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It is possible to make a few reasonably
safe predictions for 2003. Third generation (3G) mobile phones will finally arrive, now the networks are
built, most of the technical problems resolved and - a few - handsets are manufactured. High-speed
broadband will continue its spread. Corporate and public sector IT will continue its rapid, sometimes
painful, process of evolution. But there has been plenty of excitement away from the corporate
announcements and big-budget launches. In the past year we have seen the grassroots of the technology
world exposed by the receding of venture capital and the bursting of the tech bubble. And some of the
most interesting developments in technology have, in the last 12 months, continued to come from
individuals and small connected communities. We look forward to more of the same. Today Online
offers its survival guide for 2003: the 25 technologies and notions we think hold most promise over the
next year. From the evolutionary to the revolutionary, the trivial to the very serious, these are 25 of
the trends we'll be watching closely over the next 12 months. At home Mobile
games Mobile photos Online consoles
Doom III (PC/Xbox) Home networks Work Bluetooth Microcontent MyLifeBits Interaction anxiety Paying for content
Ideas Social Software Blogs as newsgroups Wi-Fi Total information awareness The return of William Gibson
Websites Googlewords Watch your
language Clay Shirky
Gossip sites E-government AA Words Clog (to) Moblogging AmI Whuffie Google and Blog · Tell us what you think - email
online.feedback@guardian.co.uk
Prepare for an avalanche of downloadable games using the cross-platform Java software
now built in to most new phones. There will be lots of recycled favourites like Space Invaders, followed
by cutdown versions of console classics like Tomb Raider and the start of serious location-based gaming.
VK
After a slow start (today they are too expensive and don't
easily work between operators) camera phones will boom in 2003. Prices will drop as operators try to
encourage us to send photos to friends. Equally addictive is taking photos of people, places and events
to create your own visual diary. Don't leave home without one. VK
With Xbox Live already available on limited release here and the PlayStation 2 service earmarked
for March, the next round of consoles battles will be fought online. The official release of Xbox Live is
scheduled for Spring 2003 at an annual fee of £39.99 for a closed network service via broadband. PS2
will have a slower open connection and requires an external hard drive. The release of GameCube online
will require similar technology to the PS2, but no official release has been confirmed for the UK yet.
RP
The title the PC gaming world can't get enough of. This
third installment of the series, which started back in 1993, uses the latest stunning visual technology
and combines it with superb gameplay physics to assure that this survival horror game will have the same
massive impact as the original. RP
To rephrase an old quip,
the home of the future is always likely to remain just that. But, away from the glossy visions of the
big consumer electronics firms, people are quietly getting on with building modest home networks.
Broadband to the home, easily created wireless networks and a tonne of digital entertainment - from MP3
music files to homemade digital videos - on PCs all mean we're beginning to see benefits in having the
net linked to our computer, our living room TV, and to our hi-fi. Just don't bet on your microwave
joining the party any time soon. NM
Once again,
it will be the year of Bluetooth - after several false starts. You don't need to lift up your office
phone or don clunky headphones: Bluetooth will divert calls to your mobile with wireless connection to an
earpiece. Forget about buying a clunky personal digital assistant (PDA) with phone attached. You can use
Bluetooth and your mobile to access the web and email from a PDA. Eventually all the wires to printers
and computers could become redundant. VK
The web browser is
increasingly frustrating for many designers working on web applications. Expect 2003 to see whole loads
of applications that deal with websites in an interesting way, but which aren't traditional browsers.
Although the actual workings will still be out there on the internet some place, the user interface will
be local to your machine, and much more usable. BH
Bloggers now
refer to their weblogs as "outboard brains", meaning, among other things, that their blogs help them keep
track of what they were doing/thinking at a particular time. Taking this idea a lot further,
Microsoft's MyLifeBits aims to let you turn the stuff of your
everyday life (notes, emails, sites you browsed, telephone calls, photos, home movies) into a searchable
database. Currently in development at its Media Presence lab in San Francisco, the project will improve
on the imprecision of individual memory, they say. But though it may appeal to info-age anal retentives,
do you really want buggy Bill Gates to be responsible for keeping your own personal past private and
secure? JM
Information anxiety we all know about - that
feeling that you need to find just one more bit of data to feel like you really know what's happening.
But that's over, according to design theorist Fabio Sergio, who says that always connected devices will
make us comfortable with not knowing everything. Instead, we're about to succumb to interaction anxiety -
a worry about managing interactions with people, content and devices, a fear of being cut off from the
Network. An intriguing notion -read more at www.freegorifero.com. l - though weren't geeks always supposed to suffer from
interaction anxiety - at least where people were concerned? JM
Information wants to be free. But many of its creators would really rather they were paid. The
subscription-only shutters are already coming up on newspaper archives and "premium" services, like
usable email, on the big portals. As webmasters discover it's much more profitable to have 20,000 paying
customers than 2 million freeloaders, expect to subscribe to at least one online service by the end of
the year. NM
After a decade dominated
by the web, essentially a one-to-many thing, we're now seeing the return of interest in programs that
permit two-way communication/many to many interactions, aka social software. In other words, get ready
for the return of the whole virtual community idea that kicked off the net hype back in the early
nineties. Think of the way weblogs are developing - they're no longer just tools for publishing one
person's thoughts, but ways for groups of like minds to network around ideas, via tools like Trackback on
blogs created with Movable Type. JM
Usenet newsgroups
were rendered worse than useless by wayward discussion and wall-to-wall spam. Now, according to some web
theorists, blogs are bringing back the newsgroup idea, albeit by the backdoor. The idea is that, on blogs
that let readers discuss links and find out where similar ideas are being discussed elsewhere on the
web, we're seeing the rise of a kind of twenty first century Usenet - more focused, more responsive, more
integrated into the rest of the online world. JM
There's nothing new
about wireless networks, but WiFi (or 802.11b, to give it its full name) is set to become pervasive this
year. From paid-for hotspots in coffeeshops to free-for-all data "clouds" covering town centres,
high-speed wireless access is likely to become the laptop-toters accessory of choice. It might even offer
3G mobiles an early boost: once surfers get used to wireless broadband via WiFi, 3G is much more
attractive for keeping the information flowing outside WiFi areas - if the price is right. NM
What happens when a government succumbs to information
anxiety? You get something like Total Information Awareness (www.darpa.mil/iao/TIASystems.htm) a new
initiative from the US Government to collect/analyse vast amounts of personal information with a view to
spotting suspicious patterns and avoiding future terrorist outrages like 9/11. Championed by Admiral John
Poindexter (Ronald Reagan's National Security adviser during the Iran/Contra scandal), TIA is just an
idea at the moment, but privacy activists are already up in arms. Expect the fuss to grow. JM
The most influential SF writer of the last two decades,
his ideas have come to change the way we think about computers and networks. But William Gibson has
always been unhappy with the future visionary tag. SF is actually about the present has been his mantra.
Pattern Recognition, his new novel (his first for three years) does something he's always threatened.
It's set in the present, not the future, in London, and follows a trend-watching heroine who's
over-sensitive to corporate logos and obsessed with tracking a "garage Kubrick" who is releasing
fragments of an art film on to the net. It's published here by Penguin in April. JM
Goggling at Google is a popular online pursuit, with many
web types suggesting that the search site has become a universal interface for the net. One sign of
Google's cultural influence is the number of jokey tools now built on its service. Example - Googlism which lets you find out what Google thinks of
you, GoogleFight which lets you pit search terms
against each other (e.g. McDonalds and Burger King). And while "google" became a verb a while back,
people are now talking about "googleshare" as a term to cover how much a particular person is
associated with a particular word/idea on Google - find out more at www.stevenberlinjohnson.com and http://ed.suppose.co.uk/google share.php. JM
Online translation services are difficult. Step forward the WorldWide Lexicon. The
system monitors when its users - real people fluent in the right languages - are idle at their computer.
A window asks the user to translate a few phrases which, when compared with other people's answers,
builds a large, accurate dictionary - and by offering programmers an interface to this dictionary,
everyone can benefit. BH
Thanks to the dotcom crash, net gurus and visionaries are now ten a penny. One of the few worth
keeping track of is the New York-based Clay Shirky. A specialist in P2P and social software, Shirky goes
to the code-face and comes back with sensible thoughts about how people actually use technology, all the
while avoiding the techno-determinism and the second hand gonzo-isms of the ClueTrain posse. www.shirky.com. JM
Online gossip gained new notoriety when, late last year, David Beckham was forced to issue a statement
denying unfounded rumours circulating online. But sites like Popbitch and the satirical technology newsletter Need to Know have previously circulated more substantial whisperings about celebs,
and broken big stories first. Gossip is in our blood, spin can't hide everything and these guys are
watching. RP
February 17 will be the day many Londoners will
get their first taste of e-government at www.cclondon.com - Transport for London's website for the
controversial congestion charge. Drivers will be able to pay up to 90 days in advance. But however good
the website is, few will be happy about using it.
The art of snapping
someone in a compromising position in a pub or wherever with your camera phone and emailing it to a web
site. VK
2003 is the year of the mobile data device. 3G phones and
wifi-enabled PDAs are all here: and what will people do with them? Blog, of course. It's already
happening: the Danger Hiptop, launched in the US this autumn and here in a few weeks, has seen people
using its camera and wireless capabilities to blog from bars, shops, even the middle of the Houston
Marathon. BH
Deep down, everyone knows that artificial intelligence that
renders us humans completely obsolete, is not going to happen for a long while, if ever. So perhaps we
need to put to one side the AI acronym and focus instead on AmI, aka ambient intelligence. We're already
starting to see the arrival of objects with a low-level connected intelligence (smartifacts, if you
like). Over the next few years, they'll become a part of our world. JM
It's the great conundrum of the web. Why do so many people do so much for free? What do people get out of
it? Whuffie - that's what. Coined by writer Cory Doctorow for his novel Down and Out in the Magic
Kingdom, Whuffie embodies respect, karma, mad-props; call it what you will, the web runs on it. BH
In 2002 both became verbs. In 2003 they may enter the
dictionaries, so we'll all have to move on. VK
   
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