At noon today I attended the monthly TAG talk
which featured Mark Anderson - of Strategic News Service fame. It was a
very well attended event, which I attempted to Twitter live.
In addition to Mark's 10 predictions for 2009 he talked a bit about
the importance of education in global competitiveness and
challenged the crowd to come up with a local solution. Namely
what he coins 'one to one' computing, delivered at the pace
individual students learn at, by instructors who know how.
The cost is $1450 (USD) per student - per his calculations.
I, for one, think we as a nation invest far too little in our
education system and need to change the system to accommodate these
types of scenarios.
Mark Anderson's 2009 Technology Predictions
- The internet assistant will emerge - delivered via voice
(phone)
- Voice recognition will finally arrive
- Broadband will reach into rural areas
- The 4G technology winner will be LTE [long term evolution]
- The netbook (carry along) will be the most popular
platform
- Wall computing will emerge (surface + multi-touch + large
scale)
- Diskless PC's will expand [SSD] usable life of devices
will increase
- China GDP will be about 6%, which will result in political
trouble (unrest)
- [Smart] Phone usage will explode
- More focus on in-home gaming (spurred by adoption of large,
high-definition displays and low cost)
The real value in attending a live talk, as opposed to reading
this same list in an article, are the additional bits Mark
provided.
Here are four of Mark's observations
- In about three weeks there will be a psychological rebound for
those in the US triggered by the change or administration and the
resulting change in media focus. I hope he's right!
- Banks cannot be trusted and must be supervised - contrary to
the 'regulators' placed by the outgoing administration and
evidenced by the ongoing global bank decline.
- The run up in oil prices was due to intentional options
manipulation by big oil resellers and not by demand or OPEC
actions.
- The current global economic crises was due to too much
liquidity in the global economy - and the resulting reckless
behavior of financial leaders in private and government roles.
Bonus Prediction
Finally, Mark predicts that social networking may go away,
though not necessarily in 2009, as it will become just 'what we
do.' He contends that people, young people in particular, are
becoming tired of advertising inside their social networks and some
have essentially revolted by leaving large social networks with
little value [Facebook] and joining more specialized and targeted
social networks that are not appealing to advertisers.
Thereby, essentially removing advertising from their social
networks.
-Paul