I have to agree with the WSJ on this one: article. Sony is due for a comeback (and may I remind the court that I was particularly prescient on when to buy Nintendo and Apple stock?).
While I'm prognosticating, let me predict how the Democratic primaries will play out over the next few months. Superdelegates will continue to announce support for Obama to where he'll gain a significant lead in that category (sparking news stories about the matter), because the superdelegates will hope to help pull public opinion more towards him in hopes of victories for him in Pennsylvania and North Carolina. Maybe even Mr. Gore will endorse. I think this will happen because the superdelegates will see it as a good way to avoid a potentially disastrous floor fight at the convention in August - voice support for the frontrunner in hopes that they can sway the public to make a more definite decision. Especially since public announcing support doesn't mean they have to vote that way at the convention.
I also predict self-driving cars will be nearly as big as the internet, and will really arrive somewhere between 2020 and 2025.
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
One day when I have the cash on-hand...
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9 comments:
Hey, three predictions, three separate posts. Also I tagged this with "the future" so that all of our future predictions will be filed under the same thing.
I think the resurgence of the PSP is being underrated as well. The increase of quality titles over the past six months is a strong sign, especially as the PS2 winds down. Particularly in Japan, where people will eventually tire of buying the DS over and over again in different colors and actually start picking up its widescreen cousin, which is suddenly very strong in the rpg department.
First, I know nothing about game systems.
Second, I think you're giving too much credit to a mass of politicians for their ability to actually lead. Also, I think endorsing one way and voting another will be somewhat challenging, since it's on record.
Third, I think self-driving cars make sense practically (safer, more comfortable), economically (Detroit could finally sell significant numbers of new cars again), and politically (huge federal works program since I think we should go with some sort of electronic guide wire system for the highways). Definitely something to look for in a few decades.
I'm still concerned that (unfounded) public fears will keep self-driving cars from happening as soon as I would like. I have visions of politicians railing against "self-crashing cars" as soon as something goes wrong with one of them. I guess the way to do it is the way it's being done -- slowly and feature by feature (such as automated parallel parking or gps navigation).
From what I understand, several superdelegates have switched their endorsements in the past few months, at least going back to "uncommitted" after initially supporting Hillary, so I don't think they'd feel too bad about switching back if Obama didn't work out.
Self-driving cars should be a national priority (Jason, don't forget effect on GDP through increased productivity). 40,000 Americans die each year in automobile accidents. Even if self-driving cars kill 10,000 people a year, that's 30,000 lives saved.
In my view the larger problem is architectural -- how to make better use of the space we have. It's massively inefficient to dedicate a 3000lb machine to transporting a person. I'm not saying all vehicles are evil, just the promotion of "ownership" of something that large is not the greatest idea IMHO. How about a hybrid motorcycle that weighs 100 lbs and gets 300 miles to the gallon? Make it self-driving and then I'm interested...
We'll always need our own cars in my opinion, but Andrew might be interested in this.
Andrew, your motorcycle idea would definitely give Kip some job security. The reason I think that self-driving cars will face opposition is the control issue. People like to think that the 40,000 people who have accidents do so because they made a stupid mistake or weren't paying attention. The idea of 10,000 people dying randomly will be hard to swallow for those who like to control their environment.
Well, I think it'd be more like fewer than 100 deaths per year, and it would definitely need to be able to be phased in, i.e. certain freeway lanes reserved for self-driving cars, much like carpool lanes. After a few days of watching those lanes zoom by at rush hour while the people-driven cars lurch in traffic, I think there will be few unconverted :].
Oooh - it would decrease liability insurance, too.
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