Annual Year End Predictions
As I prepare to write my annual year end posts (what happened and what will happen), I have been reading similar posts by others.
This part one of two posts by Alex Danco is good. I am waiting for the second one to drop now.
The “what happened” post is easier to write but still very helpful to me. It helps me close the door on the year and understand it at a macro level.
The “what will happen” post is harder to write, I get it wrong more than right, and it is embarrassing to look back and see how off I was.
So it is tempting to stop doing it. But I think that would be a mistake.
It is useful to me to try and look into the crystal ball and see the future. It pushes me to get out of my comfort zone and imagine new and different things.
So I keep doing it, largely for myself, and I publish it to keep me honest. Your mileage may vary with it and so take it with a big grain of salt.
I am glad that others engage in this practice as well. It helps me engage in my practice. It is one of the many benefits of people powered publishing.
Comments (Archived):
The thing I don’t like about calendar year end predictions is that – there is nothing magical about dec 31st from a technology development or deployment perspective.I prefer to time my predictions based on trigger points as they happen.
Any thoughts on WebAssembly? This is the first time in history where a virtual machine tech stack is open standards and open source. Runs in any browser. Runs server side as well. Many languages to choose from. Think of the potential that Java and Flash had but open and not controlled by a single party. Write once, run anywhere.
See also: https://blog.scottlogic.com…
As a warm up I share four (obvious?) predictions off the top of my head:- Openness and interoperability have become more important than decentralization. I wrote about this in The Rise of Stable Coins: Beyond Facebook Libra- Source code reviews (specially security ones) will be embedded in development tools: See GitHub acquires code analysis tool Semmle and Security at GitHub.- Threshold signatures schemes will gain traction. We wrote about this topic in What are the Benefits of Threshold Signatures for Crypto Wallets? and there are multiple companies working on this such as Curv, Fireblocks, Unbound, Vault12, and recently Binance Open-Sources Threshold Signature Scheme Library- ZKProof solutions for data privacy will gain adoption beyond the cryptocurrency/blockchain.
Wonky methodology, or too many mince pies?I predict that Philadelphia will eventually find love for all of its residents. This is quite shocking;https://www.youtube.com/wat…
-the SEC will not move on crypto much (no ETFs, but maybe a slight easing of a regulation or two)-the stock market will move higher next year-Brexit won’t be a disaster and other EU countries will follow-Trump will win re-election in November 2020-the Chinese will have to focus on controlling their own people, protests could happen on the mainland not in sympathy with Hong Kong but for their own reasons (food, etc)-more established public and private companies will leave CA, NY, and IL for states like TX, TN and FL than will move into those states-2020 census will cause a big Electoral realignment
https://www.youtube.com/wat…
Interesting prediction about China.The human rights atrocities occurring there are heavy on my mind.
Trump’s tariff policy is not good when it comes to classic economic theory. But, it might be doing things internally in China that we don’t truly know about. Hong Kong might wag the dog….or not. It ends in violence no matter what happens.
A few I think the same.A few truly create terror if you are right.Good to know that that the only thing that matters is not what happens but the things we do to work at and influence what we think is right and best.The process is all there is.
If you feel like mixing up your format a bit, I like the way SlateStarCodex calibrate’s his predictions by including a probability percentage for each: https://slatestarcodex.com/….Some more information here as to the advantage of doing this: https://slatestarcodex.com/…
Respect for owning such a wildly inaccurate set of predictions.
Fred – I think your 2019 post was two years premature. Yes. Don’t stop.
Fun exercise!I have something of a good track record! Back in 2016 before the election, here at AVC I was favoring Trump.Predictions:(1) Trump will significantly increase the fraction of his time he spends campaigning.(2) Trump will use the impeachment scam of Witch Hunt Wicked Witch of the West Nasty Charlie Brown Lucy Pelosi and her Magnificent Pelosi Political Money Machine to further beat down the influence of the Democrats and the fake news.Why? The news has been at least partially fake all the way back to Franklin and, thus, has long been a target for being irrational and worse, but with Trump they have become nearly all fake nearly all the time and a much easier target. In that past it was difficult to take on publishers who bought ink by the barrel, but now with the Internet ink is irrelevant and the fake news can be attacked effectively and is.Smart Trump saw that with Twitter, the White House Web site, YouTube, etc., he could expose, humiliate, and beat the fake news and did. Good for Trump.(3) Trump will gain with nearly all the voters and will gain big steps up in his main audiences.(4) Trump’s campaigning and good RNC GOTV and other work will have the Republicans gain in the Senate and get a majority in the House.(5) Trump will be reelected.(6) The Wall will go up significantly faster due to the funding in the defense bill Trump just signed. As Trump recently mentioned, the Democrats have given up on fighting Trump on The Wall.(7) Interest in crypto in the US will shrink.(8) Due to fewer sun spots in the 11 year sun spot cycle, we will have some measurable global cooling. Quite broadly the voters will conclude that the “climate crisis” is just a debunked scam.(9) There will be some signs of too much inflation, the Fed will raise interest rates, and the stock market gains will stop. The value of the dollar will increase, and Trump will have us make money with tariffs.(10) Trump will get some of his planned infrastructure projects going.(11) Trump will make some significant progress on economic development, job training, and employment projects in some of the really sick central cities. He will get a lot of votes from that work.(12) Wicked Witch of the West Nasty Nancy and her Magnificent Pelosi Political Money Machine with its fake news allies will continue to try to beat Trump and will fail — losing audiences for the media and votes from the voters — hurt the Democrats and the fake news and help Trump. Broadly the influence of NYC and CA Democrat politics in the rest of the country will shrink significantly.(13) Old media will shrink, and new media with distribution via the Internet will rise significantly. The variety of media content will grow quickly on the way to an explosion and then a shakeout to then MUCH better media. In this process, the NYC leftist echo chamber control of the one size fits all mainstream media will be broken at last. With the Internet, content can get out, and with various search means can be found.(14) As IIRC AG Barr in a recent interview remarked, US Attorney John (“Bull”) Durham will have his report on the DOJ and other dirty attacks on Trump out in the spring or early summer of 2020. I predict meaningful progress on prosecutions in 2020 and eventually some serious convictions.(15) The Democrat nominee for POTUS in the 2020 election has to be a Democrat well known already, one of the candidates in the Democrat debates, Bloomberg, or Hillary. None of them stands even a weak little hollow hint of even a long shot chance against Trump. Since Reagan carried nearly all the states, Trump has a big chance of carrying all but NYS and CA, and maybe also those.Trump’s victory is assured; the only question is his margin of victory, just how thoroughly he will humiliate the Democrats.But the main question will be how big the Republican majority in both the House and Senate he will be able to deliver.Many voters will consider, why vote for a Democrat who (i) just wants more of Witch Hunt Wicked Witch of the West Nasty Nancy Pelosi, Lover of the Dreamers and 2A hater Schumer, 24 x 7 hate Trump Mika and Joe, the NYC leftist echo chamber, and The Washington Compost and (ii) won’t be able to get the Trump Republicans to deliver local goodies or even pass a Democrat resolution in favor of motherhood or apple pie.Broadly, in the rush to Hildebeest, Obozo, the leftists, political correctness, the climate crisis scam, ObozoCare, the Iran deal, etc., the Democrats have ruined themselves. The party needs to be rebuilt with adults; that will take a while. For now and some election cycles, it will be Trump and the Trump Republicans. The Democrats are in for at least 13 years of wandering hopeless, useless, powerless, worthless in the desert.