TechStuff Predicts 2018

at this time of the year. It's the time of the year when I stick my neck out, get ready for my head to get chopped off, and predict what's gonna happen in the following twelve months of tech I'm recording this episode on December seventeen, so technically there's still half a month of December left to go, but I'm looking ahead at This is the the last episode I believe of tech Stuff to publish in the year twenty seventeen, so when you hear the next one will be celebrating

a new year. But first, let's before that all happens, let's let's kind of take some guesses. Um and and I decided this year to make some more specific prediction rather than the really general ones I tend to go with, because not only do I think you guys deserve more specific predictions, but it's also way easier to figure out if they came true or not. Here's the here's the secret folks. After I make these episodes and they go live, and a year passes, and it comes time for me

to look and evaluate how well I predicted things. I have to do all that research. I have to figure out, well, did what I said, did it happened, Did it happen the way I thought it would, did it happen a different way? That requires a huge amount of research. And the more general the prediction is, the harder it is to nail down whether or not it happened. But if I make very specific predictions, then I have a much

better chance of knowing right away if I'm right or wrong. So, for example, if I predict that in you and McGregor becomes the CEO of Google, I'm gonna know by December. Now, of course, the challenge there is to make predictions that are not patently ridiculous, because that's just wasting your time and I don't want to do that. So here's hoping that some of these predictions are interesting and that they are verifiable or falsifiable at the end of the year.

Those are Michaels. So with that being said, let us go to prediction number one, which is that VR headsets like Oculus rift HTC, Vibe and others will have another lackluster year. We're not going to see a spike in sales. By the end of VR will not have made any real progress in home markets, and will likely see several products discontinued, although the Vibe and the Rift may survive

just because they have larger corporate sans behind them. So in other words, I expect when I look at the analyst reports in December, that there won't be any months where VR headsets suddenly make incredible sales. We'll probably see some of those prices come down, and we'll probably see the prices of the various computers that you need in order to run VR at a decent clip, we'll see those prices come down too, But I don't know it's going to come down enough to make this a common

household technology. And we're also starting to see a lot more development on the VR space with software, with experiences that you can have that will help. I don't think it's going to be enough. So I think by this time we're gonna be looking at a pretty similar situation as far as virtual reality is concerned. I find that sad I would love to see VR takeoff. I just don't feel like it's quite catching on. I think we might be past the point where it could really hook

in to the general consumer market. Prediction number two. Microsoft mixed reality headsets, being the relatively new toy on the market, will get some initial buzz in the early part ofen but will largely suffer essentially the same fate as virtual reality headsets. And I think a R augmented reality has incredible potential to do really big business. I just don't think is going to be the year where it happens,

so I don't expect big sales numbers now. Augmented reality, in case you've forgotten, is the technology in which we are able to overlay or augment our experience of reality with some sort of digital information. Typically, we're looking at the world through a screen, so we're getting like a live video feed of our surroundings through a screen, and on that screen we can overlay digital information and us

augment our experience. But there are a lot of other variations on this, like things that are ad audible as opposed to visual, that sort of stuff. I just don't think that the mixed reality headsets are going to be a huge consumer uh piece of technology. Either. We might see it being used in industrial or business related endeavors, but I don't think it's going to become the hot new consumer product. I don't think you're gonna go home, put on your mixed reality headset and then do some computing.

I could be wrong about that. It all depends on how the technology is positioned and how it's marketed, but I would be surprised if mixed reality really takes off in the consumer space. Prediction number three, We're gonna see autonomous car service rolled out for real z s, not just as a limited test case, in at least one market in the United States, before the end of now.

This is similar to a prediction I made for seventeen where I said that Uber was going to try and do a truly autonomous test system in a major US market where there'd be no driver in the driver's seat. It would truly be an autonomous car with no human operator there to step in line. But that did not happen.

I do think we're gonna see at least a limited rollout of autonomous car service in one market in the US, not as a test, but as this is our service moving forward in this market by the end of That's a not that bold of a prediction, I would argue, because we've seen some of this in prototype stages throughout. Uber was operating some autonomous vehicle services in Pittsburgh, in Arizona, in San Francisco, but all of those were with a

human operator in the car as well. UM I think that before is over, some one, maybe not Uber, but someone will be operating a truly autonomous car service in a major market. I don't know that it will be a huge success, but I think it will happen, So that will be something to look out for. Prediction number four, Congress, it's going to give the nod to Disney and twenty first century Fox and say yes, Disney, you can acquire twenty one century Fox. This will take several months, but

it will happen. Disney will then end up being the six owner of Hulu because they already owned thirty percent of Hulu and Fox owns another thirty percent of Hulu. But they're also going to go ahead and develop their own streaming service on top of their majority ownership of Hulu. So the landscape of two thousand eighteen December two thousand eighteen will be that the massive entertainment into Street will

be more under Disney's belt than ever before. Disney will control all those assets that Century Fox had that were related to entertainment. Twenty first Century Fox of the company Murdocks Company will still have some of Fox's properties under it, but a large portion of that goes to Disney. It means lots of different things. It means that we could potentially see lots of those uh those Fox owned or Fox licensed properties from Marvel make their way into Disney's

Marvel movies. That would include The Fantastic Four and The X Men and Deadpool and characters like that. But on a bigger scale, it means all sorts of things. It means an impact to streaming services. It means that we're going to see increasingly more of our entertainment come from a decreasing number of major studios, which isn't necessarily a

good thing. We also will see that Star Wars New Hope, which was in perpetuity given to twenty first Century Fox, will now join all of its brothers and sisters of the Star Wars properties under Disney, which means potentially we could get a digitally remastered version of the cinematic releases of the original trilogy. In other words, before the special editions, we could get a fully cleaned up version of those movies,

because Disney will own all of them. Before Fox had the agreement that they owned the rights to a New Hope and Us, there was very little hope that we were ever going to get that cinematic release, the one where Han shot first, or actually Han shot period um. That one we now could potentially get. That's a big one. I don't think we're going to get in, but I

think it could happen. Prediction number five. After numerous heated discussions, Congress will overturn the FCC's decision in December to reverse the decision classifying broadband Internet as a public utility. That one was made back in. This is gonna be the result of lots of lawsuits and arguments in Congress. I think ultimately Congress is going to take a look at the ground swell of support in the United States among

citizens to maintain that neutrality, to keep those rules in place. Uh, and we'll say, hey, we can't really risk going against the will of the people without putting ourselves in danger.

Right now, if you are in Congress, you're probably looking at your position as being on shaky ground at best, because things are very tumultuous in United States politics, and as a result, even if you don't necessarily side with the net neutrality argument, your constituency might and that would mean that you have a vested interest in making sure that you kind of support it so that you don't have an angry mob of constituents at home who then will vote your butt out of office the next time

a vote comes around. That might be an overly optimistic view of what is going to happen. But I suspect that we're going to see this decision from the f c C blocked in some way in and again. It may come from the courts, or it may come from Congress, but I don't think we're going to get through with those new considerations in place. Um. The FCC argues, by the way, that net neutrality will still be a thing,

it's just it won't be an official regulation. The government won't be enforcing net neutrality, but the internet service providers will maintain net new trality out of self interest. That might possibly be true if in the United States we had a true free market with internet service providers. If you had multiple choices for an I s P within your market, then you could argue, all right, well, net

neutrality isn't protected. But if one company decides to act in a way that is contrary to net neutrality, I could just stop my service with them and go to a competitor. But that's not the way it works in the United States. Most regions in the US that have broadband access have at most two I s p s to choose from, and most of them only have one. So if you only have one choice, there's nowhere else

to go. So the argument that the free market will maintain net neutrality to me seems disingenuous because there's not really a free market in the I s P business in the United States. So I suspect that ultimately this is gonna get overturned. Prediction number six. By the end of two thousand eighteen, the percentage of cord cutters in the US will be such that will see thirty million people cutting the cord. Total. Now, in seventeen, that number was at twenty two point two million. We had twenty

two point two million chord cutters by seventeen. That's not throughout the year, but in total that was up from sixteen point seven million in twenty sixteen. So I think that trend is not just going to continue. I think it's gonna pick up a little more speed. So it they gained a little bit more than five and a half million cord cutters in twenty seventeen, I think we're gonna go closer to seven point eight million in eighteen. So that's gonna knock us up to thirty million total.

Thirty million people who have cut the chord and they no longer subscribe to traditional cable or satellite television. They will they might subscribe to a virtual subscription on a smart TV or a console or some other solution, but they will abandon the traditional satellite or cable option. That's my prediction for cutting the chord, and that the never chords. Those are people who are of adult age who have

never paid for traditional cable or satellite. That number is going to go up to just because you're gonna have more people reach the age of eighteen who still have never done that and don't have any plans to do it, So that number is going to keep going up too, just as a result of younger generations reaching the age of maturity and not having ever bought a cable or

satellite package for television. But we're also going to see more and more households that have been doing that cut those ties, and that, as a result, is also going to have massive applications across the entertainment industry because you're gonna see advertising react as a result of that. If you have fewer people watching your ads, then those ads have less value and that's going to have this ripple effect throughout the industry and it will be really interesting

to see where things go from there. I don't think it's going to be massively disruptive by the end of but it's going to continue this trend of disruption that I imagine we'll see hit its peak and maybe another four or five years and uh, at that point, who knows what will come next, but I think the landscape will be drastically different. Well, I've got a lot more predictions about ten coming up, but first let's take a quick break to thank our sponsor. All Right, we're up

to prediction number seven. There will be at least one and probably more than one security breaches on the scale of the Equifax breach. In because while we pay a lot of lip service towards security. It's way easier to talk about being secure than to actually take the steps and make sure we are are doing it. And plus we're human beings and we're wacky you, So this, I think is a gimme. I would be shocked if we get through without another massive security breach making the news.

It maybe that it's a breach that a company tries to cover up. That seems to be the m O for a lot of companies. It never works out well for them. It always eventually will find its way to the public, and then it's way worse at that point. Equifax is a great example. The The initial UH vulnerability

was found in March. The earliest evidence of an attack was found in May, and no one talked about until September, and by more than a hundred and thirty million accounts had been breached and accessed and potentially all that personal data is now compromised. So I suspect we're gonna see

something along those lines again. Don't know who will be the target, could be anybody, don't know what vulnerability they'll use, could be anything, but just from the fact that no one ever seems to really get their head around how to practice good security tells me that this is going to happen. In the case with Equifax, the company was even aware of the vulnerability before the first attack apparently happened,

but failed to act to solve that. Despite the fact that the company has a policy of fixing such problems within forty eight hours of discovering them. That just didn't happen. With the Equifax data breach, I suspect we're going to see something along those lines. I'd rather not. I I have been personally affected by some of these. The Yahoo breach,

the Equifax breach. It's all gonna happen again, though. Uh, just because there's no such thing as a perfect secure system, and there's way too many examples of companies that just don't take the right steps to address vulnerabilities once they are found. They drag their feet because fixing problems is expensive and it takes time and it takes energy away

from doing business. But if you don't do it, the amount you're going to have to spend in order to correct the problems that will happen will dwarf anything you would have spent just fixing the problem in the first place. So I would love to be proven wrong on this, hopefully December, I'll say, wow, we got through without any major breaches. I would love to be proven wrong. I just don't think it's gonna happen. Prediction number eight. Apple next iPhone, which I'm betting will not have a number

associated with it. So it's not going to be the iPhone eleven. It will be called something else, maybe just the iPhone It will be an incremental upgrade to iPhone ten. So it's not gonna be some sort of massive evolution of the iPhone ten. Now, Johnny, i'ves Sir Johnny Eyes has once again taken the helm of design over at Apple. He's personally involved. However, I don't think his influence is likely going to be seen that much in the products

that come out next year. I don't think that's going to really be a major component for another generation or so, because it takes more than a year of work to produce these products. So the next iPhone, the iPhone whatever it will be called, but I don't think it will be called the iPhone eleven, is already well in the development stage at this point. It's got to be because by the time September rolls around, it has to be ready to go to manufacturing plants and be produced in

large numbers. That means that it already has to be well along the development cycle. That being, and since Johnny I've just came back over into the design section and got really hands on with everything, I think that means we will not see a direct evidence of his involvement of his influence, at least not beyond what we see in Apple products in general. Uh, this next generation is going to take another generation before that happens. Prediction number nine.

We're gonna see a rise in cord cutting, which will have a big effect on advertising, but we'll also see a rise in ad blocking online. We're gonna see more and more people installing ad blockers and developing ad blockers. This is going to encourage more sites to use ad blocker detectors. If you've we use an ad blocker and you've gone to one of those sites, you've probably seen a pop up up here and saying, hey, we see

you're using an ad blocker. Please don't do that. If you want to look at our stuff, white list our sites so that we can make money. Sometimes you can't even view the original content until you have white listed them. Or pause your ad blocker, whatever it may be. This is likely going to inspire more people to file lawsuits

against such practices. There's an argument going on that says it's a violation of privacy for a web page or a website to look into what your browser has in order to serve you up this information of Oh, I see your using an ad blocker. They said, well, that's a violation of privacy because you're staring at what I'm using on my computer and I didn't give you permission to do that. This is still unraveling as I record this podcast, so we're probably gonna see that continue in.

It's gonna be a big mess, and this is going to bring the question everyone is worried about closer to the foreground. It's going to bring this question up that people are going to have to grapple with, which is how do you make money creating content on the Internet in a way that does not alienate your customers. I have a vested interest in this question. This podcast is

ad supported. Without those ads, there's no revenue. Without revenue, we I don't get paid, we don't have a space to record in, we don't have money to host these podcasts. These podcasts stop getting recorded, the company goes away. That's our source of revenue. So we want to be able to do this. I love my job, I love doing what I do, but I can't just do it for free. I don't get paid in songs and sandwiches. I can't pay my rent with any sort of good will from

you listeners. I need I need cash money you. It's a hard knock life out there, So we as creators have a responsibility to come up with ways that allow us to make money uh off of our ideas and do it in such a way that is not too intrusive or irritating or otherwise off putting. That's our responsibility. It's also the responsibility of the advertisers to come up with methods that are effective, that give you the information you need to act upon those advertisements so that this

whole cycle works. If it doesn't, then obviously something's broken and eventually the system collapses. Well, this is true across the entire web. It's not just podcasts, but on regular websites. And I look, I'm a web user. I find ads really really irritating as well. I was using a browser to look at content the other day, I did not have an ad blocker in place. I'm reading an article. A paragraph and a half down into the article, I get an enormous full screen overlay of an ad playing music,

completely obscuring the article I was trying to read. That is obnoxious. Nobody wants that, And it's that sort of stuff that continues the argument, Hey, I want to use an ad blocker because otherwise my experience is terrible. That's a valid argument to make. But on the other hand, if you don't have the ads, you can't pay to have that content, you can't create the content. You're not gonna do it for free. So we're gonna see this really kind of become a battleground in this This is

gonna be the the lead. We got to sit down and fix this because it's broken right now and nobody is coming out a winner. We want to have something that is giving value to our customers, is giving value to the advertisers, and that allows us to make the stuff we want to make. I don't have the answer to what that is. By the way, I am a lowly content creator. I know what I hate. I hate I hate really obnoxious ads. I don't hate all ads.

Some ads I find either entertaining or helpful. A lot of ads that are based on my browsing behavior I actually kind of like because I end up seeing stuff that I'm interested in but I might not have ever known about. So those I actually enjoy. But uh, and I have. I've clicked on those ads and bought stuff that way. But you've got to be really careful how you do that too, because obviously if you do too

much of that, it becomes kind of creepy, right. It feels like someone spying on you and getting to know

everything you like, and that doesn't feel great either. So there's definitely some sort of line we need to figure out to follow as an industry and hopefully come out with a solution that works for everybody, because otherwise we're just going to continuously have this battle where people create different types of ad blockers just to ignore ads entirely, and ultimately that's going to lead to an entire industry crumbling in on itself because it can't support itself anymore.

The advertisers will pull out because they're saying, no one's seeing our ads in the first place, and then no money comes in, and then without money, you can't run a business, or so I'm told. I don't know. I still buy everything on the barter system. Three walking birds to the Wooden Nickel. I say, prediction number ten. We're heading toward a subscription service crash and which will see such a saturation in the market for subscription based entertainment services.

I'm talking about stuff like Netflix and Hulu and Amazon Video and all the others that are coming out. There will be a general backlash, and I think we'll get through before all of this kind of shakes out, but things will start to heat up towards the end of with more consumers getting disenchanted with how many different competing services there are and what they're expected to do in

order to get all the content they want. So by the end of I expect there's gonna be all these different articles about here's the list of services I have to subscribe to if I want to be able to watch the things I would be able to see if I still use pay TV, right, because that was the that was the beauty of this Originally, everyone was thinking, Hey, when we get to this world, I'll be able to

subscribe to just the things I want. I won't be subscribing to a cable package where I get four dred channels, of which I will watch three, and on those three channels, I'm maybe watching five shows total, So I'm paying all this money for five shows. Wouldn't it be great if I had a service where I could just pay for those five shows and not anything else and save money

and frustration. Except what we're getting is all these different subscription services that sort of approximate that pay TV model with massive gaps in every single service. Every service has gaps that other services kind of fill in, and then you think, well, for me to get the experience I want to have to subscribe to eight different services, I'm not saving any money, and it's just frustrating as a consumer. I think by the end of we're going to see

that frustration build to a high point. And in twenty nineteen, I would argue we're gonna start seeing some of those subscription services phase out because people will just start to object with their wallets. Prediction number eleven. By the end of eighteen, we will reach the point in America where more retail dollars will be spent online than in physical brick and mortar stores. So there's gonna be the act foul tipping point where online revenues overall are going to

be higher than traditional stores. Now we haven't hit that point yet, but will be that tipping point, and there will be no going back after we hit that. Now, that does not mean I suspect we'll see tons of real places shut down in ten. We're gonna see some. We've already seen several stores kind of go belly up over the last few years. That's going to continue in twenty eighteen, but I don't think it's going to be massive.

I don't think this is where we see the general stores just turning upside down throughout the course of the year. The trend will continue, but it will be I think another decade before this effect really starts to impact stores in a way that causes massive closures, which obviously leads to lots of other problems. You have entire towns or city centers that will be essentially vacant because the stores that would have occupied those spaces will no longer have

the revenues to support themselves. They'll they'll go bankrupt, they'll go out of business, and so further down the road, we're gonna have this issue with what do we do with all that that real estate? What happens to all those spaces? I mean, we may be getting all of our stuff online, what happens to those physical locations that used to have stores in them? And I'm sure we'll come up with different solutions to that problem. I'm sure

different cities will try different approaches. Some may reclaim that real estate and turn it into something else, whether it's residential, They may re zone to residential neighborhoods, they may turn them into public spaces. Um maybe you we'll just see a whole bunch of Pok restaurants opening up everywhere, which I'm totally cool with. I love Pok. So now that's the way things are going. If I can't walk three blocks without running into fifteen Pok places, hey fine by me.

Prediction number twelve. Google will start to roll out WiFi based internet services to some cities, similar to how it rolled out fiber, but with the goal of having faster deployment. Because here in Atlanta, Google Fiber has been a thing on the way for like four years. They still haven't laid fiber in my neighborhood, and to be fair, they've backed off on a lot of the places where they said they were going to deploy, but Atlanta was one of those where they had already made the commitment and

just hasn't rolled out very quickly. It's not entirely the company's fault. They've encountered resistance everywhere you turn. So I think they're gonna try and switch to a wireless approach, a gig a bit wireless approach, um. But I imagine there're still going to encounter some similar issues, mostly involving where they can set up transmitter towers, because that's a big thing, even in Atlanta. Now you've you'll see different areas in Atlanta opposing the construction of a new cell tower,

for example. Um. But I don't think it's going to be nearly as tough as it was to get clearance for stuff like utility whole access. That was a crazy battle Google had to fight over and over and over again, and largely did so I think as a way of setting a precedent for other companies. I don't think Google's intention was to really become a massive Internet service provider

across multiple cities in the United States. I think it was more about, let's set some rules that other companies can follow in the future to make this a more competitive space. It just hasn't really happened because, as it turns out, if you want to be an I s P you need a whole lot of money to get into that game, and most companies just don't have that kind of capital. So it ends up being the game of a few major UH companies in most regions. If you're lucky, you have a few. Most of us only

have one or maybe two. All right, I've got a few more predictions, but before I jump into those, let's take another quick break and thank our sponsor. Prediction number thirteen. By the end of automation will have eliminated more jobs than it creates. Now, that's not necessarily the endgame. I do think automation is going to create more jobs along the way, and maybe ultimately we'll see things even out or even see automation create more jobs than it displaces.

But I think, in which I view as the short term of this journey, we're going to be hard strapped to make more jobs than it displaces. I think it's gonna be pretty bleak for a lot of people, and not just in the blue collar industries. I think in the white color industries. We're gonna see a lot of of bots and AI programs and algorithms replace what traditionally would go to people, you know, like human people being things. They're going to be out of a job. It's gonna

be rough. It is not good, uh, at least not in the short term, especially not for those people. It might be good for the companies and that it could help them cut some of their costs and thus improve profits. But while that's good for a very few people, it's bad for a whole bunch of others. So I don't want that to happen. I'd like to be proven wrong on this one, but I suspect, at least in the

short term, that's what's going to be. Like Now, maybe we will find creative ways to make new jobs for those people and find ways to train them for those new jobs. That seems to be like the optimist approach to this view of the future, the idea that robots and other forms of automation we'll just take over jobs that are difficult, deadly, dangerous, or dull, and we humans will be freed up to do wonderful other jobs that are much more rewarding and less dangerous and less um

you know, less mind numbingly dull. But we have to create those jobs, and we have to figure out how to make sure people can do those jobs. If it's someone who was doing menial labor and they suddenly are being put into a position that is asking much more of them, we have to be sure that we give them the tools they need in order to do that job, which includes training and education. I'm not convinced that we

have put those those uh pieces in place. I think we're doing the automation before we've got the tools to help people affected by the automation to do something else, and it feels very reactionary to me. So maybe I'm a pessimist in that sense. Maybe there actually are far

more tools than I'm giving it credit for. But I feel a lot of empathy for people who are displaced, whether it's through automation or some other corporate maneuver, and I often feel that any sort of solution that we create for those folks tends to come after a big wave has already affected a bunch of people, and that just means that people are suffering during that time. I hate that, uh, But then I'm very squishy person less squishy than I was a year ago, but that's due

to weight loss prediction number fourteen. The trend that started, I would argue, really got started in of women stepping forward to reveal how they had been mistreated, abused, or worse, will sadly continue in now. I say sadly not to suggest that these women shouldn't come forward. They absolutely should. Rather, I say sadly because I suspect the problems women have experienced are deeply ingrained in our society in general and

the tech world in particular. So I expect we're going to see a dozen or more major stories about harassment or worse in the technosphere in twenty eighteen. Now. My hope is that through these stories, we can shake things out to make a better environment for everyone moving forward. In other words, I'm not sad about people getting called out on bad behavior. I think it's necessary. I think we have to have this reckoning, as some people call it, so that we can get rid of some rotten foundation

and build a better future for everybody. And I'll go further with this argument. I think it's important because it means for very long time, and women know this, and minorities know this people who are like me, who are straight white males. It's it's easy to ignore this. There are voices that have gone unheard for way too long, and those voices have value, and they can make contributions that can change our world in phenomenal, meaningful ways if

we listen to them. But we haven't traditionally, with a few major exceptions, and I would love to see those exceptions just become the rule so that we as a whole benefit. It's not just women are doing better in the in technology, or minorities are are more represented in various fields. It's we all get to benefit from the genius that various people possess, regardless of their gender, or sexual orientation, or ethnicity or any of those other things.

Because ultimately, the way I view the past, where we have not listened to people very much, we being my fellow straight white male dudes, uh, means that we missed out on a ton of stuff that we could have really used. Um well, we there's no telling how many amazing ideas were never are brought forward because no one was listening. I want to see that change. That means that in the short term, we're going to have a

really Rocky Rocky Road and not the ice cream. We're gonna have lots of major upsets, and I think it's necessary for us to get to where we need to be. Um, it's not gonna be pretty, but it's going to be necessary. Prediction number fifteen. Star Citizen, the video game that has been in development since two twelve, will not emerge from beta in it seems like it's the safest bet ever, so if you don't If you're not familiar with Star Citizen, it is a game that started going under development in

two thousand eleven. A kickstarter in two thousand twelve raised a good amount of money, and since then the total amount of money raised to develop this game is somewhere around a hundred and seventy million dollars a team. The game still hasn't come out. It's still in alpha various stages of the game or in alpha. Because there's no full game in alpha that's available at all, there are

various parts of the game available in alpha. The game itself is supposed to be a persistent science fiction game where you can have your own spaceship. You can actually purchase spaceships with real money. You can spend real world money to buy a spaceship in the game. Different spaceships cost different amounts, and then you can tool around space. And there's all this other stuff that will potentially be in the final game, but because there is no final

game yet, we haven't actually seen it happen. There's been some really cool stuff incorporated into the alpha, like a real time facial capture technology that allows you to have, uh, your character have the same facial expressions you have. Your webcam picks up your facial expressions and transmits them to your character's face, which I understand is a supremely creepy thing to see in person, but it's kind of a cool technology, but it's it's one part of an overall

game that doesn't really exist yet. I say that by two thousand eight teen's end, it still will not be out of beta. In fact, I'll be amazed if it's in beta and not just still in various stages of alpha. But there's no way I think that that game comes out in which is unfortunate for people who have been waiting for so long. Prediction number sixteen. There will be a bitcoin value crash in two thousand eighteen, but the cryptocurrency will recover at least to the point where it

returns to at least ten thousand dollars per bitcoin. It hit that in November two thousand seventeen. It's skyrocketed and then dipped in value, and it's fluctuated quite a bit since November two thousand seventeen. Sometimes in two thousand eighteen, I think this value is going to drop significantly, talking like down to five thousand dollars per coin or less.

But I think it's going to recover and grow back to at least ten thousand, maybe eleven thousand dollars per coin by the end of two thousand eighteen, maybe more than that. But I do think there's gonna be uh what they call a market correction or what other people would call a massive crash and value. Uh that's just my prediction. Now, by the end of two thousand eighteen, it may turn out that there was no crash at

all and the bitcoin value just kept going up. That's why I'm making this prediction specific, so that way, at the end of the year, I can take a look at the value of bitcoin and I can say, oh, I got it right, or no, I got it totally wrong. Prediction number seventeen. We're gonna see a big, serious push in podcasting in two thousand eighteen. It's really going to become a massively major form of media in twenty eighteen.

This is fueled from huge successes like S Town and the serial series, as well as some of the old standards that have been around for years, like Cough stuff you should know Cough. Expect to see a flood of new shows. Some of them are gonna be limited series with a set number of episodes, stuff like Cereal and S Town, where it's a season you get maybe six or eight or ten or twelve episodes and that's it.

Others are going to be more open ended, and we'll publish until people stop listening or the host decided to do something else. But we're gonna see more development of programming in this space, similar to what you might see in television or radio. That's gonna be a big, big thing in and U. That's kind of insider baseball. I think, all right, I got one last prediction. I thought I

had seventeen, but I have eighteen. Final prediction is we're gonna have more bots, either voice activated assistants or having those voice activated assistants incorporated into more technologies. We're gonna have more automated customer service representatives and other implementations of bots.

Just more bots that we interact with on a on a social level, whether that's through some sort of exchange where we're trying to buy something or get some customer service or whatever, or we're trying to interact with it in order to control the technology around us, whatever it may be. We're gonna see a whole lot more of that in two thousand eighteen. We're gonna see a growth in the use of bots as a point of service.

I think that's a real area of development. If you are in computer science and you're looking at different areas that you might want to explore, working to create better, more adept, more useful bots. That's a growth industry right now. I don't know if it's gonna be a growth industry for more than maybe five or ten years, but for right now, it's really a valuable space. And that's it. Those are my eighteen predictions for two thousand eighteen. Hey,

that worked out and didn't plan on. That just happened. So a year from now I will revisit these and see if I was you know, on target or if I was way off base. And I'm sure there are going to be things that happen in eighteen that will dwarf all of these predictions. It's going and it's going to seem obvious in hindsight. I'm gonna say, why didn't I predict that Elon Musk would turn into a light being from Alpha Centauri and rule us from his base on the Moon. I don't. It was so obvious that

might happen, but I didn't predict it. Here. If it does happen, I'm totally calling that a prediction, by the way, because that would be amazing. I look forward to two thousand eighteen with you, guys. Thank you so much for being with me on this journey through two thousand seventeen. I hope that we continue to explore technology together in all its forms, and I welcome you to write to me let me know what you would like me to cover.

Maybe there's a particular technology that interests you that you want me to talk about, or maybe there's a company you've always wanted to know the inside story about, or a person that you think is instrumental in technology that I should profile. Maybe there's someone you would like to be a guest on the show. I would love to hear from you. Email me the address for our website. Well, website our podcast is tech Stuff at how stuffworks dot com.

You can contact me on Facebook or Twitter. The handle of both of those is tech stuff hs W. We also have an Instagram account. Follow that give us some love over there. And remember I record on Wednesdays and Fridays, and I live stream my recording sessions. You can check that out at twitch dot tv slash tech Stuff. Just pop over there. You'll see where the schedule is. When I record on Wednesdays and Fridays, you can join the chat room and you can watch as I stumble my

way through the world of technology. And that's it. Happy New Year. I'll see you guys in two thousand eighteen really soon. For more on this and thousands of other topics, is a how staff works dot com