TechStuff Looks Ahead to 2023

little bit. I mean, we spent almost two weeks looking back on two. What's next? Now? Before I get into it, this is not a full on predictions episode. I used to do predictions episodes, but they are so much work and most of the time come up bust or at best. I I either predict something that is so obviously going to happen that really anyone would say, of course because that's where things are headed, or I'm way off base um, and then the following year I have to do a

follow up episode to say how did I do? So I'm not going to do any of that. Instead, I'm going to talk about some of the things were likely to see or at least we have a good chance of seeing. But we just have to remember we are also in a world where pandemics can happen, nations can invade one another, and billionaires can wreak havoc for no darn good reason. So it's hard to count on anything being certain at this point. Now, I will say I read a few articles that have made some predictions fore

and they made me think that I'm possibly way off track. So, for example, there's an article in Forbes that argues that we're going to see some serious, compelling development on the metaverse next year. Now, don't get me wrong, I don't doubt the companies will continue to work on the metaverse. In fact, meta at this point is essentially fully committed, like they can't back out without losing or without just having said the money that they've invested is a complete loss.

So I don't think that's going to happen. Other companies are also pushing hard, right, We've seen other companies getting into the space or have been in the space. I just I still find it hard to imagine the metaverse as being more useful or practical than the way we access digital services and online content today. So in other words, what I'm saying is I can't see the metaverse doing online presence better than the methods we have right now.

And if it's not better, it's just different and more inconvenient. I don't see it going anywhere. That's kind of the block I'm hitting. And I know I'm not alone in this. I know there are some other journalists who feel the same way. There's some who a very gung ho on it, like this Forbes piece was. But let's break it down. The promise of the metaverse is to make a persistent online world, ideally where we could do things like work, shop, play, socialized, etcetera.

Not every vision of the metaverse incorporates augmented reality and virtual reality or mixed reality for short, but many do. In fact, I would say most have that element worked into it. There are companies working to create virtual office spaces where people can collaborate and interact as if they were in the real location together for example, and in some use cases I can understand that approach, like having a virtual conference room where you can bounce ideas off

each other. That might be easier if you have like a virtual presence than your typical on screen video call would be maybe it's It's kind of hard for me to say, because y'all, my only collaborates Torii, except this week it's it's Joey. Thanks Joey. But Tari typically is my only collaborator. And the way this show works is that I record into a little tin can and then I send all those zeros and ones to Tari, and Tari makes them sound more gooder, and then Tari pushes

them out to your talkie boxes. And that's how this show works, uh to to pull away the curtain. So anyway, my point is I don't actually do that much collaboration in my job, so this is probably creating a bias for me, right, Like, I'm looking at it through the lens of how I do work. Maybe if I were more collaborative, I might be bemoaning the shortcomings of video calls and say that if only we had a virtual conference room, this would be so much easier. That might

be the case. I just don't know. Um it's hard for me to imagine that though, because here's the thing. We have seen virtual worlds that have tried very of this in the past and they just never got mainstream adoption. Second life is the perfect example. So Second Life is not as fully immersive as most visions of the metaverse are.

You control an avatar on your computer using like keyboard and mouse or maybe a controller, and you're typically doing it from a third person perspective, so it's not like you're walking around and everything is is surrounding you. Nothing like that. In your actual field of vision, You're you're

looking at a computer screen. But several companies got really excited about the idea of having a quote unquote real presence online, so not just a website, which was the boring old fashioned way, but a virtual storefront that customers could walk an avatar into and interact with. And a

lot of businesses rushed to Second Life. And while there was and still is a devoted group of people who use Second Life, second Life never became the new version of the Internet, Like that's kind of how it was hailed back in the day, and it just never became that. And I suspect the metaverse will suffer a similar fate. Again, it's through my perspective, so I could be totally wrong, but part of it. What has me skeptical about this

is that emphasis on a R and VR. There are some really big obstacles in the way if companies hope to have millions, hundreds of millions of people PLoP on headsets and engage with online material. So one of the big challenges is comfort. You have to have headsets. They're going to be comfortable enough to wear for long periods of time, at least the length of like an all hands meeting. And I don't know about you, but sometimes some of our all hands meetings can stretch to four days.

That's what it feels like at times. Gosh, I hope my boss doesn't listen to this. You also have to find ways to minimize issues with things like motion sickness. You know, some people are just more prone to that. As I get older, I get more prone to motion sickness. So I am certain that after just a few minutes wearing a VR headset, I'd feel pretty gross, and I don't think I would be really productive in a brainstorming session if I was yakking all over myself throughout the

whole meeting. But another challenge is cost. VR and a R headsets are expensive. In fact, a couple of them got more expensive because just this past year, Meta increase the price of the quest to models. Each of them went up by a hundred dollars. We already have a digital divide where people who are unable to afford stuff like a personal computer and internet service are progressively ostracized.

They are being pushed further and further to the boundaries of of especially you know, fully developed nations, uh that they're having a harder time participating in those societies. I imagine that will become way worse if people's start following the lead of these big companies and migrate towards a metaverse approach. In fact, we've got plenty of science fiction

stories that touch on that very concept. Meanwhile, I'm thinking back on the past about some initiatives that companies really tried to push on people that just didn't go anywhere, Like three D television. Do you remember that. What was it like maybe twelve or thirteen years ago where every new television being shown at trade shows like ce S

was a three D TV. And then there was this really hard push from television manufacturers and movie and TV studios for consumers to adopt and embrace three D television, and it just didn't happen. Most people didn't want to have to keep up with the glasses or have to put on a headset just to be able to watch television.

Active three D glasses were an even tougher cell because with active three D glasses you had to remember to charge them or else you'd end up having to wait to watch Avatar or whatever until your glasses were charged up. So three D TV got a big rejection, and some of the reasons for that rejection are the things that I think are gonna happen to the metaverse. That's why I'm skeptical. Also, this vision of using the metaverse as the future of online activity seems weird to me. I mean,

it seems very Hollywood. If you remember movies and like the eighties and nineties, they would often show quote unquote hackers, uh as if they were maneuvering through a first person dungeon crawler a computer game. I'm sure you've seen films like this where someone is hacking into the system and on their screen it's this three dimensional environment that they are maneuvering through in order to hack the system, because that's more interesting than guessing some passwords. And you know what,

maybe that is the future. Maybe I'm just too shortsighted, but I also think back to how I still access my computer today. So the uli I rely upon is mouse and keyboard. Personal computers have been things since the nineteen seventies with keyboards. The computer mouse joined computers in the nineteen eighties, and nothing has replaced keyboard and mouse.

There have been things that have augmented it and supplemented it, and of course for accessibility features there are people who rely upon alternatives to keyboard and mouse, but for the mainstream that just there's nothing that's replaced it. The closest you can come as with mobile devices and touch screens, but for your basic computer, you're still using keyboard and mouse.

So I get the feeling that the metaverse is a solution that's looking for a problem, that it's trying to say this is going to be better than the way we have been doing things. But I have yet to be convinced. All that being said, I do think we're still going to see companies do development in the space. I expect that development might be scaled back quite a bit, partly because of the economic situation that the world is

in right now. So I think that because we're seeing companies pair or back, either putting on hiring freezes or even layoffs. We're probably gonna see a slow down in development for the Metaverse, since I think there is a general lack of excitement around the Metaverse from the mainstream, not on the business side. You still have businesses going bonkers for this because they're hoping for a big payoff, but from the mainstream of not seeing it. Maybe I'm

not looking the right places. I just don't think it's going to be an easy road for the Metaverse. Maybe that's where we'll eventually end up, but I think it's going to be a pretty hard one. I think three will be a fairly quiet year in that regard, barring

some massive, crazy, unforeseen circumstance that changes things. Um Also, I guess we'll need to pay attention to Meta's earnings calls, which I know are boring, but that can give us an indication of what investors think about Meta's commitment to the idea of the Metaverse and progress or lack thereof. If we see like a massive drop in investor confidence, that could have a huge impact to the Metaverse as a whole. Okay, we've got a lot more to talk about.

Let's take a quick break. We're back. So another thing that Forbes article predicted. I'm really picking on this Forbes article, but they predicted serious development around Web three and blockchain based services, and again I remained skeptical. The spectacular crash of cryptocurrency in two and n f T s as well. I think dealt a huge blow to the Web three crowd, and a lot of Web three businesses are being, uh conspicuously quiet right now. I also genuinely do not understand

the value of the Web three coach. Like the metaverse, Web three feels like there's this group of extremely enthusiastic tech business people who are saying, we need another gold mine, we need something that is going to take off like Gangbusters, and they're trying to make it happen. I go back to mean, girls, you know, stop trying to make fetch happen. It's not gonna happen. Maybe Web three will happen, but it will happen through force of will, I think, rather

than a genuine need for Web three. In fact, I don't see Web three really solving anything. Everything I have seen suggests that Web three will essentially do what we already do. It's just going to do it in a different way, but not necessarily a better way. Some might argue it does it in a worse way, that it could be a slower, more clunky way. Now, a few people argue that Web three is going to shift online services so that the big tech companies will no longer

dominate the space. Companies like Google and Amazon and Meta will lose a lot of the troll they have because they will no longer be the gatekeepers for online commerce and activity, and that this will be some sort of democratized approach with Web three. But y'all, that's what the Internet was. Okay, that's what the Internet was. The Internet was a democratized approach. Okay, that's what the Internet was. It's not like the Internet was designed so that there

would be these pillars that would dominate the Internet. That's That's not the Internet's fault. That's a symptom of capitalism that, you know, some companies are going to be extremely successful and then they will come to dominate their respective markets. That just happens in capitalism. That's not I'm not saying that's a bad thing. I'm just saying that's a symptom, right, that that happens, because that's the way capitalism works, and it favors the companies that do well, and then they

are able to do even better. Web three might strip the you know, control of the Internet away from the elias and tech, but those glasses would just be replaced by new goliaths, presumably the entities that are charged with being stewards of the blockchains that are underlying Web three. So you still have centralized pockets of power. It's just different pockets of power. So again, maybe I'm way off

base here. Maybe we will have a massive Web three development spurt in three, maybe it will democratize the web. I'm just I don't believe it. I mean, this is beyond skeptical. I flat out do not believe that is where things will go. If Web three becomes a thing, I do not believe it will be a democratized, you know, utopia of online presence, because that's what the Internet was

supposed to be. So again, it's it's not like the Internet was always the way it is now, and that seems to be the way Web three tends to be framed as if this is the solution. I'm like, no, the Internet was the solution. We just did and take care of it. Properly to prevent things like the consolidation of power. Of course, it's also possible I'm just sliding further into old man yells at cloud territory, and I accept that. I'm okay with being a grouchy old person.

I don't have any problem with that. I'd rather be that than the alternative. So anyway, let's talk about something that we might get in after many years of speculation, and that's Apple's ARE headset, or more accurately, now it's mixed reality headset. So for years there's been speculation about Apple launching an a R headset and attempting to create a market for a ARE the same way that Apple

turned the smartphone into a consumer device. Apple has a very well earned reputation for defining form factors, not inventing them, but refining and then defining them. Like other companies might innovate a new technology, but Apple is the company that's

own to perfect them. So like the iPod was not the first MP three player, the iPhone was not the first smartphone, the iPad was not the first tablet computer, and so on, but each of these devices succeeded in the consumer market where predecessors either outright failed or they hit a plateau and didn't go any further. So the

question is can Apple do the same with augmented reality. Well, that remains to be seen, but we do know that Apple has already made some significant compromises in this quest. Wait a minute, no quest is met as headset in its journey anyway you want it, that's the way you

need it, and its journey to marketing a R headsets. So, for example, from early interviews with him Cook that touched on a arm, it seemed pretty clear that the goal was to create a lightweight pair of a our glasses that would be ideally indistinguishable from any other pair of

stylish eyeglasses or sunglasses. So the wearer would be able to see the outside world clearly through transparent lenses, and then the augmented reality data could be projected onto the lenses themselves, enhancing or augmenting if you will, the wearer's view of the world. But that's not what the first

generation of Apples glasses are going to be like. And that's because the tech just isn't at the point where Apple can do that, where the components can be miniaturized to that degree where the lenses can be clear enough up to be able to project the data in ways that are helpful but not obstructing your view. All that kind of stuff. We're not there yet. So Apple's first generation ARE glasses are said to be a totally enclosed headset, so more like a VR headset, so there's not a

transparent view to the outside world. Instead, you have forward facing cameras that will feed live video into the screen inside the headset, so the person where ing the headset will still see the world around them, but it will be through a live camera feed as opposed to transparent window. Apple still reportedly plans to develop true ARE glasses, but we're not likely to see those until at least or so. Some places I saw predicted maybe four. I think that's

being incredibly uh aggressive. I just don't think that's going to happen. Maybe it will. If it does, that would be super awesome. I would love to see it, because I actually really like the I like a R more than I like VR. Um from a personal use not not in a general technology sense. I definitely see the value of VR in specific use cases. It's just again, I get motion sick if I use VR too much. But a R is a slightly different story, and I can see a lot of things that I could use

a R four that would be really helpful. But if you step outside my personal preferences, I think a R and V are equally important. Anyway, company has held off on a R for a really long time, and meanwhile, companies like Meta and Microsoft have been kind of establishing a real space in mixed reality. So Apple doesn't want to hold off too long, or else it will be fighting an uphill battle. Plus, Apple hasn't had a true

breakaway hit product in a while. The company's established product lines do well, but Apple fans have been hoping for something really new the same way that the iPod or the iPhone took the world by storm. The Apple Watch didn't quite scratch that itch for Apple fans at large. I mean, it is a very popular product in its own right, but I didn't get the sense from people that the Apple Watch was like a uh, take your breath away kind of product the way the iPhone was

or even the iPad. So can Apple make mixed reality more of a mainstream technology? Well, you'd think by now that I would learn never to doubt Apple. I famously dismissed the iPad before it came out, and boy howdy, I could not have been more wrong about this. So I will say this, if a company can make mixed reality attractive to consumers, Apple is the company I would

suspect would be able to do it. I still have my doubts, but if the company can demonstrate a really compelling use case for augmented reality or mixed reality, and if the headset doesn't look like a clunky mess, maybe they'll have the secret sauce and this will be the thing that pushes mixed reality further into the mainstream, which would be a huge bonus for all those companies that are working on the metaverse. I'm just not I just

don't know. I don't know. I'm doubtful. But again I was doubtful about other Apple products and I was just wrong every single time. So we'll see. What we will not see next year is an Apple car. So Apple has also long been rumored to be working on a car concept, and for a while the company was focusing on building an autonomous vehicle, like, you know, like a truly autonomous car. We're talking about a vehicle that doesn't even have steering controls or an accelerator or breaks or whatever.

Uh not that, or at least not the ones that humans would be able to access. But reportedly Apple shifted its focus. It paired back on the very difficult engineering challenge of making a reliable and safe autonomous car and instead started to work on an electric vehicle design. However, where it is that we're not likely to see that kind of product until or so at the earliest. So no Apple e V this year or this coming year,

which is is unfortunate. Also, before I go to break, I want to mention there are some games that are meant to come out in two that instead we should see in That includes the zombie smushing game Dead Island Too, the long awaited and long delayed pirate games Skull and Bones from Ubisoft, the Harry Potter game Hogwarts, Legacy Butthes does New I P Starfield, where you've got people asking for the next Fallout game or the next Elder Scrolls game,

but we're getting Starfield, and there's a lot of questions about what that game is going to be and whether it will be any fun. Nintendo's Legend of Zelda Tears of the Kingdom is supposed to come out next year. Uh, the Left for Dead, but it's vampires game called Red Fall is supposed to come out next year. And hopefully these games will stay on their new schedules and actually

come out next year. But honestly, I always would rather a game be delayed so that developers can fix problems and make it better than to have it released quote unquote on time, but then have to wait for the numerous patches that follow in order to make the game, you know, fun to play. Now, They're also supposed to be a lot of other games that will be coming out in which I'm kind of excited about. I don't have a whole lot of time to play games, and the games I played tend to be kind of there.

They're eclectic. Vampire Survivors is one that I've been playing for a bit and then got back into because there was a whole bunch of new material released for the game, so I'm trying to unlock everything in there. I'm like maybe four things away from completing it. So yeah, I don't get a whole lot of time to play it,

but I still like to learn about them. Okay, we're gonna take another quick break when we come back we'll talk about the trade show that is right around the corner and the sort of stuff that journalists are expecting they will see at that that show. I will not be there, so I'll just have to live vicariously through them. But first let's take this break. As I said before the break, c e S is right around the corner.

This show, which is also known as the Consumer Electronics Show, is a huge trade show for the consumer technology industry. Mostly it's companies that create products that are meant for consumers. Some of them are more like components companies, so they make stuff that end up being incorporated into the products of other companies. And then you've got some other like trade organizations that do exhibits there and stuff. Like I said before the break, I'm not going this year. That

was my decision. Uh, it's just really hard for me to be productive at c e S unless I have a whole team with me to help plan and execute everything. I'm just I'm not good enough to be able to manage my time properly so that I get the most out of it. So often by the time I come back from c e S, I'm frustrated that I didn't do enough, So instead, I'm going to cover it remotely this year. But anyway, we do know a bit of about some of the stuff that's going to be shown off.

That includes some flying car prototypes, not unusual. We've actually seen those at ce s in the past. So essentially these usually look like a giant quad copter, like one of those consumer drones that you can buy, but instead you know, scaled up to the point where a human being could sit inside the cockpit of one. Well, I suspect we will not be seeing consumer vehicles take flight anytime in the near future. There are numerous companies that are looking to use similar technologies as a kind of

taxi service, particularly to and from airports. There are numerous companies that are you know, marketing themselves as a flying taxi for that kind of thing, and I suspect that some of the stuff we will see at CES will

fall into that category. I'm also sure that we're gonna see lots more electric vehicle designs because more and more governments around the world are passing legislation that is putting a deadline on the sale of new vehicles with internal combustion engines, saying after such and such date that will be illegal. You cannot sell a new internal combustion engine vehicle on the market. Used car sales will still be allowed.

It's not like internal combustion engine vehicles as a whole will be outlawed, but that you know, you can't sell new ones, and so that's really going to put an emphasis on electric vehicles in particular. So manufacturers are responding by innovating in the e V space, except maybe for Toyota, which has really held onto the hope of relying upon hydrogen to either fuel call cars directly or use in

fuel cells. Uh. I think that might actually be a sunk cost fallacy situation at this point, because Toyota continues to say, oh, with the e V thing is that's gonna be a bubble um. That might be wishful thinking on Toyota's part. On the computer front, we are likely to see some prototype devices that are really neat but will likely never go into production. I'm thinking about several computers. I've seen it past c e S events where you

had like multiple screens or interesting configurations. There was like a couple of them that were tablet computer laptop hybrids that were really cool that never came out. We had other ones come out that were never quite as interesting as the original prototypes were. So of course, sometimes, you know, these prototypes are just shown off in order to test out certain features that may or may not make their

way into future products. So I get it. It's not that the companies are pulling the wool over eyes are saying this is definitely gonna hitch store shelves, but rather we're experimenting with different features. This is what came of those experiments that may or may not find their way into products. If it makes sense down the line where it is, there will be a lot of focus thrown

to laptop computers. Again not super groundbreaking news. Their laptops have consistently been a focal point at recent c E S shows. I think laptops have been on the standard PC for a lot of households outside of the you know, like the super serial gamers and live streamers out there.

We also might see some announcements regarding laptops that have the previous generation of GPU hardware built into them, which could actually win over some of those gamers who aren't you know, sold on getting a forty eight or But there's been a lot of backlash on video about those anyway, that's a matter for a different podcast. However, I also expect that we're going to see displays and monitors that will have features built into support stuff like video conferencing

like that. That's been a thing for a while. I just think it's gonna be more of a highlighted feature in the displays that we see out of ce s this year. Now, big tech companies are still pushing to get people back into the office, but other businesses have chosen to stick with either a hybrid or remote work approach, which has pushed a surge in development on video call technologies, and I feel it's gonna be reflected in some of

the products at CES. I think we're going to see more displays that have advanced built in cameras and microphone capabilities. We'll probably also get some more VR and mixed reality headsets. Now, again, I remain unconvinced that this particular technology is ever going to be as widely adopted as say computers or mobile devices. I just don't think it's ever going to be quite

that level of popular. But certainly I think the market does have room to grow, and you know, it's always nice to hear about advancements in VR, whether it's in reducing headset weight, increasing comfort, increasing resolution and processing power, or developing a wider library of content for the devices. I think that's critical. You've got to have stuff for people to do or else there's no reason to buy the hardware. I just I know that I'm not going to be buying it because they make my tummy go

all flippy floppy. Something else that will will definitely be at CES because it's always there will be TVs, lots and lots of t vs. Now, I haven't really heard any scuttle butt on what could be the big push in television's at C E s. In past years, there have been very notable trends. Like I mentioned earlier, more than a decade ago, it was three D. Before three D, it was things like little web icons they were on your television. After that that got kind of morphed into

smart televisions a little later. Then we had things like HDR and high refresh rates. We had oh LED q D O LED screens, which was introduced last year. Really, maybe we'll get more of a widespread adoption of q D O L E D this year, or maybe there will be some other element or feature that will emerge in televisions and become the trend. It's possible we'll see more TVs sports eight K resolution. Eight K has been shown off at previous e S events, even back when

I was still going, which was several years ago. Now, I saw eight K televisions. They were prototypes, they weren't, you know, consumer models. But there's not really any eight K content that you can access. So it doesn't really make sense as a consumer to buy an eight K television because there's nothing natively eight K that you can

watch on it. A lot of eight K TVs will uh, you know, upscale videos so that it's at eight K resolution, but that's not the same thing as watching native eight K content, and there just isn't really any of that. It's the same sort of problem they had early on in the h D days and in the four K days. Like this is just the way of things. It will

take a while. I'm also skeptical about whether or not eight K provides that much more of a good experience over four K. This could be the limitations of my own physical ability to see, but I just don't It doesn't come across as being superior to me, unless you're watching it on a truly enormous screen and you're sitting three inches away, then you could really tell you like, oh, I can't even see the pixels. Okay, well that's great.

I mean you're staring at Daniel Craig's nostril as you watched Glass Onion, and maybe that's where all the secrets of the movie are. But I just don't see the appeal personally. I don't think it's I think it's more of a way for a TV company to say, look, this is a higher number, so it's more better, so buy it, And I just don't. I don't buy it. Now.

One thing we are likely to hear a lot more about at CES is matter, not like matter as in the stuff that has mass, but rather matter as in the standard that has been created for smart home connectivity. So one of the biggest headaches for consumers who wanted to adopt smart home technology in the past was this lack of interoperability between different devices, so a lot of

smart home solutions were essentially closed off ecosystems. Now, if you didn't mind that all of your component it's needed to come from the same company and rely on the same user interface for interoperability, then you didn't have a problem. But if you preferred to pick and choose the elements

that best suited your lifestyle, things got more complicated. Your smart home could start to feel less smart, or maybe you'd start to feel less smart as you try to interact with your two or three or more user interfaces in order to control all the various smart devices within your home. Well, the Matter Universal Standard is an approach

to solving this problem. It's meant to serve as sort of a common foundation for smart home applications and simplify the user interface issue and make interoperability between different devices more seamless. So Matters specifications weren't solidified until this past October. So there's a pretty real expectation that CE three will have a lot of devices with Matter and Mind and that's pretty cool. So some stuff I think will likely be talked about a lot next year now that we're

moving away from CS. I think we're gonna talk a lot more about the debate around generative AI. We got that launched at the end of this year, Like that conversation started already, but I think it's going to become a bigger one. In because seeing AI programs create images and text that's at least approaching or in some cases equaling, human achievement brings up some really tough questions. And these aren't new questions, mind you, a lot of people have

been asking these questions for years. But now the questions are really pertinent because we appear to be nearing the point of no return where machine generated content could potentially be indistinguishable from human created stuff. So my guess is we're going to see a few more examples of people really pushing the boundaries of what generative AI is capable of.

They may or may not try and pass that off as a human created piece of art or or authorship or whatever, or maybe a combination, and then maybe do the big reveal that oh, in fact, a machine made this, or maybe they don't do the reveal, maybe they try and pass it off as if it was their own wheels. See, we'll also see more stories about teachers frustrated that their students are relying on AI to do stuff like complete complete writing assignments. That's already happening. I saw a news

item about that just the other day. I'm sure we're gonna see more artists and authors express concern about what this means for the arts in general and for their careers in particular, and I think all of these are valid. I also hope that these conversations evolve into ways where we can make sure that AI development and AI use is done in an ethical and fair way, and that such tools augment rather than replace humans. But that's gonna be a really big conversation. I think that will get

elder in three. Like I said, it's already started, but I think it's going to become more prominent in the coming year. There's a lot of other stuff we could talk about, you know, things like well cryptocurrency make a recovery in three I honestly don't know. I don't think cryptocurrency is is headed for the you know, the pits. I don't think it's gonna die next year that I don't know that it's going to have a huge recovery.

I think we'll probably see some valleys and some hills in its value as we go along, unless there's like another huge failure in the cryptocurrency world, like if finance were to go down, that would be catastrophic at least in the short term for a lot of crypto companies and a lot of cryptocurrencies, but I don't know that

that's going to happen. I think it would be I think it's a long shot, honestly, So I think cryptocurrency is probably going to be fine for three It might even have a recovery in tree h I don't know. Maybe for some people it's been irrevocably damaged in their eyes and they'll never invest in it. But the proponents for cryptocurrency are very passionate, so I don't count it out just yet. Uh, there are other things we can look at, but I think this is a good starter

for things to think about for the next year. As always, I advocate that y'all exercise two things above everything else when you start thinking about tech and just you know, generally life, which is critical thinking, ask questions, question the answers you get. Don't be satisfied with simple answers. You need to really understand what's going on and compassion. Compassion for others is incredibly important. Keep in mind not everyone's

trying to pull one over on you. Like, just because you're being critical about stuff doesn't necessarily you mean you think people are trying to trick you. In some cases, it may be that a person has is communicating in a way that doesn't connect with you, and so you have to ask questions so that you both understand what the other is saying. So that's important, but to do it with compassion is also important because you don't want to just be in jerk. I've been a jerk in

the past. I'm sure I will be a jerk in the future. I try to keep in mind this compassion thing. I'm also working on it all the time, so I'm not trying to say that I'm the perfect person with with critical thinking and compassion. I'm not on either count,

but I try to keep that in mind. I think it's going to be important for three uh and I hope you have a happy New Year, that you are happy, you're healthy, you're safe, your friends and family are around, and you can celebrate the end of the beginning of tree. I look forward to talking with all of you next year about all things tech, whether it's specific technology, is people in tech, companies in tech, trends in technology technologies

affect on us, in our effect on technology. All of that will continue next year, and I will talk to you again in twenty three. Tech Stuff is an I heart Radio production. For more podcasts from I Heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.