Predictions for 2012

Due to a dearth of predictions for 2012 (since my blog only began in 2010), I have decided to do what I did last year and make a list of predictions that I think we'll be reading about in the news for the coming year.

The Arab Spring sputters out. With the exceptions of Tunisia, Egypt, Jordan, and Morocco, almost no Arab states are poised to make a real transition to democracy. Many of them are too poor to make a democratic transition likely, and several of them are cursed by their own oil wealth, which encourages corruption and enables autocrats to buy off opposition. There may be a few other Arab dictators that fall this year, but in the end they will most likely be replaced by other dictators and/or chaos. Some Arab states may successfully hold democratic elections, but find their newfound democracy short-lived and ultimately revert to authoritarianism.

Medical data processing costs continue to fall, as the work is increasingly offshored and automated. As computing power grows, it becomes easier and cheaper to process medical data from nearly anywhere in the world. The cost of sequencing a human genome continues to fall faster than Moore's Law, and currently stands at roughly $4,000. Computers can now identify breast cancer more accurately than human doctors can. IBM's Watson is currently being repurposed into a medical diagnosis tool, which will have access to more information than a human doctor could hope to acquire: the latest medical literature, clinical trials, patient histories, and (soon) the patient's genome.

Smartphone apps that monitor the user's health proliferate and become very popular. This has already begun to happen to some extent, but in 2012 health apps will proliferate as they become better and less invasive. The less the user needs to interact with the app, the more likely it is that the app will be used effectively. Look for more gadgets like Nike+, which combine the functionality of a smartphone app with a device that is worn near the body to measure some aspect of health.

The discovery of the Higgs Boson is confirmed. In December 2011, scientists at CERN confirmed with a high level of probability that they had discovered a new particle at the energy level believed to be associated with the elusive Higgs Boson, the last undiscovered piece of the Standard Model of particle physics which is believed to carry mass to all other particles. However, the level of probability was not high enough to be labeled a new discovery with any certainty. Since two independent teams found an anomaly at roughly the same energy level, it is highly unlikely to be a mistake. It will probably be confirmed by the end of 2012, thus completing the 40-year-old Standard Model.

The air starts to leak from the higher education bubble. Speaking as one of the suckers who just completed his education at the peak of the higher education bubble, I think that we've just about seen the highwater mark for tuition charges. Over the last decade, tuition for higher education increased at nearly twice the overall inflation rate. This cannot go on forever. The economics of university tuition will be difficult to sustain, because several factors are working together: The poor economy makes expensive university tuition look like a worse deal than before for those looking to maximize their payout. Government budget cuts will mean that the states are less generous about financial aid to students, and universities will need to adjust their charges accordingly. Finally, higher education itself is on the verge of a major overhaul, as presaged by MIT's announcement that they would start offering accreditation for a small fee for their free online courses. Tuition charges may continue to increase for another year or two...but I think they will increase by a smaller amount than they have in the past decade. And it's only a matter of time before they come crashing down.

PREDICTIONS:

As of 2012 – No Arab state has held free and fair elections resulting in a representative government as a result of the Arab Spring, with the possible exceptions of Tunisia, Egypt, Jordan, and Morocco.

By 2012 – Medical data processing costs continue to fall, as the work is increasingly offshored and automated.

By 2012 – Smartphone apps that monitor the user's health proliferate and become very popular.

By 2012 – The discovery of the Higgs Boson is confirmed.

By 2012 – Tuition at US four-year universities increases at a slower rate for the 2012-13 school year, than it has in the past decade.

2011: The Year in Review

As we close out 2011, in many ways the world looks very different than it did a year ago. From political upheavals in the Middle East, a cooling economy in China, an ongoing debt crisis in Europe, and the deaths of several of the world's most odious characters, the world has not seen such a transformative year since the end of the Cold War in 1991. Although we could have seen glimmers of all of these things a year ago, most of these changes were difficult to predict. My friend Nassim Nicholas Taleb might call them “Black Swan Events.”

Since this blog is primarily about futurism, I feel that I should go back and examine the predictions I have made for 2011 to hold myself accountable. With some predictions it is not always obvious whether they are correct or incorrect. Furthermore, self-evaluations tend to be a bit biased, and some futurists have the unfortunate tendency to go to absurd contortions to avoid admitting mistakes. In this post I will try my best to avoid that, but will rely on my readers to keep me honest.

By 2011 – Near-field communication comes equipped in many new smartphones. Mobile payments become even more popular in the developing world, and makes inroads in Europe and the United States. (Jan. 2011)

Mostly correct

As of the end of 2011, some of the most prominent smartphones come with NFC chips, including Samsung's Galaxy series, Google's Nexus series, and Blackberry's Bold series, although in some cases the NFC chip is an add-on rather than a standard feature of the phone. Conspicuously absent from this list is Apple's iPhone, which does not yet have NFC. In September 2011, Google released Google Wallet, a mobile payment application for smartphones which uses near-field communication. As of now it is only available on Google's Nexus S phone, although Google is working with handset manufacturers to incorporate Google Wallet into other Android phones.

This year also marked the growth of Fundamo, a mobile payment system that now operates in over 40 developing countries, and its subsequent acquisition by Visa. The mobile payment industry is somewhat unusual in that the developing world is actually far ahead of developed countries on this technology.

In Europe and the US, progress has been more slow than I anticipated on the mobile payment front, although as I stated last year, we would only be seeing the first glimpses of it in 2011, rather than its widespread adoption. One of the pioneers of this in the US has been Starbucks. The coffee chain has ported Starbucks cards onto Apple and Blackberry smartphones, and customers are able to pay their bill simply by swiping their phone over a scanner. Look for similar technologies to pop up in other businesses in 2012, although I still think it will be a couple more years before it goes mainstream in the United States.

By 2011 – Internet-equipped televisions or add-ons will become popular. (Jan. 2011)

Mostly wrong

I'm going to count this one as a miss. Although internet-equipped televisions and add-ons are commercially available, they are by no means popular yet. Google TV proved to be a very expensive flop for Google, with many cable companies explicitly blocking their web content from playing on Google TV. The biggest barrier to widespread adoption of smart televisions is no longer technological, it is economic. Unless laws are enacted to prevent content providers from discriminating against platforms like Google TV, we may be waiting for several years before economic circumstances will cause the content providers to relent.

Some of the smaller add-ons, such as Boxee and Roku, have proven much more commercially successful than smart televisions have. However, they are much more limited in what they can do.

By 2011 – At least 75% of countries improve their score on the Human Development Index compared to 2010, with the biggest improvements in developing countries. (Jan. 2011)

Correct

Although you would never know it from media reports, 2011 was a year of widespread economic success nearly everywhere in the world. My prediction that at least 75% of countries would be better off was actually quite conservative. 93% of countries improved their level of human wellbeing, as measured by the Human Development Index. The biggest winner of the year was Ghana, one of Africa's best-governed nations. The biggest loser was war-torn Libya. Of the 183 countries evaluated, 171 improved their wellbeing, 6 spent the year treading water, and another 6 lost ground. These unlucky countries were mostly located where you would expect them to be: debt-ravaged Europe and the turbulent Greater Middle East. Nearly everywhere else, people ended the year better off than they started.

By 2011 – There will be a major shakeup (or a total implosion) in the top leadership of North Korea and/or Iran. (Jan. 2011)

Mostly correct

The “and/or” is what made this prediction correct. I thought this was going to be a miss, but with two weeks to spare before the end of the year, Kim Jong-il of North Korea did me (and the rest of the world) a favor by dying. At this point it's too soon to speculate how North Korea's government will change following the leader's death. His heir, Kim Jong-un, is unlikely to be able to wield total power like his father.

Surprisingly, Iran has been relatively stable this year. With all the simmering anger in Iran following the aborted 2009 election protests, it seemed likely that Iran would emulate its Arab neighbors in protesting its government. Iran's supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, reportedly has terminal leukemia, but there does not seem to have been any major leadership changes despite a year of palace intrigue. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad spent much of the spring boycotting his official duties amidst a very ugly public spat with the Supreme Leader, who clearly does not trust Ahmadinejad any longer.

By 2011 – Tablet computers account for at least 13% of the US personal computer market. The market will become competitive with several new tablets seriously challenging Apple’s iPad. (Jan. 2011)

Somewhat

The first sentence is undeniably correct; the most recent estimates I can find for 2011 indicate that tablets accounted for about 17% of the PC market this year.

The tablet market is certainly more competitive now than it was a year ago, but most of the Android tablets continue to disappoint. The sole exception is Amazon's Kindle Fire, which has been an instant hit. It doesn't exactly “challenge Apple's iPad” as I predicted, because the two tablets are aimed at very different markets: the Kindle Fire is priced at $199, whereas even the cheapest iPad will cost $499.

By 2011 – Gaming (led by Microsoft’s Xbox Kinect) will begin to become gesture-based, rather than controller-based. (Jan. 2011)

Correct

Many games have been created for Xbox Kinect which rely exclusively on gestures. This technology is especially useful for exercise and sports-related games. Look for it to continue to expand in the coming years.

By 2011 – The migration of computer files from the hard drive to the cloud will begin in earnest, as people become more willing to allow third-parties to store all of the content on their computers via the internet. (Jan. 2011)

Correct

The big winners of the race to the cloud are Amazon, Verizon (Terremark), and IBM. The file hosting service Dropbox, which enables consumers to store their files in Amazon's cloud and easily work with files on multiple computers, has been one of the year's blockbuster startups. Some estimates indicate that it now has over 50 million users.

By 2011 – Voice Over IP services, such as Skype, become popular on smartphones, thus portending the eventual demise of traditional voice-telephone services. (Jan. 2011)

Wrong

Voice Over IP services have not yet caught on on smartphones. I think my error in this prediction was that I underestimated the difficulty of using Voice Over IP on 3G smartphones (I confess that I hadn't actually tried it on my own 3G phone at the time I wrote this prediction). 3G phones tend to be too slow to get good reception on an internet call, resulting in garbled and spotty transmission. Even people with 4G phones will be hindered unless the person they are calling also uses a 4G phone (or their computer). Until 4G smartphones become ubiquitous - which should happen within the next few years - traditional voice telephony will probably remain the dominant method of making calls.

By 2011 – At least one company offers genome sequencing for $1,000 or less (Jul. 2010)

Mostly wrong

I thought that attaching a specific dollar figure to this prediction would make it easy to evaluate and leave little room for interpretation, but I overlooked the fact that there are different kinds of genome sequencing. The price point is different, depending on how thorough one wants the analysis to be. At the lower end of the spectrum, Google-affiliated startup 23AndMe offers basic genotyping for $159, which includes a DNA analysis of a person's ancestry and their likelihood of acquiring various diseases with a clear genetic component. However, this service is not very robust. “Full genome sequencing” is considerably more expensive. The leading company for full genome sequencing, Illumina Technologies, currently charges $5,000 (or $4,000 for bulk orders). This is a price cut of more than 50% since this time last year, but we'll have to wait a while longer for the elusive $1,000 genome.

By my count, that's 5 correct or mostly correct, 1 somewhat correct, and 3 wrong or mostly wrong. I think that's a decent record, and it will be the benchmark I try to beat for my 2012 predictions, which I will be posting in the next few days. I am also interested to hear from my readers if I was too easy or harsh in grading my own predictions. Do you think I erred in any of my self-evaluations of my predictions? If so, which ones and why?

Predictions For 2011

After revisiting my list of predictions, I realized that I didn’t have very many for 2011, due to my focus on things at least five years out. In honor of the new year, here are some of my predictions for 2011, in no particular order:

Electronic wallet? There’s an app for that. On December 16, 2010, Google and Samsung released the Nexus S, the first smartphone equipped with near-field communication. Near-field communication is an emerging technology that enables the transfer of data between devices at a range of 4 inches or less. This will eventually replace boarding passes, credit cards, and ATM cards among other things and will allow the easy transfer of money over the phone. 2011 is the year when the technology will first be useful, if not exactly mainstream yet. The places where it will take off the most quickly are developing countrieswhere credit card companies have never posed a lot of competition. Those of us in the US and Europe will probably have to wait a couple more years.

Is that a television or a computer? 2011 will be the year when the television and computer converge, just as the cell phone and computer have done in the last three years. An assortment of devices that hit the market in the last half of 2010 will serve up video content from the internet onto the television. The immediate effects will be relatively unimportant – people will be able to enjoy their favorite videos from YouTube, Netflix, Vevo, and Hulu on a much larger screen. In the longer term, this will change the way people view television and make them question if paying for channels they never use is really a good investment, especially if the same content is available online.

Human development will be widespread. Last year, all but seven countries in the world improved their score on the UN's Human Development Index (5 of those were stagnant while 2 actually lost ground). Emerging markets developed much more rapidly than wealthy nations. The long-term global trend has always been toward higher standards of living, and barring another severe economic downturn, we can expect the same from 2011. The vast majority of countries will share in economic gains, and developing countries will continue to outpace the US, Europe, and Japan.

At least one company offers genome sequencing for $1,000 or less. This one may be a bit of a reach, but I’m going to predict that 2011 will be the year that the holy grail of genomics – the $1,000 genome – is finally reached. For the last several years, the cost of genome sequencing has been following a Moore’s Law like trajectory, dropping nearly tenfold per year. A year ago, the cost of a simple genome sequencing was $6,000 and $10,000 from the two leading companies, Life Technologies and Illumina, respectively. It is therefore possible that by the end of 2011 a company will be able to do it for $1,000 which will throw open the doors to many more customers. Shortly after this milestone is reached, health insurance companies may begin covering the service, and the era of personalized medicine will dawn.

Shake-ups in the Axis of Evil. In his 2002 State of the Union address, President George Bush famously labeled Iraq, Iran, and North Korea the “Axis of Evil” and called for regime change in the three nations. During his presidency, Bush only deposed one of those regimes, but in 2011 he may get his wish in at least one more. Kim Jong-il, the supreme leader of North Korea, is believed to have suffered a stroke and has appeared very frail in his recent public appearances. He has been hastily creating a succession plan to transfer power to his 26-year-old son, Kim Jong-un, but the younger Kim has very little influence with key military officers who are necessary to sustain the regime. Wikileaks recently reported that Ayatollah Ali Khamenei of Iran has terminal leukemia. Khamenei is the glue holding the regime together; for example, he recently intervened personally to dissuade the Iranian Parliament from impeaching President Ahmadinejad. It is unclear if the Iranian regime can survive in any form without Khamenei. If either Kim or Khamenei dies, there will be a power struggle as various factions within the governments jockey for position in the power vacuum left in the deceased leader’s wake. Iran stands a real chance of serious democratic reform. North Korea does not (barring a total collapse and reunification with South Korea), but a shakeup could at least generate some Chinese-style economic reforms and perhaps an end to the bellicosity on the Korean Peninsula.

PREDICTIONS:
By 2011 – Near-field communication comes equipped in many new smartphones. Mobile payments become even more popular in the developing world, and makes inroads in Europe and the United States.
By 2011 – Internet-equipped televisions or add-ons will become popular.
By 2011 – At least 75% of countries improve their score on the Human Development Index compared to 2010, with the biggest improvements in developing countries.
By 2011 – At least one company offers genome sequencing for $1,000 or less.
By 2011 – There will be a major shakeup (or a total implosion) in the top leadership of North Korea and/or Iran.
By 2011 – Tablet computers continue to sell well. The market will become competitive with several new tablets seriously challenging Apple’s iPad.
By 2011 – Gaming (led by Microsoft’s Xbox Kinect) will begin to become gesture-based, rather than controller-based.
By 2011 – Voice Over IP services, such as Skype, become popular on smartphones, thus portending the eventual demise of traditional voice-telephone services.

Black Swan Events: Bioterrorism

The Genomic Revolution is a double-edged sword. As I mentioned previously, the benefits will be enormous. Genomics will allow us to have personalized, preventative health care, instead of mass-market sick care. However, there is also a ghastly dark side to the Genomic Revolution. We will soon face the truly horrifying prospect of bioterror (or bioerror.) When any college student has access to pathogens and the capability to modify them to make them even more virulent or transmissible, someone almost certainly will.

Within a few years, the genomes of nearly all human pathogens will be publicly available. This will be necessary in order to better understand these diseases and develop cures. However, those who wish to use this information to commit acts of mass murder will have access to it as well. Some diseases may not require very much modification to become even more deadly. The 1918 Spanish flu pandemic, which killed more people than World War I, is very genetically similar to many of the strains of flu that are still circulating to this day. Soon it will be possible for an individual to create a virulent flu strain like the Spanish flu by genetically modifying other strains.

Since genomics is essentially an information technology, it is possible to swap genes from one species into another. This is what allows agronomists to copy the cold-resistant genes of Arctic fish and paste them into tomatoes (in theory.) However, the same principle could be used by bioterrorists to create a Frankenstein’s monster, combining the worst traits of many diseases. Imagine an illness with the virulence of ebola, the transmissibility of the common cold, and the evolutionary adaptability of HIV. Such a disease is the stuff that nightmares (or B-movies) are made of. Yet it will eventually be possible for malevolent individuals or groups to create them.

If a manmade disease was sufficiently different from anything found in nature, it could prove devastating. We humans have had a chance to evolve alongside influenza, the plague, malaria, and other naturally-occurring afflictions. People alive today are mostly descended from the hearty individuals who survived earlier strains of these diseases. But we would not have evolved such immunities to manmade diseases. Just as the vast majority of Native Americans were decimated by European diseases to which they had no immunity in the 16th century, we could face the same prospect with manmade superplagues.

Fortunately, we have a defensive weapon in our arsenal that the 16th century Native Americans did not have. Just as genomics can create such frightening diseases, it holds the potential to cure them. Within a few years, it will be possible to sequence a genome in a couple hours. As our understanding of how genes work continues to grow, it will take less and less time to understand the genomes we sequence. Assuming that bureaucratic procedures were waived to combat a public health emergency, a cure for a manmade disease could be on the market almost as quickly as software antivirus programs are patched when new threats are discovered. Soon, naturally-occurring diseases could be a mere minor annoyance. The real public health danger could shift to the arms race between bioterrorists and scientists racing to cure their latest concoctions.

BLACK SWAN EVENTS:

By 2040 – A disease created or modified by humans has been released into the public. Probability: 90%

By 2040 – A disease created or modified by humans has killed at least 100,000 people. Probability: 75%

(I hesitated to even call bioterrorism a “Black Swan,” since that implies that the event is at least somewhat unlikely to occur. In my opinion, the danger of manmade diseases being released onto the public is not a question of if, but when and where. Since we cannot forecast this, it is unpredictable enough to be considered a Black Swan Event in my opinion.)

Blissful Genetic Ignorance - Will We Want to Know Our Genomes?

A couple readers have questioned me about the Genomic Revolution, wondering if people will truly want to know their genome even if they are able. As I mentioned in a previous post, people prefer to avoid thinking about things that seem both horrifying and inevitable. This is understandable. Would a person truly want to know that they are doomed to suffer from, say, Alzheimer’s disease or some other affliction that is commonly regarded as a fate worse than death?

While I can’t speak personally for anyone other than myself, I think that most people will ultimately prefer to know. As personal genomics becomes more commonplace, the mindset of blissful genetic ignorance will probably fade away. This wouldn’t be the first time that a new medical paradigm has changed public opinion about how much they should know. In a 1961 poll, 90% of US physicians surveyed said that they wouldn’t tell their patients if they had cancer. At the time, most doctors believed that patients would be better off not knowing since little could be done. But as cancer screening and treatment became more common in the subsequent decades, this mindset vanished almost entirely. Today it is hardly even imaginable that a doctor would not tell a patient if they had cancer.

There are so many advantages in knowing what conditions we are most at risk for. Ultimately, I think the knowledge of which of our unhealthy behaviors we most need to change (and which we can indulge in), and what prescriptions are most likely to be effective for our personal genome is simply more important than the unpleasant knowledge that we will eventually develop a certain condition. Practically everyone is at risk for something, and everyone accepts this. Would it really be so much worse for our psyches to know our specific risks instead of just a vague sense that we will develop something?

Please share your opinion. Would you want to know if you would eventually develop a disease?

Genome sequencing? There's an app for that.

Richard Dawkins talking about the Genomic Revolution.

I think we'll look back on 2010-2011 as the tipping point for the Genomic Revolution, just as we look back on 1993-1994 as the tipping point for the World Wide Web...and the Genomic Revolution will be every bit as transformational as the World Wide Web, if not moreso.

The Future of Health Care - The Genomic Revolution

For the first time in decades, we are due for a completely transformational change in health care. We are on the cusp of the Genomic Revolution, and we will start seeing the earliest results in the immediate future. Personal genomics – the practice of tailoring prescriptions, treatments, and lifestyle choices to an individual based on their genes – will soon depose the old paradigm of medicine. No longer will doctors merely give patients the drugs with the highest chance of success; they will be able to predict whether or not the drug will be effective for a specific person. No longer will patients try to base their diet and exercise habits on generic recommendations of what is healthy and what is not; instead, they can determine the healthiest lifestyle for their genetic makeup specifically. Health care will become mostly preventative, rather than reactive.

Why now? What is the driving force behind this paradigm shift? For the first time in human history, we have enough computing power to cheaply and quickly sequence the human genome. In the very near future, nearly everyone will have access to their entire DNA code, which they can carry on their smartphones. When Craig Venter became the first person to have his genome sequenced in 2000 as part of the Human Genome Project, it cost $3 billion and took thirteen years. When James Watson had his genome sequenced in 2007, it cost $2 million and took two months. Today, sequencing a human genome costs about $6,000 and takes a couple weeks. Within the next year, it is very likely that companies will offer genome sequencing for less than $1,000. Some observers view the $1,000 mark as a tipping point: the point at which average people can afford the service, and at which health insurers may start covering it. And after we have $1,000 genomes, $1 genomes won’t be far behind. Let’s not forget that the cost has dropped nearly a thousandfold in the last three years. Fast-forward a few more years, and it is conceivable that the cost of genome sequencing will be essentially nothing. I envision a day in the not-too-distant future when Walgreens and CVS will have self-service genome sequencing machines, as quick, cheap, and user-friendly as self-service photo machines.

Of course, merely knowing one's genetic code is worthless without knowing how to interpret it. While biologists have identified thousands of disease markers, there is vastly more that we don’t know about our genetic code. Some services available now, such as Google-funded 23AndMe, can test DNA to determine one’s predisposition to a narrow range of diseases, but this is only the tip of the iceberg of what is possible. As the cost of genome sequencing approaches zero, nearly everyone will have it done. As the total number of genomes grows from thousands to millions to billions, scientists will have a treasure trove of data to analyze diseases and patient responses to medication. A machine called a microarray allows scientists to compare different DNA sequences and search for correlations. As more and more human genomes are available to be analyzed, patterns will become more evident and it will become much easier to unearth the specific genes associated with certain diseases. Patients who know the diseases for which they are at risk will be able to modify their lifestyle to prevent them from arising.

Those who are unlucky enough to get a disease in spite of (or because of) their lifestyle will have access to much more robust treatments than those currently available. By pinpointing the genetic location of a particular disease, scientists will be able to understand what caused the disease and how it can be reversed. Think of our genetic code like a computer program: Understanding the cause and location of the bugs will enable us to fix them. In the slightly more distant future, it will be possible to directly repair defective genes, such as those that cause cancer, through genetic therapy.

The next ten years will be the most transformative decade in human history for medicine, as we finally unlock the secrets of our genetic code which have been a mystery since the dawn of humanity. The things I have described here are by no means a comprehensive description of the benefits of the Genomic Revolution, and the new paradigm will not be without problems of its own. To be continued in another blog post…

PREDICTIONS:
By 2011 – At least one company offers genome sequencing for $1,000 or less
By 2014 – At least one company offers genome sequencing for $100 or less
By 2019 – Over half of all Americans have had their genomes sequenced
By 2021 – U.S. sales of personalized medicine (i.e. drugs tailored to the patient’s specific genetic profile) are greater than sales of non-personalized, mass-market medicine