Predictions for the Decade

Technological prophets, political commentators, inventors, software developers, film reviewers and radio presenters have all been making their forecasts for what lies head of us in the next ten years. I think we can safely say that a lot of them are wishful thinking, aimless stabs in the dark and some perhaps the results of interpretting the entrails of birds. Whilst never claiming to scale the dizzy heights of a modern social commentator, I, as a humble blogger, would like to hazard a few guesses (and point out a few inevitabilities) of the coming decade:

1. Collective Devices
We're already well on the way to this. If you're not immediately sure what I mean, I'm talking about the gradual collection of different devices- cameras, phones, mp3 players, personal planners, maps, games, internet access- into one simple device. Like I just said, we're well on the way to this, and it's a branch of tehcnological development that is inevitably going to become a huge battle between different technology companies in years to come. And gradually, more and more devices are going to be integrated into what I reckon we will still refer to as phones. Maybe we'll have real-time TV, on-demand films, remote controls, perhaps even our primary games consoles, and even more, until all entertainment appliances are replaced by one device.

2. Conservative British Government
This is almost certainly inevitable. Even in the (unlikely, but more likely than you think) event of Labour staying in power in the upcoming 2010 elections, they will most certainly be voted out in one of elections we'll have this decade. Even without New Labour's atrocious debacle of a record, the British public has never kept one party in power for more than four successive terms in the past 100 years, and it's nearly impossible that THIS government will break that trend.

3. The Continuing Decline of the British Music Charts
The charts of the latter part of the Noughties are a virtual epitaph on the British Music industry, resting above the grave of a once exciting and dominating behemoth which died bleeding boiling liquid plastic and wheezing out it's last tortured autotuned breaths. In a few years, all of current the "big names" - Taio Cruz, T-Pain, TI, Chipmunk, Chris Brown- and other talentless autotuned minions of extortionate and shallow svengalis, will have faded from public gaze and memory, but more identical looking and sounding clones with 3 semitones and one repetitive hand-clap-rhythm between them will fill their unremembered graves.

4. Big Reality TV Will Sink or Swim
Big Brother is nearly over, RATM4XMAS#1 showed that there is a silent majority of people with taste, common sense and individuality hidden in Britain, so the big names that dominated reality in the Noughties are on their way out. Reality TV is here to stay now, but it will either have to get seriously inventive if it wants to maintain its monopoly on Saturday night TV or be relegated to the side roads of TV, to channels like Living.

5. The Fall of Facebook Within 5 Years
Hey Guys! Are you on Bebo?! Yeah it's awesome! It's for sharing pictures! Cool right? Ah now you can create a profile! You put all your details up and connet with your friends! Wow! Hey guys, have you seen these applications?! Yeah they're so cool! I'm gonna fill my pages with them! Oh wow, "groups"! This is so cool! People who share my opinions! Now all I need to do is join these groups my friends have rather than enter into meaningful and interesting talk abbout our shared interest! .... *a few years later* Guys, I'm tired of all this clutter and crap in my feed and profile on Bebo. Hey Guys! Are You On Facebook?! Yeah it's awesome! It's for sharing pictures!

Those are the five biggies. Make of them what you will, and feed back to me please! There's plenty more I can predict. Women in advertising and "music" will gradually wear less and less and eventually perfume adverts will become short art-house porn productions. We'll have a major newspaper crisis thanks to t'internet. The British Government will try to launch a definitive crackdown on file-sharing, just AFTER most people realise it may actually not be such a great thing. Apple will continue to produce great handhelds and terrible computers. Britain and America will cease to have ANY vestige of a "special relationship".

Roll on the 2010s.
Feed back to me please!
God Bless you this year and decade.