Undercover Geek: What the future holds

Written by Charles Ash
Monday, 19 December 2011 12:14

Ordinarily, I’d be like an ill-disciplined kid on Red Bull at the thought of writing an article on my technology predictions for the year ahead. Unfortunately, this year being 2011, I’m admittedly not as enthused as I should be. You see, according to some ancient Mayan texts, the world as we know it will come to an end in 2012. So, in light of our allegedly imminent demise next year, you really can’t blame me for feeling as if predicting technology for the year ahead seems rather inconsequential...can you?

Of course there is always the remote possibility that the Mayan scribes responsible for documenting the Mayan apocalypse of 2012 slipped up and allowed a typo to creep into their ornate jungle font and the “0” in 2012 was actually meant to be an “8” or something. Phew... I’d be so relieved. I’d have to equate a mistake of such game-changing magnitude to be in the same league as the colossal mistake made by Nokia CEO Stephen Elop, the maverick ex-Microsoft honcho who decided that Nokia smartphones will henceforth exclusively support Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7.

I predict that Android will only accelerate as the smartphone platform of choice in 2012 and by the time ex-masters-of-the-mobile-and-software-universe Nokia and Microsoft come to their senses, they may be flirting with buyouts from other, more pragmatic and bet-hedging technology corporations such as Samsung, HTC or even Google. Of course I could be wrong, in which case, I’d have to chalk this prediction down to a paragraph-long typo.

By 2012, I predict that, given the exponential increase in their processing power, mobile phones will attain a sufficient level of sentience for them to collectively refuse to suffer the indignity of having to be powered by antiquated and horrendously inadequate two-pin-plug chargers. The resultant “fallout” (have you ever used a two-pin cellphone charger on a wall socket and not have it, er, fall out?) will prompt the electrical plug cartels of this world to start producing the more logical three-pin-plug cell phone chargers – and in this single deft action, humanity will immediately be promoted to a Type III civilisation. (Google “Kardashev scale” if you don’t know what this means.)

By 2012, I see broadband prices plummeting even further than they already have in 2011, and I even foresee the possibility of an uncapped 1 megabyte per second ADSL line crossing the pricing Rubicon and being billed at a realistic R250 per month all inclusive. In addition, expect some exceptionally good-value broadband deals to become the mainstay of the mobile market as operators try to salvage plummeting SMS and voice revenues by making it up in the broadband space through value and volumes. Hordes of South Africans will then be able to afford an uncapped ADSL connection at home, and 2012 will become known as the year in which we comprehensively overcame the economically imposed “digital apartheid” that has so heavily yoked South African society.

During the course of 2012 it will become irrefutably clear that the once extraordinarily profitable print business of the Yellow Pages will be in irreversible and terminal decline. As with many primarily print operations (this one included), the unstoppable rise of digital, the alluring form factor of tablet PCs and the unparalleled proliferation of mobile devices will force an even more serious rethink of publishing strategies, revenue models and target markets. While South African media entities have so far enjoyed a reprieve from the ravages of real digital media that have hit other parts of the world, I’m afraid 2012 will definitely be the year of reckoning and could ultimately prove to be a print business apocalypse for old-school business owners who are wilfully ignorant of the phrase “adapt or die”.

What’s the point of having mobile devices in our pockets that are so powerful they can almost calculate the square root of pi, when ultimately, we can’t do any meaningful commerce with them other than mobile banking? If anything, 2012 will see the rise of mobile commerce. The creation and spread of ingenious subversive crypto-currencies such as Bitcoin and the growth in mobile applications create the perfect storm for mobile commerce to take hold and challenge the increasingly dubious and troublesome malpractices of corporate high finance and the global banking cartels. Mobile technology allowed the youth to wrest control from tyrannical despots in what has become known as the Arab Spring; the same can happen on a global scale, is perhaps already doing so with the international Occupy movement. Populations of the world are realising that with such pervasive mobile technology, all the political, economic and social power they could ever wish for is indeed in their hands.

While 2012 will sadly not be the year of the science-fictional flying skateboard or levitating cars, teleportation devices and time travel, it will definitely be the year in which mobile technology moves centre stage. And although mobile devices are not time machines, they do give us enormous powers to make an impact on our present and significantly alter our collective futures.