Redeemer.Blog

Nice read, cool thing about technology is that it's developing faster than before. Don't be surprised if our kids begin to complain about their 6.2 Ghz with 1 TB RAM Smartphones being old fashioned and how the 70 inch TV isn't just enough.

Can I say how I doubt physical copies of books and games won't go?


There are too many people who want to actually want to keep them with them, and not have them digital. I'm like that with books.

Some very interesting predictions, especially when I got to the ones for 2030. I couldn't help but smile when you said we would be able to silence cell phones with the wave of a hand. I'm not quite sure how that would work, but it will be pretty cool if it does.

"3D movies and games, without glasses, will be a common reality. I think 3D is the future, the immersion adds possibilities that we may not have thought of yet."

This is honestly the only one I don't agree with. Are we not already headed there? Look at the 3DS for example. We're able to turn 3D on and off with just a switch, and it's glasses-free (which is wonderful for people with glasses like me), so I don't see why this is 10-15 years away. I'd be surprised if others aren't trying it about a year after the 3DS is released in Japan, maybe even before that. Look how fast Motion Control caught on...almost everything uses it now in some way.

I'd like it if books and games became digital, yes, but I highly doubt it'll happen in the timeframe you estimated. It's possible I guess, but the consoles would need a hell of a lot more memory if everything was digital. If you go to Amazon, you'll see their Kindle. It's basically an E-Reader. Barnes & Noble also uses this technology, with their Nook. Those books are already digital, and it can store up to 3,400 books (Kindle can at least). I assume this will take over very soon. My mom's got one of these, and she loves it. So far, I know 8 or so people who have something like a Kindle (Kindle or Nook one), and they just got it this Christmas. I know a few who have had it before then.

But yes, I'd love it if games went digital. It'd make life a lot easier.

Great read. I'm really interested in the statistics that corporations are gathering about consumers. Think about it. Facebook knows where you live, what you like, who like, and you can even "like" articles, products, stories etc on other sites by clicking the Facebook like button. Our privacy is about as transparent as it gets, depending on the degree of how much information you share on the internet, of course.

It's just a thought, but the information is out there. How will it be used in the future?

The reason why I assume it takes so long for these changes is the fact that there's no standard yet, and the technology is still evolving. Just because technology is available doesn't mean it is adopted widely.

When it comes to content you have to have everything "in the chain" sync up before it becomes truly mainstream.

Take DVD for example, they were introduced in 1995 but I didn't buy my first DVD player until ~2001, and I'm a fairly early adopter. Even 4-5 years after their introduction, my midrange quality DVD player costed me $299. 3-4 years after that, DVD players were going for $99 or less. So from introduction to acceptance was something like 8 years. That's also how long it takes content producers to not only produce using the format, but for prices of the media to become affordable (eg $9.99 DVDs on sale, vs $34.99 for a brand new DVD when the format is "young").

For something to become truly mainstream you need all the elements to come together:

• Studios have to be using a standardized procedure for producing the content
• Equipment manufacturers have to use a standard for playing back the content
• The price of the equipment (in this case the TV, source player, cables, Hometheater receivers, cables) needs to break through certain price barriers (I'd guess $59-99 for the player, and $399-699 for a 32"-40"TV)
• You need to give it time before people are willing to buy into the technology, especially since people may have already invested in the "last big thing". I think most people are only willing, or able, to absorb big ticket TV purchases around once every 5-10 years, and many will hold out even longer. If someone bought their non-3D HDTV today, short of equipment failure you won't see them buy a 3D HDTV until 2020.

It may seem like standard HDTVs are everywhere, but that is simply not true. There were alot of "HDTV Ready" TVs sold in the earlier days and none of these are actually capable of receiving HD signal without additional equipment. Some of them are 720P only, or 1080i. Others might even use weirder standards. According to a recent study in 2010 only 61% of US households have HDTVs. If HDTVs aren't ubiquitous today after 12 years (they were introduced in 1998), why will 3D TV's without glasses (of which a production model has never even made it to stores) become standard even 10years from today?

Not only do you have to take into consideration how long it takes for the mainstream to adopt something, you also have to remember that the old format or concepts last decades even after they are no longer mainstream. DVDs are still a very popular format for movies, and CDs are not quite dead yet. What this means is that even when 3D TVs are all that get sold anymore in stores, you can bet there are plenty of people who are using regular HDTVs and even pre-HDTV boxes.

Anyway, I'm not talking about "some people" will be using 3D content, I'm talking about 3D content becoming the norm. The same with digital books, movies, and games. The Kindle is an amazing device, but I know someone who just got one as a gift, and their response was they can't be bothered to use one since they prefer real books. 20 years ago the EXCEPTION was to have a cellphone, today it is the norm. When you think about the future, don't think about fringe cases, early adopters, and amazing technologies used by a tiny fraction of people. It's all about entire shifts in what most people consider to be "normal". When there's a time where you tell your future nephew you just bought a good book and he asks you to beam it over to his reading device to check out, and when you answer "Oh I bought it in paperback format" he looks at you like you just ate a cat, then the time I'm speaking of has become a reality - in that time, the digital stuff will be the "real books", and what you and I call "real books" today would be a fancy collector's item.

I just realized you never said anything about the Internet... What are your predictions for the future of that? Specifically, do you think we're going to maintain the anonymity we have now, or will everything we do online be connected to our true identities? (perhaps eliminating screen names altogether and replacing them with our actual names)

So yeah, what do you think?

Interesting read. I definitely agree with the whole widely adopted time period/frame. As of this point in time, I still have yet to buy a blue-ray disc or HDTV even though they've been available for awhile now. In say that, I most lightly will buy one or both this year.

As for Discs disappearing in the next 5-7 years making way for Digital distribution. I really hope it's longer as I am not fond of the idea even-though it's convenient and cheaper. When I buy something I really like having the actual physical goods in my hands. It gives me the feel of real ownership as opposed to Digitally downloaded to my hard-drive. Which is why I still preferred to buy my movies, musics and games through the stores.

I understand. I feel the same way about books. I like to have a physical copy, but that is just a silly habit. Electronic data is easy to store, easy to copy, transport and backup. It is much better than a bulky physical copy. We better just get used to it.

Kaiba: I intentionally didn't make any guesses about what would happen on the Internet. As fast as the world changes, the net changes even faster, I doubt a single prediction I tried to make would come true. On the topic of identities however, I feel people will continue to use both their true, and "made up" identities on the web for different purposes.

Here's one prediction I'll make: more and more sites will rely on outside services to provide lower registration barriers. Like we did last year (we'll take it further this year) with our registrations allowing you to connect via Twitter and Facebook to prefill info and bypass email validation.

Naked Snak3: I personally prefer physical books, but even so, I'm reading the classics on my Android phone (they're all free downloads since they are in the public domain, but you'd have to buy a copy to be able to read the ) and I can take that anywhere with me.