the future...re: the internet and technology

In an entertaining, insightful and sometimes tongue-in-cheek presentation, GoPets founder and CEO Erik Bethke has looked forward five years. Here are his 20 predictions. They might not all come to pass, but you’ll do well to be prepared…very interesting stuff

INTERNET USE
1. The number of Internet users in the world will increase from 1.1 billion in 2007 to 4.1 billion in 2012.
2. A lot of these will come from India which will wire up the entire sub-continent to 2mb broadband, convert the entire telecommunications industry over to VOIP with a flat rate of just $5 a month for all net access including unlimited voice calls across the country.
3. Everyone will follow India’s lead. All cities of more than 500,000 worldwide will effectively be 100% broadband. VOIP will dominate voice traffic, but the last major market to fall will be the US. Locally adjusted prices for net access including all domestic and international VOIP calls will be for a fixed monthly service fee of about $9.95 to $19.95 a month
4. Almost every country with rapidly deployed broadband connectivity has a young demographic with 25% of population under the age of 20. These include massive population areas such as China, Indonesia, India and Brazil.
PIRACY AND REVENUES
5. Traditional movie DVD, music CDs, and single-player console DVDs will fall 75% in 2012 relative to 1992 in the same markets. For the billions of young consumers in the new markets, purchase of intellectual products on media is effectively zero.
6. But revenues will come from services. Rentals, streaming, downloads, friend channels. Companies will have moved from a product focus to a service focus.
THE LIVING ROOM
7. What does the living room look like? All TV is on a PC box. The channels dedicated to communicating with pals are dominant. User-interface will be gesture-based. Revenue models are based on individual micro-purchases of content or of lots of low-cost subscriptions to content or channels. go here for the entire list

hat tip josh