Someone asked me to think up counterintuitive predictions for the next year – things which might happen, but where it would not be ordinary for them to happen. Things with a hint in the present world of their possibility.
Here’s some, make your own in the comments.
- Ordnance Survey will go bust – i.e. their revenue will suddenly fall dramatically (due to competition from OpenStreetMap, Google).
- Vince Cable will be Prime Minister (with backing of tabloids, after a hung Parliament coalition Government collapses due to a further financial crisis, and then the formation of a Government of national unity).
- Someone will work out how to print photovoltaic solar panels on a device as cheap as a household inkjet printer, shares in all other energy businesses will collapse.
- There will be a nuclear war, with a bomb at least as large as
Hiroshima used on a civilian population. I don’t know where, because it’ll be somewhere we don’t quite expect. - At least one famous person will lose their job, reputation and spouse due to an affair discovered using reverse face-image recognition on Flickr photos of crowds.
What are your wild predictions for the next year?
Well Ordnance survey instead freed lots of data under an open license – looks like we have at least three way mapping competition which is great. Vince Cable became Business Secretary, so I wasn’t so far off.