Brenda Cooper's Blog, page 29

The Ordinary Futurist: 2010 review of my own predictions in technology

Well, every year I play a game of "What will happen?"  Now, I'm a semi-professional futurist, so you'd think I'd get this right.  But my success rate varies party because futurists aren't really prognosticators (Nostradamus was not a futurist) and partly because the world is more complex than any of us can follow.  This year wasn't my most successful move in this game, but I'm going be dutiful and report out anyway.  I did get some of it right. I'm going to break this up into three posts since I have three areas of focus and it would just be too long to do as one post.  Hopefully I'll get them all out today. So here's the 2010 review of my predictions in technology:

Prediction: Even more social networking. Plus, social networking gets more synched with physical space (geo-aware applications like Foursquare but more useful). Immediate opportunities to help a neighbor, great business deals close to where I am standing, someone with interests a lot like mine in the same coffee shop. Etc

How did I do? I'll give myself half-right on this.  Yes, more social networking and it's more important to mainstream (business) concerns.  But I don't really see the killer geo-aware apps I was expecting.

Prediction: The cloud takes over more of our personal storage and backup, but doesn't make it very far into the enterprise yet. We enterprise CIO's watch it and poke it and maybe try a bit here and there, but we don't drink the kool-aid. Yet. We will. Just not so much in 2010.

How did I do? I'm a government CIO, and this has held true for us.  We're stretching fingers into the cloud and getting them misty, but not flying yet.  Bigger corporations and small young ones that need to be agile have had pretty high adoption rates.  As far as real-world validation, I didn't find much on the net yet with end of the year adoption figures, but the Business Roundtable posted some statistics that support me – far more people are planning to use cloud tech then are using cloud tech. There are some nice graphics over at Web Analytics World. So I got this one right.

Prediction: I know I said this last year, but I think people will choose to be chipped in certain situations, like when they are travelling overseas, when they have certain medical conditions, etc.  Soldiers and criminals may get chipped, too.

How did I do? Well, I'm still mostly-wrong on this one.  But not entirely; The site Information Systems Innovation has a November 2010 article about RFID in the human body but more of the internet-available information is anti human chipping and a lot of it is bible-belt types talking about RFID as the number of the beast.

Prediction: The apple tablet will actually appear (and I'll buy one). It will have been at least slightly over-hyped but as apps get released it will be well-loved by gamers, readers, students, and field people. It won't replace the netbook or the notebook generally, but it might be a great substitute for the Kindle.

How did I do? Well, mostly-right here.  Not spot-on since I think the iPad did even better than I expected.  It delivered at the hype level, and I think the iPad has slowed netbook sales and had little affect on the Kindle (many people own both).

Prediction: eBooks will be near 10% of book sales by the end of the year. This is a phenomenal amount of growth – they are about 1.5% of the market now.  BTW – I think it growth in this sector might slow down again for a bit after that.

How did I do? I'll give myself a mostly-right here.  One set of numbers suggests they were at 9% in October.  So the only thing I missed was I just shouldn't have tacked on that last sentence.  Of course, it could still be right, but I no longer think so.

The Frost Fairies and the Dragon

The Frost Fairies came by our house last night.  They clearly had great fun playing with the mossy-backed dragon in our front yard.

Found in the Mail: Two anthologies

DAW sent me not one but two new two presents for the new year.  One of them is Love and Rockets, a delightful-looking anthology edited by Kerrie Hughes:  I love the cover.  My story is the first up in the anthology, but I advise not stopping there – there is a pile of stories by excellent authors including Nina Kiriki Hoffman, Jay Lake, Dean Wesley Smith, and Kristine Kathryn Rusch among others.  I am looking forward to reading them.  There is also a book discussion page by DAW  available.

The other is one of the very lovely Mercedes Lackey anthologies set in Valdemar:  Finding the Way and Other Tales of Valdemar.  This is the only world in which I write light fantasy – I'm a hard sf writer by trade with a periodic fantasy thrown into the mix, but nothing as light as traditional as Valdemar, where the good guys ride white beings and the help each other out, and where bards and healers make the world a better and more interesting place.   It's a place I would love to live if it were real.  I have loved Valdemar since I was young, and still buy and read all of the books set there.  I give books set in Valdemar to YA reader friends.  Unlike most anthologies, this TOC is almost all women, and many of us have been lucky enough to be invited to play in Valdemar from time to time for years.  My first solo professional sale was into this series, and I have a framed cover flat above my desk (the name of that anthology is Sun in Glory).  I'm pretty sure this is my fifth story there. There is also a book discussion page for Finding the Way.

Both books appear to be available in multiple formats.  Here are the Amazon links:

Love and Rockets at Amazon

Finding the Way and Other Tales of Valdemar at Amazon

Reading Recommendation: Hitler's Angel, by Kris Rusch

I just finished this book no more than an hour ago.  Wow.  Yeah for the history and for another look at Hitler.  But that is not what this is about.   It is about the human heart and how a single mistake can change the world of eirther one man or one country.

This is NOT genre, nor is it a thriller or even a terribly fast read.   It is grand characterization both on the individual level (her detective feels so real I believe he existed) and on the national level.  Nicely done.

Reading Recommendation: N.K. Jemisin's "The Broken Kingdoms"

Well, this is two reading recommendations in a row for N.K. Jemisin.  I enjoyed The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms so much I immediately ordered The Broken Kingdoms.  I left it closed as a carrot against getting some of my own editing done, but after one pass I just had to stop and pick it up.  This is the kind of book that convinces me to reach farther in my writing.  It is a bold book.

I am even more impressed by the fact that while it is solidly in the same fascinating world as the first book, and clearly in the middle of the same ongoing story, the characters and the events are different enough that it feels richer than most second novels in a series feel.  Its got its own structure that isn't derivative of book one, and is equally good or maybe even better.  But both are so good it's like choosing between brands of excellent rich dark chocolate.

The pair of them would make an excellent holiday gift for any fantasy reader.  But buy copies for yourself while you're at it.  Note that these are not the urban fantasy that I devour in a few hours each (my version of TV).  These make you think about good and evil, and power, and if they remind me loosely of anything it's Jacqueline Carey's excellent "The Sundering" series.   I won't be surprised if N.K. Jemisin is competing against herself this award season.

Reading Recommendation: N.K. Jemisin's The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms

Sometimes it's worth it to get led to a book.  I roomed with , bid on it, and then became enchanted.

I found it fabulous.  Awards-ballot fabulous.  New voice to fantasy fabulous.  It's  a brave, confident book full of gods and power and sensuality and danger.

Of note – the second book is out now, The Broken Kingdoms.  I have already ordered it, and will be waiting impatiently for my Amazon Tote.

Reading Recommendation: N.K. Jemisin's The Hundred Thousand Kingdom's

Sometimes it's worth it to get led to a book.  I roomed with , bid on it, and then became enchanted.  

I found it fabulous.  Awards-ballot fabulous.  New voice to fantasy fabulous.  It's  a brave, confident book full of gods and power and sensuality and danger. 

Of note – the second book is out now, The Broken Kingdoms.  I have already ordered it, and will be waiting impatiently for my Amazon Tote.

Just in: Mayan December cover

New at Futurismic: The Recession and the Steep Upward Slope

I'm an early adopter.  But new technology is coming out so fast, I can't adopt it all.  I sat down to write a short pithy paragraph about that  for this blog, and out came a whole essay — so it's at Futurismic.  The basic idea is that it feels like we're going backwards in a lot of ways.  Recessions.   Austerity programs.  Slow job growth.  All the bad news we're hearing every day.  But maybe we're heading into that unknown territory of tech change so rapid we can't keep up.

Some days I feel like I'm handing onto my geek cred by my fingernails.

I'd love people comments on the essay- here, or there.

On FiRE This Veterans Day

I'll be spending my day off tomorrow at the Future in Review one-day conference called FiRE Global.  I've been invited to participate in the CTO challenge, which is this case is a continued discussion about scaling energy, which may be no less than a talk about how to save the world.  My belief (based on years of research and lots of listening to and reading scientists) is that if we don't replace a large portion of the fossil fuel we use with renewable energy, we will so radically change the world that it may not be a place where we can live any more.  I'll get to join Ty Carlson from Microsoft, Larry Smarr from CalIT, and Janice  Nickel from HP on the stage.  I'm pleased to have been included in this conversation in this venue.  Last year, I spent the whole day fascinated.

And that's only 45 minutes of a full day.  If you're free, consider coming to be part of FiRE Global West Coast.  It's going to be a very interesting day.