2007

2007. What will happen in 2007? It seems a lot like 2006, almost as if it were a continuance. While Romanians and Bulgarians woke up and felt more EUish (what effect on sex slavery in these countries?), I don't know that many people will see much of a difference other than a hangover.

What will happen during 2007? A few things are almost certain. Since I deal mainly with technology, I'll use that as the focus:

Technology

• Mac OS X 10.5 "Leopard" will get released.
• Windows Vista will suffer security issues.
• Linux will continue to dominate mobile devices, and the user desktop may be taken seriously by gaming companies as a worthwhile platform for gaming.
• The OLPC will continue to fail to meet the lofty goals set for it, and may rob some countries of money which could have been used to build infrastructure. The technologies used on the OLPC, if truly open, will be beneficial for adaptation around the world.
• Virtual Worlds, such as SecondLife, will fall out of their own virtual reality but will continue to be used as marketing platforms and in 2007 - political platforms. Like the internet, some opportunists will charge exorbitant fees to make presences for corporations in virtual worlds - but this will not last as long as the Dot-com bubble.
• SecondLife will begin a visible process toward open source, and issues of virtual economy, security and international law will become more visible to the average netizen through this.
• Global internet penetration will pass 30%.
• People will begin to understand that the 'desktop' is now a server for their devices - ranging from mobile phones to cameras, MP3 players to home automation.
• 'Free Software', as a phrase, will re-enter mainstream media as the media becomes more knowledgeable about software licensing and the Free Software Foundation puts down deeper community and organizational roots.
• Network Neutrality will continue to be an issue as telecommunications providers keep trying new business models and people (their customers) reject them.
• Practical renewable energy usage will increase in households throughout the world, and hardware manufacturers will make tentative steps toward creating computers powered by renewable energy.
• Computer disposal will become a more visible issue for developing nations.
• Language content on the web will shift to decrease the English bias, thus making content translation issues more visible to Anglophones.
• India and China will continue to prop their growing economies against each other while dealing with pollution and poverty.
• Software development in Africa will become more visible and used for outsourcing.
• 'Content Management System' will become a household phrase as bloggers seek more from their software and the archives of their content.
• Another rendition of WSIS will occur where little or no progress will happen. The Caribbean will have another Internet Governance Forum this year, where they will discuss the same things which they discussed in 2005 and 2006. Public pressure will increase globally as global internet penetration crosses 25%.
• Broadband will be tracked as a metric associated with global internet penetration.