[Editor’s note: To tap the wisdom of our distinguished group of Xconomists, we asked a few of them to answer this question heading into 2013: What does your gut tell you will happen in the coming year even though you don’t have data to prove it?]
This is a pivotal year in mobile, we are seeing the app rush turn to a corporate need to support customers in every relationship. How can this happen without people having hundreds of apps loaded simultaneously?
This is a pivotal year in energy. We are seeing consolidation in the renewable resources sector. Still, the improvements in solar inverters and installation will continue to reduce price in installation. We are hitting tipping points in people believing they have to use renewables. New cellulosic ethanol is coming on line but will not replace corn based for several years.
This is a pivotal year for efficient cars. VW used to say they would release a 165-mpg Honda 1-liter [engine] this year, but it might not happen. So many electric vehicles are being released that it will be amazing if the beautiful Tesla S can meet it production goals. If it does it will be historic change for cars.
As well, this is the year that most car companies are offering some autonomous aspects to their cars. Waze-like travel support is becoming a force, which i think should increase traffic carrying capabilities of roads by at least 10 percent.
The real estate boom will start.
Startup funding will slow.
Coursera and Udacity will get more than 50 universities to offer courses they couldn’t offer without them. All education will start having a deeper online experience.
Author: Ted Selker
Dr. Ted Selker is Associate director of mobility research at Carnegie Mellon Silicon Valley and a visiting scholar at Stanford computer science department. He is well known as a creator and testor of new scenarios for working with computing systems. Ted spent ten years as an associate Professor at the MIT Media Laboratory where he created the Context Aware Computing group, co-directed the Caltech/MIT Voting Technology Project, and directed a CI/IDI: kitchen of the future/ product design of the future project. His work is noted for creating demonstrations of a world in which intentions are recognized and respected in complex domains, such as kitchens, cars, on phones and in email. Ted’s work takes the form of prototyping concept products supported by cognitive science research.
His successes at targeted product creation and enhancement earned him the role of IBM Fellow and director of User Systems Ergonomics Research. He has served as a consulting professor at Stanford University, taught at Hampshire, University of Massachusetts at Amherst and Brown Universities and worked at Xerox PARC and Atari Research Labs.
Ted's innovation has been responsible for profitable and award winning products ranging from notebook computers to operating systems. For example, his design of the TrackPoint in-keyboard pointing device is used in many notebook computers, his visualizations have made impacts ranging from improving the performance of the PowerPC to usability OS/2 Thinkpad setup to Google maps, his adaptive help system has been the basis of products as well. Ted’s work has resulted in numerous awards, patents, and papers and has often been featured in the press. Ted was co-recipient of the Computer Science Policy Leader Award for Scientific American 50 in 2004, the American Association for People with Disabilities Thomas Paine Award for his work on voting technology in 2006 and the Telluride Tech fest award in 2008.
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