a big status symbol outside of very niche industries

like in the tech world. Maybe you could argue that smart watches and devices that are in that tier are seen as something of a status symbol, but beyond that industry, not so much. And you've got to keep in mind that while smart watches can be expensive on the order of hundreds of dollars, when you're talking about luxury watches, the stuff that executives can afford and or afford to have and often use the status symbols, that's in the thousands of dollars. It's well beyond what we tend to

see with smart devices. And you wouldn't necessarily want to spend thousands of dollars on a smart device because, like all technology, it runs out of value pretty quickly. It hits hits obsolescence within a couple of years. So unless you're making crazy amounts of cheddar, you probably don't want to be spending it on smart devices. Every single year or every two years. The next prediction was that people

will restructure their lives around personal power hours. This was an idea about how we're using more devices to kind of get information about ourselves and our productivity and our activity. We can see how we have peaks and troughs of activity throughout a day, and that by looking at this data, we could actually plan our day so that we have our most productive hours dedicated to work and are less productive hours reserved for other stuff like food and naps.

And I want to live in this world. It sounds like a lovely place. But Tom and I both were skeptical of this one as well. We pointed out that we are probably not at a place yet or and we wouldn't be by the close of two thousand and fifteen where your average workplace could have the flexibility to allow employees to structure their work days around their own personal uh peaks and troughs of activity. And I think

that's pretty much true. I'm sure there's some very forward thinking places out there that have incredible flexibility for their employees, but on average, I would say that's not the case, and I wouldn't expect it to be. There are a lot of different businesses that just are not really optimal for that kind of flexibility. Despite the fact that we would be much more productive or potentially could be much more productive, it's just not the way the systems work.

You know. There's certain business systems that rely upon people working at certain hours, and it would require a huge overhaul to change that, and it just is not really realistic to expect that to turn around so quickly. Maybe in the future it would be lovely to see, but

we're still kind of waiting on that. The next one Samsung made was that VR and the innovative use of displays would lead to a new era of shops, freeing up physical space so you would have less of a need to maintain a physical presence like in a mall or at a strip of stores. You could have a kiosk and a VR headset and customers could put that on and walk through a virtual UH store and see all these products and purchase them that way. Tom and I,

again we're a little skeptical on this. UH. We did think that we were going to see more VR headsets hit the consumer market in two thousand and fifteen. As it turns out, we're still waiting on most of those. Um we keep hearing about the promise of VR, and honestly, it's making me a little nervous about the use of VR, because the longer we have to wait, the more likely people will lose interest, just as they did the first

round of v R in the nineties. Uh, if the experience isn't really mind blowing and amazing, and if it isn't at a price point that is acceptable to the average consumer, and if it doesn't happen soon, we are in danger of VR not going anywhere yet again. Um So, because of that delay, we really haven't seen any use of VR, at least not on a widespread basis as a way of of as an alternative to having a

physical presence physical store of space. We've seen plenty of online uses of that where stores have used an online presence instead of physical storefront properties, but not the VR experience at least not that I've seen. And uh, this wasn't a big price for us, We thought that it was pretty likely that it was too early to call VR the savior of the small business. The next one was that home automation would become more of an industry

and less of a geek only world. It was going to go from geek to chic in other words, and Tom and I both agreed that that was more realistic, uh, And we also said that it was going to probably be a slow progression. It wasn't going to be something that really super takes off in two thousand fifteen, but we would see an increase. And that's exactly what we have seen. We've seen more devices and systems that incorporate

automation into the consumer world. But you know, as I've pointed out multiple times, it's a daunting task to ask a consumer to buy into an automated system for their home.

Unless you're buying a brand new house, like something that's been built from the ground up and it's now time to put appliances in that space, you probably aren't looking at many situations where a consumer is going to replace all of their appliances and various like climate control systems and locks and all of that stuff all at once. It's very rare when that's gonna happen. Most of us

can't really afford to do that. I know that it would be really a scary bill to look at to say, all right, we're gonna get rid of all the stuff we have now, like all the appliances, and we're gonna change out the locks, and we're going to put in nest systems for both the smoke detectors and the thermostats, and all the lighting. We're gonna do Hugh bulbs and

all the lighting. And I'm sure that by the time that's all over, and I looked at that that price tag, I would think this costs more than my house dead. So it's not a big surprise that while there are more options on the market and it's slowly getting adopted in the consumer space, it's not moving super fast. Not a big surprise. I think it would take a remarkable movement in the automation world for this to get like

a big boost. I think it's going to be something that over years, we will see more and more systems integrated together, particularly if we can find uh non proprietary ways for these devices to communicate with each other so that you don't have to buy in on just one manufacturers products if you want to have an integrated system in your home. But that's a hope that is probably futile, at least in the short term, because it behooves companies to make proprietary systems so that way you stay with

one company at any rate. That was the next one, and the last one that Samsung made was all kids born in two thousand fifteen will end up learning coding along with stuff like science and math as a core subject. Obviously, we can't verify that yet. It will take another ten or eleven years before we can say for sure whether this prediction comes true. But Tom and I both thought that this one was certainly possible, and we definitely hope that it becomes reality, because, uh, technology is a very

important part of our lives. At least a base understanding of of what drives technology from a a processing standpoint, from a computational and programmatical standpoint would be really helpful, and it would be great to see that worked into the curriculum of schools, not just for students, but for teachers to it. I think it'd be incredibly helpful. I certainly wish I had been able to take coding classes

when I was in high school or middle school. Even middle school would have been ideal, but it just was not an option. Instead, I had shop and I made a race car that vaguely looked car shaped and sort of rolled. I mean, it was easily the worst made car in the class. It looked like I had hacked at it with a stone saw as opposed to using power tools. Coding would have been a nice change of pace. The next collection of predictions came from the Street dot com.

The first one was that Facebook will aim at the enterprise model to expand and launch something for businesses. In other words, Facebook was going to try and and grow as a company by targeting other companies and saying, we're gonna create a platform for you to use as a business on the back end, not just something for you to interface with customers, but for you to use as

sort of a productivity platform. And this makes sense because Facebook already has hit pretty much saturation in the consumer world. It's hard to get more people to join Facebook when everyone is on Facebook, or one out seven people in the world are on Facebook. So, uh, Tom and I both agreed that this was in fact a very likely outcome. And as we've seen Facebook is doing this, it's kind

of slowly working its way into business systems. They launched a messenger platform for Android example, for example, the Android operating system, and we're starting to see more of that kind of enter into the Facebook strategy. So I'm sure this will continue in two thousand and sixteen, although this is not the Predictions episode for yet, so I will save that. Perhaps I'll even talk about that more in

the Predictions episode. Next was that Amazon would launch delivery drones before the end of and the f a A would crumble under intense pressure in order to allow this to happen. Tom immediately was skeptical of this, as was I, and sure enough, this prediction was a little too optimistic. Amazon has not launched the delivery service. We did get another video of an Amazon drone being able to lift a large package, but it hasn't gone into practice, and

that's not a big surprise. It's gonna take a lot of R and D to prove the system works. Uh, it is reliable that it's not going to encounter problems or cause catastrophes. And then on top of that, it's going to take a lot of work for the regulatory bodies to allow this to happen. So yeah, this seemed like it was a really aggressive prediction and it did not pan out as it turns out. Next was that

Uber would go public in two thousand and fifteen. Tom said his instinct on this was that no, it would not, But then he also pointed out that often companies end up going public despite the fact that he can't see any logical reason for that. Uh. But Bert did not go public, at least not yet, and in October two thousand fifteen, Uber CEO actually said that the company wasn't

planning any I p O anytime soon. So it looks like we're gonna be pretty safe in Uber will not be a publicly traded company before at least, and perhaps it will be a long time before Uber attempts to go public, so that one ends up being a bust. But Tom's disagreement with that prediction was right, So while the prediction was wrong, we ended up being correct. Hooray. The next predictions came from Bread and Beyond, and the first was that Google Glass will head into mass production

in two thousand fifteen. Wow. Well. Tom said that he gave this a sixty chance of going of being true, of Google Glass going into mass production, and I said I was more skeptical. I did not think it was and it happened, And that was largely because I own a pair of Google Glass and while I love them, I also recognize their shortcomings. They have very limited use, and the uses that they do have can cause strife

among people you encounter. I had several situations where I wore Google Glass and friends would say, can you take those off? It makes me nervous because they thought I was video taping or I'm sorry for using the acronism videotaping. I'm a child of the eighties. Um, but but recording what was going on or taking pictures even though clearly I wasn't uh, and still made them nervous because it

seemed very prevalent. Never mind the fact that everyone today has a device that is capable of recording video and even broadcasting it live to the Internet as it's happening. Um, it's I think the perception of what Google Glass is that really hurts it at any rate. Uh. It did not go into mass production. Only did not go into

mass production. But in January two thousand and fifteen, so just a couple of weeks after Tom and I recorded the episode, Google announced that Google Glass was essentially being shelved. It wasn't being dismantled entirely. They said that they the company intended to bring Google Glass to consumers at some point in the future, but was at least temporarily being put on hold. So not only did not go into mass production, it actually was kind of pushed into the shadows.

So uh that one, uh, that one not so much. Brend Beyond also predicted that the Firefox operating system uh for for mobile devices wild flop and it would never go mainstream, which made Tom laugh because he said that, well, it it had maybe a long shot chance of success, but it was already clear that the cards were really stacked again to Firefox already, because you had entrenched operating systems in the mobile space already and it would be

really hard to dislodge them. Uh. And in fact, if you look at recent market share numbers, they're kind of all over the place because it all depends upon which tracking system you use. But for example, I d C says that Android makes up to about eighty two point eight percent of the mobile market, and iOS is a distant second at thirteen point nine percent. Then it's Windows Phone at two point six percent, then BlackBerry at point three percent, and everything else all lumped together as point

four So that would include Firefox OS in there. Uh So yeah, it definitely didn't go mainstream, but who would have expected it to. Uh. We certainly thought that there was a chance for it to go to be popular within a niche, but there was just no chance for it to go mainstream, not not in a year's time anyway.

The last prediction from brend Beyond was that we might actually see autonomous cars hit the streets before the end of meaning that consumers would have an opportunity to buy them, or perhaps that businesses would be able to use them as taxi services. But Tom and I both thought this was way too aggressive prediction. Uh And sure enough that's the case. We have not seen these types of cars go out for the general public to either purchase or

to ride in as part of a service. Uh. We pointed out that autonomous cars also faced some really hefty legislative hurdles, and it's gonna take laws changing in order for these to become a possibility in the future, like it may not even be legal to purchase an autonomous car depending upon where you live. Never mind the fact that we do have Tesla vehicles on the street with some autonomous capability, but they're not intended to be autonomous vehicles.

Their vehicles that have really sophisticated driver assist systems in them. You're not supposed to use it as a means of getting from point A to point B without having touched the wheel or the the accelerator or break. In fact, you're very much not supposed to do that. And yet there are people who take videos of it and then express amazement when things do not go as they had hoped. And it's because the systems weren't designed to do what

the people are making them do. It's really problematic. So this one also turned out to be a bust, but Tom and I both agreed that that's how it was going to turn out. Next, we looked at I d C and some of the predictions they made. One of those was that the fablet market fablets being extremely large smartphones,

something between a phone and a tablet. Typically we look at things like the Galaxy Notes and the next to six and the iPhone six and that sort of stuff as being iPhones plus really as being the devices that are in that category. That the market would grow as

people demand larger devices, but wearables would underperform. In two thousand fifteen, now, Tom made a very good point in that episode, he said, well, it's pretty safe to say that fablit market is going to grow because the fablet market was very young at the end of two thousand fourteen, there were only a few uh devices that fit the category, and clearly more devices were going to join that category. And since you're talking about small number, having a small

number grow isn't a big surprise. Like sometimes you'll see figures for market growth that will say the market for this type of device grew by two. Well, if I only sold one last year and then I sell you know, three the following year, it's not that great a story. But from a growth perspective, it looks fantastic, you know, from that percentage. So it all depends on how you

look at it. And sure enough, Uh in July two thousand fifteen, there was a report that fablets were on track to have market growth of sixty six percent in two thousand and fifteen. Now that sounds great, a sixty six percent growth in the market, but that means that fablets would make up about seventeen percent of the overall smartphone market. So it's not like fablets are completely displacing

every other type of smartphone. They're making up less than twenty percent of all smartphones on the market, but they are the number is growing and I do expect that to continue because, as Tom pointed out in our Predictions episode, these days we use our phones not to make calls so much, but to access stuff online and to send messages and pictures, and therefore having larger real estate for for screen size, for for being able to see the things we use these phones for, it totally makes sense.

He also pointed out that the second half of that prediction that wearables would underperform was more of a substantive prediction. It had more meat to it because it meant sticking your neck out and and actually saying wearables are not going to do as well in as they had been doing, or at least they're not going to sell as well

as what people had predicted. He pointed out that there would be many more products in the wearable category out in but perhaps people wouldn't flock to them, and according to I d C, there was a two increase in wearables shipped in the first quarter of compared to that same time in but that is shipped, not sold. The Apple Watch came out this past year, but it was not a mega hit. I mean, it sold a lot

of units early on, but hasn't continued. Like we don't hear crazy stories of of Apple Watch sales, but then again, Apple is also pretty quiet about that kind of stuff. But it didn't seem to be the sort of hit that the iPhone was or that the iPad was. The next prediction was that the Internet of things will continue to grow, which is sort of a no brainer, and we Tom and I both pointed out that that was going to obviously be true, and of course that is true.

But we're also seeing some resistance to the Internet of things, largely because people are starting to question how that impacts their security and their their privacy. There's also been some data tracking scandals that have really brought this to light, and so now some people at least are a little more wary of having more devices around us that are tracking more data that pertains to us as people. So

it is interesting to see how this is going. I'm sure we're going to continue to see the Internet of things grow over the next few years. I don't think that it's going to stop growing. It may slow a bit in its growth as people bring more concerns to light.

But ultimately, from what I see, it looks like the people who are raising concerns represent a relatively small population compared to people who either don't know about the problems, don't care about the problems, or just are you know, they they care, but not enough for them to do

anything about it. We next looked at some predictions from Gardner, and Gartner mostly was looking at trends that they expected to increase, maybe in doubling in size, like the number of devices connected to the Internet would increase substantially, in the three D printer market would double, uh that there would be twice as many car models that would have connectivity in as there were in twenty fourteen, and that more companies were going to higher chief digital officers and

similar executives to help with data security. Now, Tom and I agreed that all of those trends would be on the rise, maybe not as much as doubling, but all of them would see increases over the course of As it turns out, if you want to know how many devices are connected to the Internet, there's not really any

good number out there. There are a lot of different companies that have created estimations based upon various types of measurements, but there's no easy source to go to and say here it is, here's the number, Like you can't go to how many devices are on the internet dot com, and there's just a big number there that doesn't happen. However, estimations tend to range between four point nine billion to

twenty five billion devices. That's a big range now. Gartner says that four point nine billion represents the install old base. Those are chips that have connectivity UH abilities that are

actually in devices that are shipped to consumers. In other words, there are currently four point nine billion devices that are in consumer products and are connecting to the Internet, whereas the twenty billion number they say represents the total chips manufactured that would allow for connectivity but are not necessarily in actual devices are actually employed as of right now. So in other words, we're just shy of five billion

devices connected to the Internet. According to Gardner's numbers, three D printers have seen a great deal of growth, particularly in the low cost consumer model market. Forecasts still predict that the market will double in size every single year until two thousand nineteen, so every year we're gonna see twice as many three D printers sold as the year previous, which is pretty exciting. However, right now we're all talking about numbers that are in the hundreds of thousands of units,

not millions of units. So, like I said before, doubling doesn't necessarily mean a huge number. Uh, it just means it's twice as big as it had been before if if it had been too now it's four. In this case, we're talking about couple hundred thousand units of three D printers. Pretty soon we'll be getting into the millions though. But even so, it's still a pretty small market all things considered,

but it is growing. The car model prediction they made is pretty difficult to pin down because it would mean going through every manufacturer in every brand and every model and seeing which ones have connectivity, and then even defining what connectivity means. When you say a connected car, are you talking about multiple systems being connected? Are you talking

about just a entertainment system? Um? Like, what does that mean acted car in this in this respect, but I would guess that we have seen a lot more cars with some sort of connectivity feature added into it, and there were in However, we also saw some major major problems with connected cars in and if you listen to my year in review where I wrapped up the big

stories of you heard some of that. Uh, So we'll probably see this continue, but we're also going to see even more focus put on security in the automotive world. And as for chief digital officers, we've certainly seen a lot more focus put towards cybersecurity, but we're still seeing security leaks and security breaches. So I don't know that we have reached the point where we can really say we've got to handle on this, because this is an

ongoing problem. Well, the I r S hack was incredibly scary that this hit the United States government, which is supposed to be really focusing on cybersecurity, and there are other breaches that were also pretty terrifying, nothing quite on the media level of the Sony hack from but still we haven't reached a point where we can rest easy.

Certainly one of those things where I think we'll see more progress in twenty six more companies investing in high level positions that are meant to at least attempt to address security issues, uh, cybersecurity issues at companies. Then we had a couple of other predictions that just fell from different sources. One was that we'd see a move to more alternatives to email, that emails importance itself would decrease

in two thousand fifteen. I mean, I don't know. I couldn't find a whole lot of information about how email use has changed in two thousand fifteen. Anecdotally, it's still very important in my job, but that's anecdotal. That's not very useful information. There have been a lot of tools that have gained serious traction in two thousand fifteen, stuff like slack. Slack reminds me a lot of what Google

Wave was attempting to be. So we're we are seeing tools that are meant to be a means of of collaborative work that could decrease the need to use email. But even in our office where we do have slack um, we also have people who would prefer to just go ahead and use email to send stuff around rather than constantly check, uh, you know, a slack feed. So this one was one that I think maybe is more true

than not true. We probably did see some people shift away from email use other means of communication more frequently, but not to a point that was really remarkable. Uh. Also, there was a prediction that tablets would make a comeback in two thousand and fifteen, although another prediction said that

tablets would fade away and smartphones would take their place. Now, Tom pointed out that there had been a stall in tablet sales, but that might be because people had bought a tablet and then weren't ready to replace it yet, that tablets might follow a pattern more similar to desktop computers, where you buy one and you stick with it for a couple of years before you upgrade, and then you might upgrade once you notice that the performance is starting

to suffer, or maybe the latest version has a feature that is really compelling to you and you're not going to get it on your existing tablet. But it would make sense that we would see tablet sales numbers go in cycles where you know it's it's not necessarily a device one's going to upgrade every single year. Some people will, but not the not necessarily the majority of your market. So he said, it's not a big, big surprise. He would imagine that there would be an uptick at some

point where people are ready to upgrade. Um And as it turns out, I d C reported in two thousand fifteen that by the end of the year, we would see an eight percent decline in tablet shipments. This was in the middle of two thousand fifteen when this report came out, So eight percent negative growth is the way some people refer to it um Strategy Analytics, as it expects a seven percent growth in the tablet market in

two thousand sixteen. So it's possible that we're on the verge of an upward swing, that that two thousand fifteen was one of the lulls, and in two thousand sixteen people will be ready to upgrade and that's when we're gonna see growth again. But we're probably not going to see crazy growth the way we did when the first few years when the iPad came out and everybody wanted to get one of those devices. I also asked Tom did he think two thousand fifteen was going to be

the year that NFC technology would finally take off. I mean, it had been available for a couple of years but had yet to really catch on, and I was wondering if Apple pay the iPhone and the and the Apple Watch, we're going to really push this over the edge. Tom said he wasn't. He wasn't really certain that would happen. He was a little ah. He said it probably wasn't the outcome that we should expect, And I'd say, he's right. We've definitely seen more places adopt stuff like Apple Pay,

but it hasn't been universal. And I would argue that seeing someone pay with NFC is still the exception as opposed to the rule. In most cases, it hasn't been so widespread that it's become the common way, or at least like even one out of five transactions. We haven't seen like a twenty perc adoption rate of NFC technology, at least from what I can tell. So uh, he thinks.

Tom thinks that, you know, NFC is gonna be one of those technologies that gradually increases in saturation, and at some point we're gonna look at and say, oh my gosh, NFC is really here. I mean, it's it's the way people use to pay for stuff, um, But it's not going to be one of those things that happens rapidly. It's just going to be a gradual realization. I agree with that. I also said, will the Firefox browsers switching

to yah Who's search engine make a big difference? And Tom jokingly said Google would end up selling YouTube and their HQ because they would be so threatened, and then said, no, that's not gonna happen. Is it would be interesting and good for Yahoo, and I will make Google a little sharper.

As it turns out, Um, that didn't work out so well, because if you listen to my wrap up episode of UH, this agreement was made at the end of two thousand and fourteen, and a year later, Yahoo market share had actually dropped, it had not increased, So you could argue that this partnership did not help Yahoo at all. Maybe it did help Yahoo. Maybe without the partnership it would have dropped even further. It's hard to say, but it certainly didn't propel Yahoo into a new dominant space in

the search engine business. So that was pretty rough. Um. Then I said, Tom, do you have any other predictions that you'd like to talk about. He brought up the fact that everyone tends to predict that an Apple TV will be on the way, not just an interface for

your television, but an actual television branded by Apple. UH. And we both said that's probably not gonna happen in if it happens at all, And sure enough, we did get Apple TV, but we're talking about a set top box with a new user in face, a new operate system TV o S that interacts with streaming content and digital content so that you can watch it on your television,

but it's not a TV set itself. And Tom also talked about how we'd be seeing more traditional broadcast and cable channels offering online options for customers to get the content without going through cable itself, and how that could mean we're seeing peak cable, so stuff like HBO, you know, in we saw Hbo Now, which was the first time HBO was offering digital access to content without requiring a

cable subscription, including HBO. So HBO Go you had to already be an HBO customer through your cable company in order to use HBO Go, but HBO Now meant that you could actually get access to HBO programming without having HBO on your cable, which was kind of cool, and a lot of people have said this is sort of the beginning of the end for cable television as it has been known up to this point, and Tom you know, said, well, maybe we are at peak cable, and as it turns out,

that looks like that might be right. We're seeing we're seeing numbers of cable subscribers drop. Not just that we're seeing more people get rid of cable, but we're seeing few here people adopt cable. Uh. We have cord cutters, the people who are saying I'm done with cable television, I don't want it anymore. And then we have cord never's. These are the people who have never subscribed to cable.

They don't see the value in it. They might have cable as an Internet service provider, but they don't have cable television. And uh, it looks like we're not just looking at peak cable. We're not just looking at a plateau. We're looking at a drop off. It's not so incredible that the cable company is in dire straits right now. But unless something changes, I think it's a trend we're gonna see continue where cable subscriptions are gonna gonna continue

to drop. Uh. We're going to see fewer customers for the major cable companies out there, cable service providers, and we're gonna see some big changes in that industry. Uh. I sure hope we see some big changes in that industry, because there needs to be some real shakeups in the United States. We've talked multiple times about how cable service is largely a monopoly in the US, even though there

are multiple companies that are operating in that space. In most regions, you don't have a choice in who your provider is, or if you do have a choice, it's it's almost like a fake choice, like one is clearly more dominant than the other. Um And that's a problem because without competition, there's no incentive to UH to work with con sumers to create the best experience for consumers. If you're the only game in town, you can charge whatever you want for your stuff and that's the only

place people can get it. So this is where we're starting to see that kind of crumble as the Internet takes over some of that load where you can get stuff online. Well, that wraps up what our predictions were and how things have turned out. I'd say on the whole, Tom and I were pretty accurate with our our evaluation of the predictions. There were a couple of times where things turned out differently than what we expected, but not

by a whole lot. Now, our next episode will be the predictions for two thousand sixteen, and on that episode, I will have another special guest, and that will be i As, Actar of c Net. I As is an old friend of mine. He's been on the show before. We're also co hosts of a another show that we do ourselves with a friend of ours named Eric Sandean, and so i As and I are going to make our predictions for what will happen in two thousand sixteen.

And that should be fun because we'll be recording that in December and it won't air until the beginning of two sixteen, and by then it will be too late for us to change our minds. And I'm sure I will predict something that will have already been proven wrong by the time the episode goes live, because that seems

to be the tradition. If you guys have suggestions for future episodes of tech Stuff, whether it's a topic that I should cover, or a guest I should have on the show, either to interview or to be a guest post, or anything along those lines, you should send me a message. Let me know. The email address is tech Stuff at how stuff works dot com, or you can drop me

a line on Facebook, Twitter or Tumbler. The handle at all three is tech stuff hs W and I'll talk to you again in the future for more on this and thousands of other topics. Is it houstock works dot com,