Seth Godin’s Predictions

“I just found this post, lost and forgotten, in the bottom of a folder I was backing up.

I meant to publish it in January, 2002, when I started this blog:

Predictions for 2008

I know it’s six years away, but I’ve found that short-term predictions are too easy to make. So, here you go:

• I predict that the number of blogs will explode, to more than a hundred times as many as we have now. If you’re an opinion leader, you’ll have one.
• A virtually unknown politician, a black man who’s father is from Africa, will be elected president, in a landslide. He’ll take the office from George W. Bush, leaving with the lowest approval rating of any president in history.
• Americans will watch more video online than on TV.
• The economy will be in the middle of a once in a century meltdown.
• Apple will make a cell phone and dominate the MP3 market as well. And the music industry will be in tatters. Napster will fail.
• Starbucks will sputter, but the quality and availability of dark chocolate will get better and better.
• You will know who the governor of Alaska is.
• China will become the fourth largest economy in the world, but they’ll get in trouble for putting poison into milk and toothpaste.
• Most newspapers will either be on the verge of bankruptcy or considering it.

Sorry to kid. But just think about how impossible it is for your to predict what your life is going to be like in four or six years… being ready for anything is the only rational strategy. So, why exactly are you planning on the future being just like it is now, but with better uniforms?”