The thing I like least about prediction stories is the lack of accountability. Controversial, whack-job predictions drive page views, but few of them pan out. Moreover, the writers who make crazy predication are rarely called on to account for their lunacy. Few of us every hunt around for last year’s stories to see whether or not the prognosticator is any good at this racket.
To make sure my own technology trends predictions don’t go too far off the reservation when I write my annual predictions column for CIO Update, I go back and assess how I did last year. Lucky for me, my 2011 predictions were pretty good. Let’s hope my 2012 ones are just as good.
I predicted that governments would make noise about regulating the Internet, but other than countries like China and Iran, most would not. This could end up being a swing and the miss if the horribly misguided Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) legislation ever goes through, but I’m going to predict that it won’t.
When I turned my sights on social media, I guessed that Facebook would finally have to face its privacy problems. Facebook’s settlement with the FTC cost them a bunch of bad publicity, yet earned them no fine. I’m not really sure how to rate this.
This is less than a slap on the wrist and the U.S. government isn’t terribly good at protecting consumers from corporate overreach, so I doubt that the settlement will ever amount to much. In fact, it may well be counter-productive from a privacy standpoint since Facebook has the appearance of having solved its privacy problem, while facing only a $16,000 per day fine per incident if they screw up. Chump change for a company with a $50 billion valuation.
I stand by the accuracy of my other predictions from last year – predictions about state-sponsored attacks, smart grids, tablets, Android becoming the new Windows (on phones, that is) and mobile and the cloud stressing IT’s ability to keep up – but I’m not going to dissect them all right now. That’s not why you’re reading this article. For those of you who want to fact check, here’s the link to last year’s story: 7 Hot Tech Trends for 2011.
Now, onto my predictions for 2012:
1. SOPA will never make it out of Congress . . . but will spark a major backlash if it does.
Yes, online piracy is a serious issue, but so is all of the corporate malfeasance that goes unpunished each year. Consumers have been getting ripped off by entertainment companies for years (remember all of those $16 CDs you had to buy for one good song) and in a down economy consumers won’t have sympathy for industry attempts to strong-arm them into good behavior.
This is an election year, and, after Citizens United, average voters are waking up to the fact that our politicians have been bought and sold over and over again. Some politician will do some polling, decide they need the youth vote to win in 2012 and will prevent SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) from getting out of Congress.
Those who stand to benefit the most, the recording and movie industries, are pitted against companies like Facebook, Google, the Huffington Post and Twitter. Which side of that fight do you think will have the most influence when it comes to regulating the Internet?
However, no matter what happens with the law, expect the major players, the studios and distributors, to start losing, while consumer-focused entertainers who decide to focus on value and use the Internet to bypass various middlemen will start to win big. The fact that Louis CK’s $5 comedy special download has generated more than a million dollars is big news this year. In coming years, this won’t be news. Well, it’ll be news in the way that box office returns are news.
Of course, Louis CK is following what Radiohead did a couple years back. What will be different going forward, though, is that consumers and activist groups will start fighting back when corporations overreach.
Now, I’m not saying that it’s right to pirate movies and music. It is not. But when the bad deeds of the Wall Street and corporate insiders who wrecked the economy went unpunished, don’t expect the little guy to just bend over and take it if they get pinched for a few illegal downloads.
Read the rest of my 2012 predictions on CIO Update.
