Ahhhh.  But it will not just be this blog that you will witness rising to technorati top spot greatness.  For you underestimate the genius of my hotly-anticipated rise to blogging awesomeness.  I have splashed out on several rather lovely domains, all of which I will be paying people minuscule amounts to write content for, in the off chance that I get around to gaming Digg and Slashdot to get some traffic.  Then we’ll be in moolah.  Well… I will be(,) anyway.

Oh yeah and I might get around to finishing the 5 posts I’ve started for this blog, and getting some SEO (and ads?) on.

Artificial Intelligence
The sophistication of weak AI will continue to increase, and will be adopted in future web startups.  I envisage this being used more in the area of online entertainment than anything else, for example in interfaces, information filtering for media, etc.  I reckon strong AI will be with us by the end of the decade if progress continues at such a rapid rate.  Not only will this be the biggest technological revolution of all time, it will change our lives in ways which have been dreamt of since the industrial revolution, and in ways which I have yet to imagine.  It will signify the effective pinnacle of human development, and the start of a new age of immortality and human obsolescence.

Interfacing & Communicating
It’s come on vast amounts in the last decade, with the rise of the mobile internet, the iPhone, the cloud and social networks.  But there is so much that is happening now and in the coming months and years.  Properly utilising touchscreens, 3D TV, and gesture based interaction are all maturing now, with so much more still to come.

Payments
This decade will see the fall of cash, and the redundancy of cards.  In our mission for convenience, payments will come to our phones, along with everything else, and.  Once one of the more innovative internet behemoths – Google or eBay – embraces the technology, banks will suddenly all follow suit to adopt what will be an overdue and welcome simplification to our lives.

The coming together of technology
We have already seen so much come to our phones – cameras, the internet, and soon, payments – and this trend is only going to continue.  But as well as our pockets getting emptier as more and more is packed into our phones, the web will become more centralised too. We’ll see a rise in collaborative information filtering – the technology that powers personalised recommendations – and, as we are already witnessing with Twitter, the rise of the stream.  Google Wave will never replace email, but eventually some other incarnation of the stream will.

Privacy
Our attitudes towards privacy have certainly evolved over the last few years, and they will continue to evolve as privacy becomes opt-in and making everything public is the default.  As more of our friends join us on the internet, we become less concerned about who can see what, only with publishing as much as possible.  But maybe by the end of the decade we’ll see a resurgence in privacy as social networking evolves.

The fall of Facebook, and rise of Riva
How could I post my predictions without some shameless self-promotion? Facebook’s desire to be more than your social network – to be your online ID – I don’t think will work out without some major changes to the core functionality of the service, which won’t happen any time soon.  The coming of “streams” will be will alter the way we communicate, and will form “Web 3.0″.  A standardised, semantic and personalised web, where the content you like is streamed straight to you.  This is one of my aims with Riva, as now is the time a site will get it right and end up being people’s ID and home in the internet.
But whether it’s Riva or not, the next decade’s gonna be awesome.

Unlike other things that have affected our communication like phones, texts, emails and even Twitter, Facebook allows, encourages, and practically enforces superficiality, through features such as the “like” button and apps.  But these form part of the reason why Facebook is so successful.  These features are addictive.  And for many, it is the self-affirming nature of Facebook that keeps them there.

Facebook, like phones and texts before it, is changing communication.  But at the same time it is changing us, its users.  By making alternate and superficial personas  so easy to maintain, it is turning us into self-interested narcissists, and on a wider scale damaging society.  It is the global warming of the internet.

So why do I not just delete my account I hear you ask? It’s because there is no alternative that features the core of Facebook: my friends. And until they pick up another service there is little point me migrating. But will there be another service that we will move to? What could tempt people off the fastest growing social network in the world?

I believe Facebook will continue to be the network of choice to have an account on to keep in touch with friends and acquaintences. It will continue to attract a crowd of all ages, and as such will be unable to introduce desired features such as integrated music, profile customisation and public video and photo galleries, to avoid losing it’s raison d’être: it’s professionalism in networking.

I think it is unlikely any of the current major networks will change enough to satisfy the demand for something better. Changing the service so much is too great a risk for them. So it’s up to another social network to take Facebook’s crown. It will happen, sooner rather than later. And by the close of the coming decade we will have our omnipotent social network victor, and it will not be any of the current ones. Not even Twitter.

That’s the crappy lame introduction over. I’ll have to rewrite it some time. Anyway, now I’ve welcomed you to my world, sortof, watch this space, as it’s bound to be fascinating.

Signing off,
Alec