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Tech predictions for 2008 AD
Firstly the x86 architecture will still be with us in full force in 2008, so this is going to limit a lot of the other possibilities and relegate them to also ran status compared to the mainstream of x86.
2008 will not be the year of Linux on the Desktop, nor will Duke Nukem Forever be released, nor will it be the year of the great switch-over to IPV6.
What we will see is a lot of movement globally as the analogue television spectrum is released as digital takes over, and a lot of players maneouvering for dominance in this spectrum.
Mobile hand held devices (i'm not limiting this to basic stuff like mobile telephony only) are going to be a major area of competition, and we can expect to see a major injection of location awareness into everything delivered to and via said mobile devices.
Microsoft have bought Multimap, Google have mapping, both have mobile / portable device software somewhere under the corporate umbrella, plus the market is already well understood by the likes of Nokia and Garmin, so expect to see a lot of "synergy" and "strategic alliances" and of course a whole new round of VHS vs Betamax etc compatibility wars as these three heavyweights slug it out.
Apple will be an also ran in this game.
Hardware generally will see more of the same old same old arms race, everything will get incrementally faster, smaller, cheaper, etc, but interfaces are due a re-vamp so expect to see far more use made of multi-touch touch screen interfaces and far more use made of screen coatings such as sapphire for EPOS style durability as opposed to iPod style fragility.
Solid state disks based on Flash etc still won't make it into the mainstream due to continued read-write reliability issues, but I expect to see volatile DDR3 based hard disk cards with SATA2 interfaces and battery backup filling the gap, more successfully than the old SDRAM Gigabyte effort.
I expect colour lasers to finally diverge into two species, the pukka industrial grade kit and then a huge gap with nothing until you get to the home kit, poor build quality, inkjet model sales, refill toners will cost more than the new printer, major arms race escalation in both laser and inkjet refill vs proprietary product market, not just one chip, but several interleaved and interlocked systems that present so much hassle 99% of users will simply buy approved OEM refills.
I expect to see a resurgence of the CRT, particularly as a quality item rather than a budget one, as all the second generation plasmas sold in 2007 reach end of warranty and fail promptly thereafter.
I expect to see a great increase in the number of niche market but high tech (and out of the realm of the cottage industry but firmly in the clean room CAD / CAM / CAE production line area) quality items, such as keyboard built to the same standard as the old IBM ones, optical mice with roller micro switches instead of nubs of plastic that wear away, A5 wireless stylus and tough pad with inbuilt ARM CPU and functional hardwriting recognition, head motion detection linked to monitor display viewpoint that doesn't require you to wear mini Borg headgear, I also expect to see at least one new major physical data connector (eg firwire / usb etc) iteration in the sub compact range to accommodate the new small toys and gadgets.
I expect to see the first commercially available 1.5 kilowatt ATX PSU for the extreme gamers, and I also expect to see the first "triptych" style purpose made display, with at least one device of some sort sporting a triptych GUI as standard.
For most of the world I think wired (copper & cable) bandwidth may increase as far as the adverts claims, but in reality remain much the same, and most notably, when looking at latency and asymmetry as regards the user experience I see things getting worse, particularly because I see 2008 being the year of the battle for net neutrality, a three cornered battle incorporating the last major stand of the intellectual property and copyright heavyweights, the various "content" providers and the various state and government agencies all vying to bring virtual policing to the net as an analogue of the real world highway experience, at least as far as handing out tickets, fines, "suspension of licence to operate" penalties and suchlike, all of which is going to require more intelligent and powerful filtering, switching and analysis at the ISP end of things.
I am also going to look to the Far East for someone to introduce a micro payment system that actually takes off, it is unlikely to be in US Dollars.
I am also going to look at China to really make things like cheap ubiquitous wireless mesh networking (dragon CPU and chino-linux anyone?) a real world event with catchment areas measured in the thousands of square miles and users in the millions.
Intel is going to continue on a roll, but I see AMD falling on their own sword as far as commercially competitive x86 compatible CPUs are concerned, and thus enjoying renewed vigour when they start running with the ATI line and become the Intel of graphics. Probably will end up wrapping sound up in that package too. I see them releasing a killer app, like a compiler, to augment this change in direction.
I see desktop hard disks shrinking to the 2.5" form factor to facilitate easier production of 15k RPM (and above) desktop drives as the norm.
Increasingly I see the tendency for spinning storage to take a packaging and interface route more similar to RAM, eg interface card to the system, and (hot?)plug the small packages in like stacked PCMCIA.
The Operating System and Office Suite (business software) markets I see pretty much as they are now, lost in the fog, all looking for the road out ahead of the competitors.
I see the black hat / malware / computer crime scene growing in leaps and bounds, especially in Dollar turnover terms, and I think 2008 will see the first major Information Technology centric business, possibly a software house, possibly a Dell, wiped out as a direct result.
I see Sun surviving the fallout from the global credit crunch better than anyone else, mainly because they will adapt better than anyone else.
If there is a killer app for 2008 it will be something that allows YOUR mobile device to connect to and utilise the raw processing and storage power of YOUR computer at home.
On the doom and gloom side at some point in 2008 large areas of the net will go dark as far as the rest of the net is concerned, may be power issues, malware, political, who knows, but for the first time it will happen. At least for 12 hours, maybe longer, business will panic.
Apart from that, business as usual.