Here is a stick, beat me with it later.

Many pundits, charlatans and so-called-psychics make vague and untestable prognistications, and escape all consequences of their failure to be correct simply though passage of time. They are often helped by the tendancy of the human mind to be good at correlating things that happen with information, and very much less good at correlating things that fail to happen with anything at all.

So, I’m inviting you to make a bookmark on this post, and set a diary reminder for about five years time. That way you can come back and tell me how badly I missed the mark with my forecasts.

The things that I think are going to be really huge (as in: they will generate businesses worth over $1bn, at least 1 IPO at over $1bn or profits of over $200m a year) are:

1.     Clean technology and software technology cross-overs (using advanced software to reduce energy demands, improve the use of scarce resources, and reduce waste or pollution);

2.     Brain and consciousness technology, either as control platforms for devices or to improve health outcomes;

3.     Pervasive networks using RF technologies (think: Bluetooth ++)

4.     Local micro-services driven from large web services

5.     Electric cars

6.     Alcohol / Methanol as a fuel

7.     Augmented reality on all platforms

8.     Metal refining using new technologies

9.     New battery technologies

10. Waste-mining and recovery of metals from waste

The things that I think are going to wither and dry out, falling to around 20% of their current size or less are:

1.     Hydrogen as a personal fuel

2.     The state and national medical gravy trains (one can hope)

3.     Tuna fishing

4.     High powered console games machines

5.     Non-smart mobile phones

6.     Novels and movies about Vampires

So, what do you think?