Like many people, I have delusions of being able to accurately predict future tech trends. This condition can be rather unhealthy, and the whole situation has been horribly exacerbated by my accurately predicting a Blu-ray victory in the last format wars, a prediction which was published on a school magazine at the time and so is verifiable as a fact. My more impressive prediction by far to date, unfortunately, was never committed to publication: 5 years ago I commented that a small, cheap laptop, based on something like VIAs mini-itx series, would sell like hot-cakes. Imagine how I feel now...

Anyway, in order to feed my delusions of grandeur, I need more predictions, and accurate ones at that. Without further ado, then, my current list of predictions (probably incomplete, but at least I’ll get the most pressing ones down):

1)     Wireless HD – If you’ve followed the coverage of CES this year you’ll have seen talk of wireless HD. Brilliant and all as the technology is, I don’t think it will be anything like commonplace for at least another 3-5 years. Even if it’s easy to use, most people will still go for the cheaper and simpler cabled components. The idea of having a TV wirelessly linked to an I/O box of sorts is being bandied around too, and again seems brilliant, but the associated cost means that it’ll remain a high-end only feature for the immediate future.

2)     Blu-ray – As mentioned above, I’ve been right about blu-ray before. People do like to point out that that was a 50-50 call though, so here’s one that’s not – 2010 will be the year blu-ray finally get’s decent mainstream lift-off, but it still won’t emulate DVDs success because of on-demand streaming (youtube-esque) and the fact that most people simply don’t care about higher definition, unless they’ve loads of cash to throw around. In fact, the only reason I see blu-ray taking off at all is that it’ll be approaching price-parity with DVD by then.

3)     The Internet – If you haven’t already heard, we’re due to run out of IP addresses in the next  few years. My bold and wholly predictable response is that it’ll be sorted by then, for the simple reason that there are too many obscenely rich companies who need the internet to keep operating (Google being the prime one, but also Dell, Microsoft and just about anyone else you care to name, especially the big telecoms players). On a related side-note, I love the thought that the internet was designed to accommodate a few dozen devices (at most), but was built with probably the biggest margin of safety ever seen, which still wasn’t enough. No way I can look too badly wrong after that...

4)     3D – There are a whole load of competing 3D technologies, from the Nintendo Wii –based tracking system (here) to Nvidia's solution (here) with a whole host of others in between. It will take some time before this hits mainstream, however. Games will benefit first, for the simple reason that they’re already 3D, and name one decent 3D film you’ve seen (recently or ever). Oh, and a solution which involves glasses simply won’t win punters over, nor is the Wii head-tracking system likely to achieve more than a modicum of success because it won’t work with films. Could make it into to next Wii though...

5)     5) Smartphones/portable computing – The growth of portability in computing is as inevitable as Sony’s next proprietary format, I’m afraid (there may very well be a memory stick rant soon...).  Good thing? Only sort of. Anyway, my bold prediction is that by the end of this year there still won’t be anything that can touch the iPhone interface-wise, for reasons I can’t fully get my head around. That’s as is though. Slightly more out there as a prediction,  the ability to e-mail on the go (blackberry style, though not necessarily with the same ease of use) will be ubiquitous within 3 years (not much less than that, certainly, and it could take 4).

And there you have it, my first round of predictions. I know there are a couple more squirreled away back there somewhere, and once I remember them I’ll be sure to make them known. For now though, that’s it. Oh, and don’t forget, a Month With Linux starts Sunday week, so that means first major update by Wednesday. Stay tuned…