Yet Another 2006 Tech Predictions List

Many experienced, thoughtful authors in the tech world attempt to forecast what's likely to happen in the forthcoming year; we're glad they've done that so we can focus on getting a few cheap laughs at the expense of others. Much as we'd like to detail the voluminous research and shed light on the more occult details on our look at the forthcoming year, we've decided it's best just to put the Ouija board away, sweep up the chalk circles, and pretend not to notice the shadow on the wall that remained behind long after its caster had departed. Someone once described magic as being nearly indistinguishable from advanced technology. Maybe it was the other way around. It doesn't matter. Predictions are indistinguishable from the usual guesswork and hypothesizing most tech writers do anyway. It's just that, around the beginning of a new year, they get assembled into lists and put forth as solemn pronouncements about the future of technology. Sounds good to us. Here's the Murdok list of predictions we'd be surprised to see come true, but hey, if they do, you read it here first. 1) John Battelle will vanish from the public eye after his 700th Web 2.0 consulting session. He will be found months later in a shadowy underground realm at UC-Berkeley, using a machine running FreeBSD to play old Infocom text-based adventures and blogging anti-Web 2.0 posts to Pine client. 2) Robert Scoble the blogger will be revealed to be an advanced Turing program created by Microsoft. Robert Scoble the person will write a book about his secret life, which will be picked up by Oprah and sell 18 million copies. 3) Steve here. Add to document.write("Del.icio.us") | Yahoo My Web David Utter is a staff writer for Murdok covering technology and business.