> 4. Communication | Telephone communication has moving images
> PREDICTION: ...and routinely includes high-resolution moving images.
> ACCURACY: Correct
...and then he goes on to mention FaceTime and mobile video calls in the US in 2010, and calls it a success.
Meanwhile, in Europe, we've had this since 2003, all phones you buy now have the capability, but almost no-one is using it, because it is essentially an undesireable mode of communication. Voice-only allows the speaker to multi-task, to do something with hands and eyes, while talking to someone else. Video-conferencing has its uses, but it's not lack of technology that holds it back, it's the undesireability of it.
We regurlarly do Skype video calls with the grand parents of our daughter. Video telephony has been completely mismarketed and wrongly priced.
It's a technology with high emotional bandwidth. This means we want to use it for longer and more intimate calls. It should therefore be priced as low as possible. When it was first launched in Europe it was marketed as a premium version of voice calls and thus much more expensive. This was wrong.
Compare this with SMS which has a very low emotional bandwidth. This type of communication is much more rapid and we accept a higher price per byte.
Now that I've read through all of his predictions, this is part of a larger trend among them. He calls his predictions a success when the technology problem has been solved, and he is completely ignoring that forces that decide if that technology becomes common or not. He is very bad at thinking about the human factors, and optimistically calls success for things that saw a brief life in the market, and then was pushed to the sidelines.
Take force-feedback in games. Ten years ago I could go into any videogame store and buy a lot more different kinds of force-feedback controllers than I can today. It was tried, and then everyone got bored.
Or his prediction that everyone will have several wearable computer devices on them. Yes, we can do that today, but noone is doing it, because the more devices you have, the more often you have to recharge them. This is why most people consolidate their wearables to one smartphone that they charge every night, rather than ten devices that have to be charged each on their individual schedule.
Or voice-recognition input. Yes, the technology is there, but is is not, and will probably never be, the main input mode for our computers, because it is incredibly annoying in any group of people.
Or his prediction that cables are disappearing. This prediction will not fully come true until we solve the recharging problem. I have a colleague who recently bought an ordinary wired mouse to replace his cordless mouse, and he said it's the best thing he bought for his computer in ten years, because it always works and never runs out of power.
Or his prediction about animated virtual personalities. Yes, I've seen those at a bunch of websites, but less and less these days as people realize that they're just in the way. What people want is an efficient search function where they can type whatever they want and get relevant results.
He also has a bunch of predictions involving virtual reality which are all pretty off. World of Warcraft has over ten million active players, and allows people to interact with each other in the virtual world of Azeroth, and yet a lot of people play it in internet cafés or at LAN parties, they play it with their friends next to them, because the physical experience is so much better than the virtual one.
It's also pretty telling that if you look at professional video game players, they are constantly rejecting reality-like immersion. The best first-person-shooter players are all using the lowest graphical settings, and a distorted perspective, the best world of warcraft players do the same, play with no sound, and have lots of addons that expose as much of the underlying mechanics and numbers as possible, which is completely contrary to the goal of immersive systems.
Not even Steve Jobs can make accurate predictions about what will/won't work without usability testing. Futurists should make distinctions about capabilities and how they are implemented.
Some thing just stop in development, waiting for a break through to be better than the alternatives. Virtual reality, chording one handed keyboards and screens in eye glasses seems to be examples. I've been waiting a long time for a nice Steve Mann-system to run Emacs.
As someone said... It's hard to make predictions - especially about the future.
I wouldn't hold my breath for virtual reality, however augmented reality came out of nowhere and is looking like it's going to be very important. I saw that iphone app, Word Lens the other day, it's absolutely fantastic. It transforms your iphone into a magic looking-glass, I think the possibilities for technologies in that direction are endless. If/when we get good retina displays, this is what they're going to be used for, to change our view of reality, to add things to it that helps us in our lives.
Check what Steve Mann, which I refenced, did re augmented reality. Really cool, long ago. (His work with cameras and different exposures to handle dark/light picture parts has gotten analogies in modern cameras the last few years.)
Saying it has been widely available in Europe sine 2003 is a bit of hyperbole. Far from every phone had the ability and the UI always sucked. You could but it was damn hard.
Meanwhile, in Europe, we've had this since 2003, all phones you buy now have the capability, but almost no-one is using it, because it is essentially an undesireable mode of communication. Voice-only allows the speaker to multi-task, to do something with hands and eyes, while talking to someone else. Video-conferencing has its uses, but it's not lack of technology that holds it back, it's the undesireability of it.