The Year Ahead

By Lynne Greer Jolitz

January 24, 2005

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As is usual every year, I spent a bit of time after the holidays reading the tech predictions from all the usual suspects—tech gurus, product pundits, and biz buffs. Even the IPODs (the fans, not the gadget) have invaded the turf with their "Apple rules and Microsoft drools" gloating.

But for the most part, these predictions seem to have been cut from the 2004 magic eight ball: spam, security and search. Sure, we all know that spam is increasing, security is broken and search is cool. But is this really all there is to it—buzzwords?

While marketing people love inventing, reusing, and misusing buzzwords, technologists, scientists, architects, and engineers work from specifications where the words actually matter. And since money is made from products and services—not just IPOs—it's fair to ask if any of these predictions will spawn innovation and work. So let's take a look behind the curtain and put these trendy tips to the test.

Prediction One: Spam Spawns More Spam

To paraphrase Mark Twain, "Everyone talks about spam, but nobody does anything about it." Seems like spam makes the list every year, just like telemarketers and fax ads used to make the "top annoyances lists" a decade ago.

Most folks don't recall how commonplace those phone calls were in the mid-1990s, when a cheap PC with a modem board could dial thousands of local numbers and drop an automated message in your lap. The cost of telemarketing plummeted in this period dramatically, since you no longer needed dozens of phone lines and a boiler room full of people—just a few lines and a PC could more efficiently handle these messages.

Where did most of these telemarketers go? Well, with cheap PCs came even cheaper devices—answering machines. Call screening came into vogue. Cell phones became more popular (people began to disconnect from the land-lines). And statutes were enacted which made sending unsolicited faxes or automated telephone messages without a real person on the phone a crime.

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