Wild Predictions for a Wired 2007

An anonymous reader writes "Wired has put up its predictions for the coming year, in technology, internet, and entertainment news. Despite their claim that they are 'wild' predictions, a lot of them make some sense. Some of their calls: 'Google Stock Hits $1,000 per Share. Internet Traffic Doubles to 5,000 petabits per day by the end of 2007. And 80 percent of it is peer-to-peer file sharing, mostly Skype video and BitTorrent. BitTorrent on TiVo: Speaking of, digital video recorders get BitTorrent baked in, bringing internet video to the living room. Spam Doubles: No-brainer -- but no one cares because we're all using IM, especially at work. Second Life Ends a Life: Skullduggery in Second Life -- probably digital adultery -- ends in a real-life murder. Year o' the Laptop: Half of all new computers sold in 2007 will be laptops and 20 percent of those will be Apple's MacBooks." What do you folks think? How many will Wired have called correctly by the end of the year?

Comments

Re:What is so great about IM?

[Buskaatt]

I'm a luddite I admit, but what makes IM so great?

Instant gratification? Even e-mail is not as instantaneous as IMs are. Far less spam. Granted IM is getting spammed, but not at the rate that e-mail is.

Bah. I'm not looking for instant gratifcation in my work -- I'm looking for solidity, trustworthiness, and industry standards. GAIM is fine (I have that on my Linux box) but all my clients use email and IRC. Email separates topics much better for me. Between graylisting and dspam, my spam problem is just about nil (1 or 2 a day for the hundred or so emails I get).

Is there a way to catalog the information into a searchable index?

See my previous answer. If you log, you can search those logs using GAIM. Not real hard. Tons of other programs offer this option as well.

Again: Bah. Why search through what amounts to a bunch of text files when I can filter messages so much more accurately (and quickly) using email. No need to grep through a bunch of text files or guess which text file to search.

How can you "forward" an im to another person or group of people? Can you thread the information into a cohesive timeline?

Logs have timestamps. Marvelous little thing that tells you the date and time a message was sent. Forwarding messages might be possible. Worst case you copy and paste. Most chat systems also offer chat room options. AOL IM offers you the ability to create a room and invite the people you want to it. This can be accomplished and logged with the above.

Hrm email has those timestamps, and I can thread the messages for cohesive timelines and a topic-oriented search. I don't care what "might" be possible, it still doesn't prove the viability of IM over email.

As far as inviting people into my chat room, why bother? I don't forward an email until after the information arrives that I need to forward. Inviting somebody into my chat room after I have information for them means I have to copy and paste whatever I learned, repeating the info, and cluttering my logs.

I definitely have uses for irc (which is kinda like im I guess) but if it were my sole means of electronic communication I wouldn't get anything done. What am I missing?

Obviously a lot. IM is coming into increasing usage. We have a Jabber server at work for all internal communications, it is used more than the e-mail system or the phones are. I actually have to get up from my desk once a day just to make sure that people are really in this place. I do not know how big it will be with inter-office communications, especially considering a lot of companies headed by older execs still don't use e-mail well. (Trust me, plenty of offices are still sending TONS of paper memos.)

Why would I trust you? You act like a dick. I asked a simple set of questions for some well reasoned answers, not a bunch of sanctimonious condescension. You haven't provided one reason why IM will replace email.