2018 Predictions Scorecard

And then at the end of those twelve months, I go back and I look at the predictions I had made for the year previous and see how it all turned out. Generally speaking, I do really poorly. So let's see how I did for Here's what I predicted and here's what actually happened. So the first prediction I made was that VR headsets like Oculus, Rift, HTC, Vibe and others will have another lackluster year. Now the result here is somewhat mixed. I was certainly right for the first

half of those numbers were not doing well. Several news outlets and analysis firms would release reports throughout they cited declining sales for VR headsets in general throughout the year. The Oculus Go was an exception in the first half of the year. It saw some growth early on, but still not a crazy amount. Reports have cautioned that this does not mean VR is going to fizzle out again the way it did in the mid nineties, but rather

that the market is still finding its foundation. It's still figuring out where it is, and there was an upturn in the third quarter in bolstered largely by holiday sales and particularly the PlayStation VR headset. Things were even worse, however, if we're talking about VR head sets that don't have a screen, so in other words, i'm talking about the headsets that you use in connection with a smartphone that

that's running a particular app. So Samsung's Gear VR headset year over year sales were down by fifty eight point six per cent. That's dreadful. Some of the more recent Samsung smartphones don't even support that particular feature, which suggests the company may be extricating itself from the VR market entirely. So the only headsets that we're doing well, not even well, but weren't losing ground like that were the tethered ones. Back to that third quarter. As I said, the improvement

was largely due to the PlayStation VR headset. The Sony headset helped reverse the declining trend in that third quarter of and actually pushed the market up to an eight point two percent growth year over year, or a quarter over a quarter. I guess the p S VR headsets sold four sixty eight thousand units total. That's an increase of twenty six over the previous year. Oculus would follow in second place, and HTC held up third place by

the end of the year. So the third quarter growth was a nice thing to see, but that was after four straight quarters of decline and it remains to be seen if this is actually sustainable growth. So I'd say mixed results on that. The whole year wasn't a loss, but you had two quarters of decline followed by a third quarter of modest gains. Eight point as good, but it's not great, So I will give myself, you know, a thumb in the middle here, not like thumb up

or thumb down. Prediction Number two was that Microsoft Mixed reality headsets, being the relative new toy on the market, will get some initial buzz in the early part of but will largely suffer the same fate as VR, and this one I was absolutely right about. Out. We saw prices get marked down a couple of times in eighteen for mixed reality headsets, and interest failed to build into a lot of actual action. There weren't a lot of

sales even with the reduction in price. Now again, this may just be a case of the technology not quite being sophisticated enough to convince people to make the jump. According to research firm I d C, augmented or mixed reality sets only made up three percent of the market for these types of things. The really advanced headsets, the stuff like hollow lens or magic leaps new headset, those cost thousands of dollars and they're primarily intended for professional

use or developer use, not for your average consumers. So those sets aren't meant for you and me. We're not meant to go out there to like a Best Buy or something and pick one off the store shelves and take it home and play games or use it for

other applications. They're meant either for industrial use things people are using hollow lens in order to help train people to work around equipment, make repairs that kind of stuff, or They're meant for developers to get hold of the hardware and start thinking about ways that they can, you know, leverage that hardware, what kind of software can they build for it, and then sometime down the road, presumably we'll get a consumer version of those pieces of hardware. That's

kind of how Oculous came about as well. So, uh, they absolutely right, big thumbs up on that one. Prediction Number three was that we would see autonomous car service rolled out for real, not just as a limited test case, and at least one market in the United States before the end of this was a pretty aggressive prediction that I made. As it turns out, I think this is

another thumb in the middle situation. I would not give myself a full thumbs up, but I don't think it's a full thumbs down either, I think, if I'm being totally honest, I just ba early missed this one because Weymo one, which is a driverless car service from the Google spin off Weymo, launched in Phoenix, Arizona, so that did happen this year. However, as of the recording of

this podcast, it is a very limited launch. It is not it's not widely available to anyone only people who signed up to be quote unquote early riders with the service are actually eligible to use it, and it works pretty much like any ride hailing app and that users would select a pickup point and a drop off point.

The only thing that's different is that the vehicle that comes to pick them up is a driver less one, although there is a safety operator behind the wheel, because we're not quite at the point where I think any company would be comfortable and having a truly driverless cargo and pick people up and then potentially get into an accident and then you've got an enormous lawsuit on your hands. So we're not even at the point where it's a real robot car when no human behind the wheel at all.

The Early writer program is limited to just four people, and the area of service is also GEO fenced, which means the cars will not go beyond certain designated areas. They their services limited to specific regions. So it's a very contained case and way Moose pitching it like it's an actual launch, But really I would say this is a pilot program, or maybe I should say a pilotless program.

So with all the qualifiers, I don't think it meets the level that I had uh imagined when I made that prediction last year, but still a lot further along the what the more pessimistic version of me thought might happen. The pessimist in me thought we won't even see this much of a rollout, so to speak. Now, I think it makes way more sense to do this deployment this way rather than just try to jump in wholeheartedly. That would to me seem to be irresponsible. So I think

this is the better choice. But it's really more of a closed beta program. Okay, So that was a thumb in the middle prediction. Number four. Congress will give the nod to the Disney twenty first century Fox acquisition after several months of discussion. Disney will hold a sixty percent ownership of Hulu, but we'll still go ahead and developing its own streaming service on top of that. Okay, the big thumbs up for me. I mean, I would also say this was not a particularly bold prediction, as pretty

much writing on the wall kind of stuff. I mean, there there could have been pushed back from the US government on the acquisition, but based upon who's in the various branches of government, I thought that was unlikely largely because they are pretty friendly to big business. So the seventy one point three billion dollar acquisition was approved by the United States government in June of and company shareholders also approved did in July. So first the government said,

we don't have any problems with this. Then they went to the shareholders and said, are you guys cool with this? They said totes, and then it went on. So technically the closing for this acquisition has not happened yet. It will actually happen on January one, nineteen. And yes, Disney does still plan to launch its own streaming service called Disney Plus, and it will also oversee Hulu. It will

have controlling uh interest or controlling steak in Hulu. Meanwhile, we watch as we sadly see various Netflix Marvel series mysteriously get canceled, like you know, Daredevil and The Defenders, despite critical and public acclaim which suggests that perhaps Disney is preparing those to migrate over to a different streaming service, perhaps for a total reboot, and may not even have the same actors involved. We aren't quite sure what Hulu

is going to look like following this acquisition. Even now, right now, before the acquisition is complete, Hulu technically has three major owners. There's Disney, Fox, and Comcast. There are also some other owners on top of that, but those are the three big ones. So with the acquisition, Disney will hold the majority stake, and that might mean that Comcast and NBC will be less eager to form agreements for the properties that they have to air on Hulu.

It may also mean we'll see the emergence of yet another streaming service to cater to those properties. So yea, it's getting worse than cable prediction number five. After numerous heated discussions, Congress will overturn the fccs decision in December to reverse the decision classifying broadband Internet as a public utility. M hm now yet uh, FCC did overturn it in um earlyen they announced the Restoring Internet Freedom Order, which seems to be a bit of a comedic title for

what it is. It rolled back pretty much all the changes that the previous FCC had made, and um, yeah, I don't know that we're gonna see that get returned super soon. There were a lot of discussions about net neutrality, but still very much a unresolved question within the United States, so thumbs down. On that one, I would say prediction number six. By the end of twenty eighteen, the number of cord cutters in the United States will hit thirty million.

In seventeen, it was twenty two point two million, which was up from sixteen point seven million in twenty sixteen, and I said that trend would not only continue, but would accelerate as more people would turn to virtual subscriptions using smart TVs, consoles, and other solutions to get access to live TV while abandoning satellite or cable options. Big

thumbs up. In fact, I was being apparently conservative. Um midway through eighteen, analysts had already projected that we would hit thirty three million cord cutters by the end of the year total, not thirty three million alone, but total in the United States. So I was actually three million people shy even though I thought, well, this is an accelerated rate, I'm gonna go with it. It turns out I was being too conservative. The reasons cited for the

increase we're pretty much what I have said. People are focusing more on internet delivery services and less on television. And while a lot of TV services were forming partnerships with companies like Netflix, the takeaway seemed to be that customers were interested in just getting those Internet entertainment services,

not television plus those services. Now, at this point, I've seen analysts like Dan Robin Robbins predict that this trend is only going to accelerate further in twenty nineteen, so we may see an even a larger number of cord cutters joined the fray in the following year. I have more to say about the predictions I made at the end of twenty seventeen, but first let's go take a

break to thank our answer prediction number seven. There will be at least one, probably more security breaches on the scale of the Equifax breach in ten, because while we pay a lot of lip service towards security, it's way easier to talk about being secure than actually doing it. Plus, we're human beings and we're wackyo, So this is another

big thumbs up. Unfortunately, I wish it weren't, but we had so many data breaches that happened in or were made public in Some of the data breaches actually happened years ago, but we didn't find out about them until this year. So let's go over some of the big ones, shall we I'm just going to concentrate on the ones that were larger than Equifax's breach. That one affected an estimated onety three million people. So while I'm gonna look at some big ones, just know that there were also

a whole bunch of other ones. They just didn't hit the hundred forty three million victim mark. So in February, not even to the two months into the year, and we hit one and unauthorized party and that's how they defined it gained access to user information belonging to people who had the My Fitness Pal app that that includes me. And the data that the unauthorized party got access to included encrypted passwords, email addresses, and user names. The estimated

number of people affected one hundred fifty million. A data security expert was poking around on databases belonging to the data broker Exactus, and they found a database that had information on pretty much every US citizen in it. That was actually a quote from a news article about this event. It was publicly ex pessible. In other words, there was an unprotected, unsecured database containing information about people. This is beyond a breach. This is like leaving the vault door

open in the bank. The estimated number of people affected is three hundred forty million people. Yikes. Then in September, we learned about a data breach in the reservation database for Marriott Starwood Hotels, which may have exposed the information of five hundred million people half a billion people. And that includes stuff like passport numbers, reservation dates, payment information, and more. So there are a lot of not just data security things, but privacy issues. Tons of problems there.

The largest was one that didn't get a whole lot of coverage in the United States, but it was phenomenal in its scope. It made the UH the hundred forty three million people look like nothing in comparison. It affects did India's government I D database, which in turn meant that it affected the information of around one point one billion people. That's billion with a B. It was all made accessible. The fault lay with a state owned utility company.

They had an unsecured API which gave backdoor access to all of this information. So if you got hold of this API, which you should be able to do. It's an application programming interface, you know, it's meant for developers to get hold of. They could get this access to all the information, including I D information, biometric information, information on connected services like bank accounts. It's mind boggling in

scope and impact. One point one billion. So yeah, big thumbs up on the prediction, Big thumbs down on how bad all this is. Prediction number eight. Apple's next iPhone, which I'm betting won't have a number associated with it, will be an incremental upgrade to the iPhone X or iPhone ten. Johnny Eys was once again taking has once again taken the helm of design over at Apple, but his influence isn't likely to be seen in products for another generation or so because it takes more than a

year of work to produce one of these things. So, in other words, when the iPhone ten debuted, the next iPhone was already well in development at that stage, and this was another one that was a gimme. I think I got it absolutely right, So another thumbs up. But again I don't think this wasn't necessarily a very uh courageous or outgoing or crazy prediction. It was kind of

you could see the writing on the wall. So the iPhone ten R and the iPhone ten S are incremental evolutions of the previous models, or if you prefer x R and excess. Apple has phased out those previous models much earlier than it had done with older iPhone models, which was interesting. I guess the biggest change in the design was the notch. That's the section at the top of the face of the phone where the camera and

sensors are. Other smartphones have since adopted that notch approach, which can sometimes encroach a bit on the screen if you're trying to watch something in wide screen format. But yeah, no super revolutionary iPhones came out in Prediction number nine. While we'll see a rise in cord cutting, which will have a big effect on advertising, will also see a rise in add blocking online. This will encourage more sites to use ad blocker detectors, which will likely inspire more

people to file lawsuits against such practices. And it's going to be a big mess, and it will bring the question everyone is worried about closer to the foreground, which is how do you make money creating content on the Internet in a way that doesn't alienate your audience or your customers. This one, I would say, I say my thumb was pointing more down than up, maybe somewhere in the middle, but kind of leaning downward. The trend has continued. Certainly.

Many sites are using what ad blocker services called ad blocking walls, and that's lines of code that detect if

someone is using an ad blocker. That's an you know, if they're using a browser they're trying to connect to a web page, there's a detection that the client request, that is, the browser is including an ad blocker, and that means the server will send a pop up window or something similar saying Mike, we see you're using an ad blocker, could you you know, not do that or whatever, or even going so far as to block you from being able to see the site at all until you

disabled the ad blocker or white list the site. Now.

According to the team behind ad block Plus, which is a fairly standard response here, they could block those messages, but they choose not to because they feel it's important that people understand that revenue has to come from somewhere, you know, we have to find some way to pay for the content we access or else everything falls apart because if you don't have any money, like if you're not making money from people coming to visit your content, you have no way to pay the people who make

the content and most people are justifiably not super cool with the idea of creating stuff for free, because, as it turns out, you can't pay the rent that way. You gotta make your living. I do this podcast. If we didn't have advertising on this podcast, then this podcast wouldn't make money, and then there'd be no no money made to pay my salary, which means I wouldn't be doing this. I wouldn't you know, I'd have to do something else in order to make money so I can

make a living. So that's just the way the world works. Unfortunately, there are a lot of advertisers that have created extremely irritating and um intrusive ads, and also there have been apples of malware posing as legitimate advertising or compromised ads that harvest data without user knowledge or consent. So there are legitimate uses for ad blockers in the context of

user privacy and security. You know, it's I can't blame someone who says I use an ad blocker because I'm scared that if I go to a website that has one of these compromised ads on it, I could end up with malware on my computer, or I could end up with my information stolen without my knowledge, those are legitimate concerns, and they're definitely things that have to be addressed. I don't think any one party is totally in the right here. I think that companies that want to make

money through advertising, I think that's legitimate. I think the advertising companies that serve ads are for the most part legitimate. Some of them might be a little more shady. And I think the people who are installing ad blockers because they want to protect themselves, I think that's a legitimate concern. So this is a tough situation. It's there's not an

easy answer. It's more of a dilemma. Google Chrome version seventy one, which came out just before I recorded this episode, has an expanded ad blocker in it that's meant to protect people from abusive AD experiences. This is significant largely because Google makes his money through advertising, so it's a company that both depends upon ads for revenue and recognizes how they can be predatory nor that people can compromise them. But there was no rash of lawsuits that popped up

around this, as I had predicted. Ad block Plus did win a legal battle in Germany in April, but we didn't see a ton of people take companies to court for ad blocking walls. So I'd say this one again is kind of a thumb in the middle, maybe leaning downward a bit, because it wasn't It wasn't that rash

of lawsuits that I thought was going to happen. Prediction number ten that we were headed toward a subscription service crash in which we would see such a saturation in the market for subscription based entertainment service is I'm talking about stuff like Netflix, Hulu, YouTube Premium, that kind of stuff that there would be a general backlash, And I said,

I think we'll get through before this happens. So it's couching my bets here, but things will be heating up towards the end of the year with more consumers disenchanted with how many different competing services there are and what they're expected to do to get all the content they want. So I'd say I've got thumbs down mostly. I mean, yes,

there is some discussion about this. There are growing concerns that with the huge number of services that are popping up that if you wanted to get everything that you liked, you'd be subscribing to, you know, half a dozen or more services, and if you're talking about ten dollars a month, that starts to add up pretty quickly. But we did get through without some sort of reckoning. But I think

one is still coming. As of December twelve, there are numerous new streaming services that are planned to join the ones already out there are so right now we've got stuff like Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime Video, YouTube Premium, but now we're gonna also get Disney Plus. There's an unnamed Apple streaming video service on the way. Warner Media under a T and T, assuming the appeals court upholds the

legality of that acquisition, has one plan. There's probably more that are going to launch in twenty nineteen, but the crash hasn't happened yet. The backlash hasn't been widespread. I've seen a few articles talking about this, but I haven't seen a general like reaction or resistance to it. I just I think it's still coming. So thumbs down on that one prediction number eleven. This was a prediction about

dollars spent on e commerce versus retail stores. But I'm not even gonna bother talking about what the specific prediction was, because honestly, and this is just me having to come forward and admit something. It was based off of me being an idiot, at least that's my guess. I had not looked at this prediction since I had made it, so I don't know what frame of mind I was in when I made it, but was clearly based off

of absolutely the wrong conclusions I was. I don't know where I got the idea that e commerce had really started to catch up to retail. That's not the case. E Commerce is growing year over year, but it makes up less than fifteen percent of all dollars spent UH in that sense, like retail is still way way ahead. Physical stores are in the lead, though the growth they experience you over year is much lower than what online

online sales are experiencing. So both brick and mortar stores and e commerce are seeing year over year growth, but e commerce is seeing way more of it. So e commerce is getting bigger, faster, but retail is still way ahead. Maybe that was my mistake. Maybe I was looking at growth figures rather than the overall figures, and that's a good lesson for me to learn. E Commerce sales could increase by at and retail sales could increase by just two.

And maybe that's what I was thinking, was that, you know, because e commerce sales were increasing so fast by the way, I was just making up those numbers. But let's e commerce sales are increasing so fast, they're ahead. That's not what that means. It just means they're growing faster. And I know all you know that I'm reminding myself that it's it's a weird mistake I made. I don't know what I was thinking. So this prediction was so incredibly wrong.

That's not just thumbs down, it's everything down. I mean, I was just I don't know, but it just reminds me. I am human. I make mistakes. It's embarrassing, but I decided I had to at least acknowledge it. Let's move on. Before you know, I just throw myself at the wall. So prediction number twelve. Google will start to roll out WiFi based internet services to some cities, similar to how it rolled out Google Fiber, but with the goal of

having faster deployment. The company will encounter similar issues involving where they can set up their transmitters, you know, their towers, but it won't be nearly as tough as it was to get clearance for stuff like utility pole access. This is another thumbs down. It did not happen. Google Fiber

is still sort of kind of a thing. In the places where Google actually began to deploy Google Fiber, there's still service there, although I read a report that a lot of that service went out in Kansas City just before the recording of this episode. But the company has pretty much put a stop to doing more of that. They they've said they're not going to deploy in any other cities. Uh. They never did really fully deploy in

Atlanta at last I saw. They still say they're going to get around to it, but I haven't heard anything definitive about that. It hasn't Maine moves to build out wireless services either. However, five G technology is right around the corner. That's the next generation and of wireless data transmission technology, so we might see many companies jump in to provide wireless broadband connectivity and shake up the market. They're already talks about laptops and other technologies having five

G capability baked into the systems. I'm sure i'll see more of that when I go to c e S in January. But don't hold your breath, because it's still going to require building out the infrastructure to support all that. We probably will see some of that coming online in twenty nineteen, but I suspect most of it won't happen until well. I've got a little bit more to say about the predictions I made for but before I get into that, let's take another quick break to thank our sponsor.

Prediction number thirteen. By the end of automation will have eliminated more jobs than it creates. This isn't necessarily the endgame. It will create more jobs along the way, and maybe we'll see things even out or even see automation create more jobs that displaces than the short term as in the next few years, it's going to be pretty bleak for a lot of people. Uh no, thumbs down. I must have been watching episodes of Black Mirror before I

did that prediction. Automation did not eliminate more jobs than it created, not by a long shot. There are increasing concerns about the impact increased automation is going to have over the next few years, not just from eliminating jobs, but also in how automation will incorporate into jobs, whether it will end up being more profitable to do that.

The effect it might have on things like unionization is also a concern, and there are other concerns as well, But it has not eliminated more jobs than it created. That is, Gardner still predicts that by five one out of every three jobs will be done by robots or computers or some combination of those, but it also says that's starting a I will be creating more jobs than

it eliminates. So while we will have a robot or AI taking over one out of every three jobs, in general, there will be more jobs for everyone, not just robots, but for people, and that these technologies will be used to help companies become more efficient and profitable, but not necessarily at the expense of human employees. Rather, the machines will help humans do their jobs, not make humans superfluous.

So that's great. That's a very optimistic view of what automation will do, and it's very different from the fears that have been talked about over the last couple of years. Here's hoping the optimistic one is right. Prediction number fourteen. The trend that started in twenty seen of women stepping forward to reveal how they have been mistreated abused and

worse will sadly continue in twenty eighteen. I say sadly not to suggest these women shouldn't come forward, but rather that I suspect the problems they've experienced are deeply ingrained in our society in general, anti tech world in particular. I expect we'll see a dozen or more major stories about harassment or worse in the technosphere. In My hope is that though these stories are, through these stories, we can shake things out to make a better environment for

everyone moving forward. It's going to be painful, but absolutely necessary. Yeah, that definitely happened. That's another I hate to say thumbs up because I didn't want this. This is another prediction I didn't want to be true. I just felt pretty certain it was true. And the Me Too movement really took center stage in many arenas, not just the tech industry, you know, the entertainment industry certainly had its share as well. Uh not even the overall business industry was the only

place where this happened. We saw it everywhere, and it absolutely should. I want to be clear about that, the me too movement should take center stage because honestly, it harms everybody if we don't address these problems, and that includes just acknowledging that there are, in fact problems. If we say no, there's no problem, we're making things worse

for everyone. By acknowledging the problems, by confronting the fact that they exist, and then working to resolve them and to prevent those things from happening in the future, we can create a better environment for everyone, not just the people who are being victimized, but the people who are being victimized. If if things are better for them, then they get to do better things, they get to contribute more back to society, so we all benefit when we

improve things. This isn't just a you know, not all men type of argument sort of thing, which is by the way, I'm exhausted hearing about that. I think everyone understands that not every person of the male gender is constantly being a predator or anything like that, but rather that we have enough of that, and enough of that is baked in systemically and things like business, politics, general culture,

that we really need to address it. We really need to acknowledge it and figure out how to fix things to make the environment better for everyone, and again, we all benefit from this. This is something we should be selfish. We should all want this to happen so that we get better stuff. Alright, Prediction number fifteen. No, wow, I just read it again. Yeah, this one was dumb. Star Sitisen will not emerge from beta, in which seems the safest bet ever. A Star Citizen is a computer game.

It was kick started in tw It also has had various ways of raising money. It raised more than a hundred seventy million dollars. In fact, that number is old, that's a year old number that was from when I was making these predictions. But it's a persistent science fiction game. Sold spaceships and the possibility of purchasing in game real estate and also at facial capture technology so that you're supposedly gonna be able to transmit your expressions onto your character.

That kind of stuff. This is kind of like predicting water will continue to be wet. Star says, and is still in development. It has not been released, so big thumbs up here. However, I do want to say a little more about it. The most recent version of Star Citizen, which has parts of the game finished, has the designation Alpha three point three, so it's not even in beta. But while it's still in development. There are parts of

the game that are playable. People who supported it and are in the alpha can actually play those parts of the game. And I'm talking about stuff that's legitimately impressive. This isn't like wire frames that just tell you, Okay, well here's a placeholder. It's gonna look really awesome later on. So I don't mean to say the game is never coming out. I don't mean that the developers aren't working hard. They clearly are. The evidence is there. It's a hugely

ambitious project. Hope fully it's a hugely ambitious project that one day will be a full game, even if that means a game that gets continuous updates and additional content, Maybe the kind of game that releases and the full game part continues down the road. I'm hoping for that. Right now, it's still one of those things that people are kind of worried will always be in development and

never be released. Prediction number sixteen. There will be a bitcoin value crash in ten but it will recover at least to the point where it returns to around ten dollars per bitcoin, but at some point the value will drop significantly. For a while, I was wrong about this, I would say, um, I was wrong about the timing and I was wrong about the recovery, so I'm gonna

give a thumbs down on this. However, the important note to to really know here is that bitcoin's value did drop drastically in twenty eighteen, but it did so over the course of the entire year. It wasn't like a crash. It wasn't a moment where the value plunged lower and then never recovered or recovered up to ten thousand dollars, because it hasn't done that yet. Instead, what we've seen

is this steady decline. The value UH started at around fifteen thousand dollars at the beginning of the year, and as I record this, the value is closer to three thousand, four hundred dollars per bitcoin. So fifteen thousand to three thousand, four hundred that's a huge drop. It's significant, But again, it happened over the course of twelve months. There wasn't a sudden crash. There were some pronounced dips throughout the year, and by that I mean there were some pronounced drops

in value, not there were pronounced idiots. I'm sure there were those two, but not necessarily connected to bitcoin. One of them is talking into a microphone right now. Prediction number seventeen. We're going to see a big, serious push and podcasting. This is fuel from successes like S Town in the serial series, as well as some of the old standards that have stuck around for years. Cough, tech

stuff cough. Expect to see a flood of new shows, some of which are limited series with a set number of episodes, others that are open ended and will publish until people stop listening or the hosts decide to do something else. But we are going to see more development of programming in this space as if it were more akin to radio or TV series. Big thumbs up here, It's absolutely true. And remember I made this prediction before

I Heart Radio came in and acquired our company. We saw tons of new podcasts debut in, including mini series, and I feel like maybe half of them came out of our office. But at the time I made this prediction, I didn't know that was gonna happen. But yeah, we put out a lot of podcasts. Um nothing quite got the buzz of S Town. I feel I don't think anything quite captured the public. Uh, you know, like the water cooler talk like s Town did, but people still

were listening. There were numerous shows that debuted in twenty eighteen. They included high profile podcasts, celebrity hosted shows. A lot of true true crime shows came out in ten and more Prediction number eighteen. More bots, whether it's voice activated assistants, automated customer service representatives, or some other implementation, will see a growth in the use of boats as a point of service. Thumbs up. We saw a ton of this, and we saw a hint of the future, like Google Duplex,

which was equally impressive and unsettling. That's when Google would show off this uh, this artificial intelligent assistant. During the IO event Um, they had someone tell the Google Assistant make a make a hair appointment for me at such

and such a place around noon. The assistant made a phone call to a real human being at a hair salon and actual we got to listen to the recording of the phone call and the assistant, this artificial intelligent assistant made the arrangements and it sounded almost human like. The assistant actually said things like uh um while responding like a human would, like we don't have anything in noon? Would one o'clockwork, Um, do you have anything between ten

am and noon? That was an actual thing that the assistant said. So that was impressive and a little unsettling, but it gave us a hint at what might be to come. There have actually been discussions since then that such an assistant should identify itself at the beginning of a call that it is in fact an AI assistant and not a human being, because there's a worry that it would feel deceptive and creepy otherwise. So how do

you think I did. I think I had a better success rate this year than and I did most years, apart from that ludicrous mistake I made about online sales versus retail. I still don't know where I got information that made me think something that was so far from the truth was accurate. It blows my mind. It would have been like saying we're gonna find out in twenty nineteen that the Earth is flat. It just seems ridiculous. Now. Anyway, those were my predictions for I will not be making

predictions for twenty nineteen. I've decided this year to do something different. I'm going to make a wish list. So in our next episode, you will hear what I'm wishing for for twenty nineteen, and I'll explain more on that episode. But it has been a heck of a year, a year where for six months of the year I was doing five episodes a week and we're back down to

doing three episodes a week now. It's two new ones in one classic, and that's going to give me a lot more opportunity to really focus on individual shows and make them the best I can. So I'm very happy about that. Plus I'm gonna be working on some other stuff outside of Tech Stuff, so keep an ear out for that. If you guys have any suggestions for future episodes of tech Stuff, because it's gonna keep on going, send me an email. The addresses tech Stuff at how

stuff works dot com. Make sure you pop on over to our website that's over at tech stuff podcast dot com. That's where you can find ways to contact me on Facebook or Twitter, and don't forget to visit our merchandise stores over at t public dot com slash tech Stuff. I'm just watching try try and guess what I'm gonna

say next. She thinks that I do this exactly the same way at the end of every episode, and she's wrong, I tell you, but seriously, go to our merchandise store because if you buy stuff, it helps our show and we greatly appreciate it. I'll see you guys in twenty nineteen, and I'll talk to you again really soon. For more on this and thousands of other topics, is it how stuff works dot com