Back in my day, I rode my BMX bike to the library, 15 miles in the snow, just to borrow books about 2400 baud speed modems. (One of the four things I just said isn’t true). Back then I imagined a future that really did include space travel, jet packs and personal robotics. Boy, was I ever setting myself up for a lifetime of disappointment.

So it’s with huge conservatism that I attempt my hand at any kind of prophetic foresight. Especially as I scorch these words into the tender rawhide of the internet, forever available to come back and taunt me at some future date. My grandchildren will read this blog post and laugh at silly old grandpa and his wild theories. No, I will keep my predictions to the very immediate future i.e. the next few years. Alas, there will be no jetpacks.

Solid State Drives (SSD) will kill Hard Disk Drives (HDD) 
SSD Drives are about to completely take over where magnetic, platter “Hard Disk Drives” (HDD) are currently the status quo. The cost per-gigabyte isn’t equal yet, but the benefits of SSD drives are so great many people are already making the switch. SSD drives fit in the same space with the same connectors, they aren’t susceptible to crashing, can’t be wiped with magnets, have excellent data integrity and very long life (over 50 years). Apart from that, they can speed up your computer by a factor of 500% through increased read speeds. HDD is dead, long live SSD. If you haven’t ditched HDD already, do it as soon as you can.

Mobile Computers will Replace Desktop Computers
Currently the “mainstream” Desktop PC computers are going to become only necessary for creators, developers and other workers. For everybody else, mobile computing and tablets will become nominal. Most office workers will end up on laptops as they become cheaper and ultimately perfectly adequate for all office related activity. Tablets and mobiles are “consuming” devices and the vast majority of the population are consumers who need nothing more than to consume content online. Although mobile devices will generate a lot of content, the formal, quality work will come from desktops and laptops – movies, music, art etc.

There Will be a “dotcom” Crash
As before, the hype around tech stocks and online services will bloom to unsustainable levels and lots of people will lose lots of money. Computing and information technology will still continue to grow as a mainstream, solid economic base but some tech stocks will race ahead in anticipation to levels that don’t fully represent the true organic growth and acceptance rates of the new technologies.

High Resolution Displays Will Become Standard 
Apple’s high pixel density 150ppi retina display will set the benchmark for the rest of the industry and all screen manufacturers will use this as a minimum.

The CPU Race Will Slow Down
As Moore’s law reaches it’s physical limits, greater emphasis will be place on other bottlenecks within computers. Namely, the drive speeds, bus speeds, memory speeds & graphics processing. And increasing number of cores and hardware and software architecture to support them will replace the race for megahertz in the short term.

There you go. Do you think I’m on track? Would you be willing to update your current stock portfolio investments based on my advice? Well, what do I know? I’m just a lowly website developer, but lets look back at this post in 5 years and see if I hit any bulls-eyes.