It's the end of 2010, and 2011's just around the corner!  In the past, I've written "a year in review" types of articles about what I did and accomplished in the previous year, or post new year's resolutions that I've never kept.  This time, I won't do either.  Instead, here's a few predictions and comments on topics that interest me.

General

The US (and world) economy won't collapse in 2011 and the world won't end in 2012.

Ok, now that we've gotten that out of the way, let's continue…

Politics, Government, and Freedom

We've seen some of it already (healthcare, net neutrality, talks of cap & trade, etc.), but I think the United States' government will continue to grow much larger than it's already become in the last decade or so.

Net neutrality bills and other type of broadband initiatives will be approved and implemented, requiring broadband providers to upgrade their infrastructure to certain speed requirements, while losing the freedom to engineer or block traffic.  Blocking ports like TCP/80 and BitTorrent will become illegal for anyone providing Internet access (form coffee shops to large MSOs).

MPG requirements for automobiles will continue to rise, eventually prohibiting (through high taxes or special licenses) the sale of sports cars to the general public, and causing auto makers to manufacture more efficient vehicles.  Electric and hybrid cars will be promoted by the federal government and an international charging standard will be created to prevent plug incompatibilities of plug-in hybrids.  LED headlights might make an appearance in the automotive industry!

In some way or another, the good-intentioned fight against [childhood] obesity in America will result in the government slowly starting to dictate the eating habits of Americans.  I'm not implying that bacon will be taken off the market overnight, but I do think that the suggestion of a healthy lifestyle may go too far.  Just like salt is on its way to be banned in some places, we'll start to see items offered by some fast food chains drop off the menu, more and more sugar substitutes appear, and portion size at resturants regulated.  Eventually, I think hamburgers will be banned (remember this seaQuest episode?), too!

Anti-terrorism screenings and procedures will result in even more invasion of personal privacy, banning more arbitrary items from planes and trains (think iPhones and laptops).

Texting will become illegal, and more cars will start to support voice recognition via an extension to the Bluetooth protocol (ie, send and receive SMS/e-mail messages, post to Facebook, etc. by voice only).

Smart grid technology will continue to be deployed in most cities and modern neighborhoods.  From the data obtained by such a system, households with more than some amount of "waste" (eg, computers running w/out power saving) may be taxed in some way or another, regardless of actual power consumption.

Home-schooling will probably be banned in the next several years, due to a divergence in the curriculum used and the inability for the US DOE to control it.

More whistleblowing sites like WikiLeaks will appear, and cause companies and governments to become more paranoid with the safeguarding of sensitive documents.

President Barack Obama will be re-elected in 2012.

Technology and The Internet

Overall, software will become more complex, inefficient, slower, and buggier.  I just don't see this changing, at all.

Apple, Google, Amazon, and Microsoft will all continue to embrace cloud computing, and coerce everyone into storing all of their personal data on their servers.

Facebook won't kill e-mail.  However, e-mail spam volume will decrease.

Newer versions of desktop operating systems (Windows, Mac OS X, Chrome OS) will start to be "locked" to users, like iOS.  So-called "jailbreaking" or "rooting" will be required to access the shell and filesystems.  For most users, this won't be an issue because of cloud computing.  The sale of software will migrate to online "stores" like the forthcoming Mac App Store.

Laptop, tablet, and netbooks will replace traditional desktop computers and workstations.  Only in high-performance computing environments will desktops and workstations exist.

Desktop Linux will continue to fail, with the majority of Linux users migrating to Mac OS X or Chrome OS (I don't consider this to be desktop Linux).

IPv6 will continue to be deployed throughout networks in the United States over the next year or two, but it will be 3-4 years before the majority of content delivered to end users will move from IPv4 to IPv6.  Router and switch manufacturers will find a way to produce cheap CAM and routing table bloat will be less of a concern, resulting in the maximum prefix length allowed into BGP by most providers to be at least 48 bits.  Provider independent (PI) allocations from the RIRs will be given out to small companies and individuals, and the need for multihoming hacks (NAT66, SHIM6, etc.) will be reduced dramatically.

Whitelisting of DNS servers to provide access to AAAA records (like GoIPv6) will become a bit of a fad in 2011, but drop off dramatically in 2012.  DNSSEC will start to see usage among the popular sites (Facebook and Google) in 2011, as well.

The majority of TDM circuits (DS-3, etc.) will be replaced with Ethernet over the next several years, and the PSTN as we know it will go away.  Voice will start to move over IP everywhere, and phone numbers will start to become obsolete.

MSOs will become nothing more than ISPs, and video will start to be more subscription-based.  The concept of "TV channels" will be gone, and all content will be viewed in a web browser or on specialized hardware.  There will be more NetFlix-like services available.

More and more wireless ISPs (like Verizon, Clear, etc.) will appear with LTE Advanced services offering speeds that rival FiOS and DOCSIS 3.0 cable deployments.  MSOs will eventually convert to FTTx and abandon coaxial cable altogether.  Some (Comporium) have already started to do this.

There will be larger credit card security breaches in the next couple years, resulting in online merchants migrating to PayPal-like services.  For retail payments, NFC will be used.  IT departments around the world will rejoyce and not have to deal with PCI.

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