There is no doubt that in the tech world, the combination of the shift to "cloud" computing (which to me means both the growing relegation of the desktop PC as nothing more than an intelligent cache that can power more responsive UIs, and the ability to leverage at-scale virtual compute environments run by the big web companies) plus the explosion of post-PC ubiquitously connected mobile devices, are going to be two most important ingredients in the cocktail that gets mixed up over the course of the coming year.
In the context of those two undeniable trends, here are three predictions for the coming year:
Privacy on the net is going to become a big deal. Facebook's recent snafu was just the start of this. Every year people do more important stuff online, and when combined with big companies whose emergent business models are predicated on targeted media accelerating attempts to ramp revenue, you get an explosive combination. This will only be exacerbated by mobile devices streaming all sorts of interesting metadata (starting with location) to these same web services. It will not take long for one of these location-based features to mix with lax privacy in a way that causes real harm in the physical world— theft, adultery, rape, or murder style— and when it does, it will create one of the big stories of 2010. It will also result in a groundswell movement on the part of normal users to take control over their information, be it what gets clicked on from their web browser, or emitted from a mobile.
And while on the subject of mobile, Android is poised to be the only alternative to the Apple juggernaut (goodbye RIM, goodbye Symbian, goodbye Maemo)— and in some key ways, it will surpass the iPhone this year. The obvious one is what is being repeated all throughout the tech blogosphere: that as everyone BUT Apple depends on Android, their installed base will quickly eclipse Apple. While I think this may be true, I am not sure that it matters all that much, as the installed base we should be talking about is that of the Webkit-derived mobile browsers that are common to both the iPhone and all of the Android devices. From a developer perspective, I think that this will increasingly become the relevant target (especially as the AppStore mania settles)— and will continue being so until the smartphone form factor settles down, x86 PC style (which I personally hope doesn't happen for a long time).
Where Android's ascendancy does matter is that as a more open system, it will enable hardware manufacturers and service providers to play with deep web service integration in much more interesting ways that any sandboxed developer environment ever will. Obvious choices will be things like data synchronization and content delivery— both of which a big company would see as ways of making users more "sticky." But there are other more interesting deep integration efforts along the "smartphone as a remote control for life" which innovative companies will be able to play with.
And finally (and I realize that this one is a geek aspiration and a stretch), I hope to see 2010 begin the process of turning regular users into programmers. Right now we are almost there without realizing it: every time someone sets a Google News alert, uses an eBay sniping program, or customizes a Pandora list, it is a form of programming. A few years ago, when millions of kids where learning rudimentary HTML and CSS to trick out their MySpace pages, I thought we were heading in this direction, but it didn't seem to catch on. This year, with the notion of APIs being front-and-center among web service developers, we may start to see something that goes beyond the geek efforts that were Yahoo Pipes and Google Mashup Editor. Already, I am amazed at how many regular folks seem to be interested in the Facebook API, and the other day, while helping a friend with a Wordpress installation, I was shocked to see how vibrant and turnkey its plug-in ecosystem has become.
The best part of anticipating the coming year is that, no matter how you cut it, it promises to be more exciting than the last one that just passed!