Predicting 2024: Technology

Big Tech, little tech, it all fall down

• AI continues to consume all available attention and resources of every Big Tech company, because everyone is utterly fascinated by computers that talk to them and the possibility of laying off literally everyone that works for them. The main objectives for Google and Apple involve having LLMs (large language models, like ChatGPT) that can run entirely on a modern smartphone. This isn't as insane as you might think, because most modern phones are stupidly overpowered. By the end of the year, you can expect to say "Hey, Google/Siri, what's the latest" and your phone responds with a variety of news updates keyed to your particular interests. Your phone's digital assistant will also do a fairly decent job of searching your email and summarizing it, writing an email based on a spoken prompt, sending excuses for why you can't make it to a meeting on time, and other AI-driven things that will continue to make every interaction between people occur through a thick curtain of somewhat polite generated AI crap. AI does not, as many people expect, destroy the world. This year, anyway.
• AI-generated cruft makes the Internet utterly unusable as a tool for knowledge as websites that generate millions of fake stories on every topic exponentially flood Google into being completely useless as a search engine. People flee to silos such as Discord, Reddit and other gated communities, and bespoke curated search engines appear that promise to be immune to AI content poisoning. (They're not.)
• Cryptocurrency continues its slide into irrelevance, as it becomes a tool exclusively for criminals laundering money or making transactions they mistakenly think are untraceable, thanks to its ridiculous computational overhead making it useless for mainstream purchasing. The value of Bitcoin and Ethereum collapses even further as more people finally bail.
• Streaming video services continue to (a) combine into each other and (b) get worse in general as the era of free money ends and entertainment companies realize they have to once again somehow be profitable in an age where downloading videos for free is easier than jumping through Hollywood's hoops
• Apple's new VR goggles come out. They're really good and stupidly expensive. I keep telling myself I won't buy them. I'm lying. The tech media heralds their introduction as the breakthrough moment for THE METAVERSE but it isn't, because only stupid jerks like me buy them. Normal people continue to resist the siren song of strapping computer monitors directly onto your face.
• Bluesky is the "Twitter replacement" social network of 2024, thanks to user adoption and general platform improvements. Threads continues to lurch on as a text version of Instagram, where brands and influencers try to drive up each other's impression counts. Mastodon continues to exist, much like Linux on the desktop, and someone is probably still shouting at you there. I closed my Mastodon server down last year, and you never noticed.
• Elon Musk's sanity continues to deteriorate. His address at the Republican convention doesn't go well, especially when he tells Gavin Newsom to go fuck himself. Near the end of the year, he manages to sell a far-diminished Twitter for pennies on the dollar to an investment group led by MrBeast and Logan Paul.

Next: Predicting 2024, Gaming Edition. Yes, this is what I call a pro gamer move.