

Mark Anderson's 2010 predictions - ilamont
http://www.tapsns.com/blog/index.php/2009/12/sns-predictions-for-2010-released-from-new-york/

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yuan
Perhaps some would find this more interesting:

[http://www.fastcompany.com/blog/linda-tischler/design-
times/...](http://www.fastcompany.com/blog/linda-tischler/design-times/mark-
ansersons-10-predictions-2009) (Mark Anderson's 10 Predictions For 2009)

~~~
hugh_
"After 8 years of nothing but messages of bad news and fear, the psychological
lift of Obama’s inauguration will lead to a short term rebound effect on the
market".

Ahh, I miss the naivety of the ancient days of late 2008. In fact the market
dropped from ~9000 at inauguration day to ~6500 by March. Obama's approval
rating dropped from around 80 at inauguration to less than 50 now. And bad
news and fear, as it turns out, still exist.

"It will be a big year for applications that can play on big screens... video
games, movies, etc." -- as a prediction, shrugworthy.

"Similarly, the big news in the mobile world won’t be a slicker, newer
cellphone -- it will be smart phone applications" -- this prediction wasn't
too bad.

"China’s GDP is likely to plummet in 2009" -- nope, it grew by something like
8%

"This year we’ll see the first computer with no moving parts" -- trueish,
though I thought that netbooks sans moving parts were already on the market in
2008.

Wall computing: somebody has already mentioned this. "Carry-along computers
will be hot" -- reasonably true. "Led by Europe, LTE (Long Term Evolution)
will be the preferred technology for 4G." -- I don't even know what this
means.

"Not to be left behind, the less developed world will finally see widespread
availability of broadband" -- y'see, as a prediction this one is hard to fault
in that it's a long term trend and I'm sure there's some places in the third
world that have acquired broadband over the last year. Still, I wouldn't say
the last year has seen enormous progress on that front.

"The Internet Assistant will be born" -- hmm, not really. And if a product
which _could_ book me a flight, a car, a hotel, and make dinner reservations
automatically did exist, I wouldn't use it, since I wouldn't trust it to get
me the best prices.

"he was optimistic that having a new, competent, team in Washington, that
valued science, technology, and innovation, would improve the country’s
overall mood" -- a giggle seems like the appropriate response here.

In conclusion, there's a few accurate predictions here, but they're just
identifications of trends which should have been reasonably obvious in 2008.
And then there's the impossibly naive political predictions which, the less
said about the better.

~~~
RyanMcGreal
> I wouldn't use it, since I wouldn't trust it to get me the best prices.

This is the fundamental problem with AI: if it's not as smart as a human,
people won't like or trust it; but if it _is_ as smart as a human, people
especially won't like or trust it.

~~~
yrb
Sort of the uncanny valley for intelligence. It astounds me how many people
don't trust programs/automations when it is almost provably better at
performing a given task. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncanny_valley>

~~~
hugh_
In this case I think it's more a case of incentive structures, and not
trusting the agent's motivations.

In this particular case the problem is that the virtual valet would, unlike a
real valet, be funded primarily by kickbacks from whatever services he winds
up booking for me, so I've got no reason to believe he's making decisions in
my best interests instead of his own.

Basically if I'm going to trust someone else to make my decisions for me, I
want a real flesh-and-blood person that I can shout at if things go wrong.

