Through a glass... darkly

Just read a superb blog post from Stephen Downes who I reckon has been polishing his crystal ball. He usually has his finger on the pulse where technology trends are concerned. Called 'What not to build' and hosted by his Half an Hour blog site, this post is likely to be a strong contender for 'Most Influential Blog Post' in the 2009 Edublog Awards and we're still only in the first week of January. Although it's a lengthy blog, and takes some ploughing through, 'What not to build' is well worth the effort, because Downes has successfully identified all the stuff you would waste your time building, because it's either been done to death, or us financially unviable. He then takes on to some of the current technological 'fads' (he includes the iPhone here!!), before moving on to the really edgy stuff that is 'out there' that will make someone a millionaire if they can pull it off.

Context aware systems, location dependent devices, surface technologies, personal health systems, distributed systems and cloud computing are all in there, and all expounded upon with insight and seasoned with common sense. Probably the best bit for me is Stephen's last section which identifies the 'dead' technologies. Although these (paper, transport, telephones, TV and radio) are fairly controversial, he ends by qualifying his choices in his commentary on what the world may look like in the next decade or so. Well ... through a glass darkly ... we shall see whether he's right.

(As a side note, Stephen is courageous. He is obviously not screening his reader comments, because it looks like the blog has already been spammed).