So, I was listening to the seminars over at the Long Now Foundation (well worth the time to listen to, IMHO), and hit the one about why foxes are better at predicting then hedgehogs. You can pretty much stop reading at this point, as nothing else I’m going to say is going to be as interesting (especially the Vernor Vinge interview). But it inspired me to go back over my record. Specifically, the last time I sat down and tried to make serious, concrete predictions- which was at Bogonomicon (which is now dead, if the “last updated in 2003″ isn’t enough of a clue).

Unfortunately for me, the score isn’t good. Of nine predictions I made, only one inarguably came true. And half of a second one. But I hope to score some points for 1) being intellectually honest enough to admit I’m wrong, and 2) being wrong for interesting reasons. More after the break.

1) Dean will win in a landslide. Wrong. Not only didn’t not win in a landslide, he didn’t even win the primary. I overestimated the impact the internet would have, and underestimated the impact the media slime job would have (including some incredibly viscous ads from the Kerry/Gephardt campaigns). The broadcast media is still the political gatekeepers in this country, and the Washington Beltway establishment the cool kids. Worse yet, the structure of the primary season gives incredible advantage to the establishment candidate. There is no time to start late, or to recover from mistakes. We’re not going to get a Matt Santos or Josiah Barlett as a candidate because neither of them won Iowa. Heck, we won’t even get another Bill Clinton- that loser lost both Iowa and New Hampshire. This front-loaded primary season means that the race is effectively over before the first ballot is cast, or before even the first caucaus is held. It’s being decided now, by money and institutional support. The campaigns also have to be organized, and with boots on the ground, much earlier- as there is no time to grow an organization later. Basically, if you don’t already have an organization at this point (March-April ‘07), it’s getting awfully late to get into the Presidential race.

2) Intel will announce a 64-bit x86 chip. Right. I’m not sure if they did it in 2004, but it was close, so I’m calling this one my way.

3) 2004 will be the year of Linux on the desktop. Wrong. Nor was 2005, 2006, or 2007. And, the Dell news not withstanding, it doesn’t look like 2008 is going to be it either. My prediction was basically that a) Linux had, or would soon acheive, full parity with Windows, and b) disgust and annoyance with Windows would drive people to abandon it for the obviously superiour alternative. I was write about most things- Linux has acquired yet more polish and capability (Ubuntu, for example), and the virus problem is still a huge deal. And longhorn was abandoned, and it’s successor, Vista, was delayed longer than than I would have dreamed possible. What I missed was that all of this would still not be enough to get people to switch. Worse yet, I’ve started seeing defections from Linux. Not to Windows- but to the Mac. Surprisingly enough Apple got geek cred. Not that Linux is dying, by any stretch of the imagination. It’s just not exploding onto the desktop of non-geeks.

4) The Blair Goverment falls. Wrong. Unlike the Bush administration, the Blair administration is actually fairly competent, and has several acomplishments to it’s credit, and no other major diasters. As such, it’s managed to sidestep major political consequences. I expected the backlash against the war to be much sooner, and much more dramatic. Also, I know diddly about English politics.

5) The US pulls out of Iraq. Because Lord knows it’d be freakin’ nuts to still be in Iraq five years later. I mean, the Bush administration is a bunch of psychopathic criminals, but they’re not effin stupid. Karl Rove, if nothing else, wouldn’t let them be. What can I say- maybe between Plame and Abramoff, Rove got a little distracted on this one.

6) A new bill will be introduced into congress mandating DRM. I could probably weasle my way out of this, finding something stupid publicity stunt bill that never made to the committee, let alone back out again. But the real gist of my prediction- that the bill would stand a decent chance of being passed due to the lobbying influence of major corporations- was wrong, thank god. Better yet, not only was I wrong, I’m getting wronger. The net neutrality issue was effectively decided in favor of the internet. Increasing numbers of politically important people (including the chair of the DNC) are viewing the free internet as an ally and friend, and not as an evil beast who needs to be tamed. A bill mandating DRM would face a much tougher time now than it would have four years ago.

7) There will be more Enron-style financial scandals. Wrong. Mainly, I think, because “Bubbles” Greenspan kept money so cheap that it was possible to keep a house of cards financial chicanary going longer. As the current housing bubble “crisis” is showing. The era of cheap money is ending, however.

8) The Athlon-64’s will top 3GHz, while the P-4’s won’t top 4GHz. Well, I got the second part right. This is the half-right prediction. It’s only been very recently (last few months) that the Athlon’s have hit 3GHz- and that only due to the pressure of the Intel’s new Core. The P4 never did hit 4GHz. I certainly did not see the power wall we’ve seem to have hit, or the explosion of multi-core chips. Or rather, I didn’t see them happening now- 10, 20 years from now yeah, but not now.

9) Dean will have long coattails. I’m not sure how to call this one- but, with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight, I’m calling it wrong. Oddly enough, in a sense I’m right. With Dean at the head of the DNC running a fifty state campaign, we didn’t in effect sweep the 2006 election- including a number of wins in states we wouldn’t have guessed in 2003. So I could make the argument that Dean did have long coattails. You could also argue that the Democrats didn’t so much win 2006, as the Republicans lost it, or that we won because of the netroots, or a great slate of cannidates, or a good electoral map, or just luck. But even if you agree (for sake of argument) that Dean won the 2006 election, was there time for him to have effected the 2004 elections? I think not. If anything, having Dean out of the presidential election freed up volunteer time for more local campaigns. And it’s not like the netroots gave up and went home. Any advantage Dean would have had did get confered, at least mostly, to Kerry.

I was going to follow this up with my predictions for the comming four years, but in doing so, I realized two things. 1) I don’t think anything all that interesting or surprising will happen in the technology field in the next couple of years. Clock speeds will stay low, number of cores on a chip will continue to double according to Moore’s law, AMD will come out with a tweaked microarchitecture that will be incredibly similiar to the core- all of this is just predicting business as usual.

Politically and economically, everything depends upon one single question: are we going to attack Iran or not. I’m 60/40 that we’re not going to attack Iran. But that means I think there’s a not insignifigant chance we will. And the two scenarios that I see, predicated on us attacking Iran or not, are so different that I see little commonality. If we attack Iran, I expect Iran to retaliate by taking pot shots at oil tankers in the Persian Gulf. They’ve threatened to, they would have no reason not to, and oil tankers are a lot easier to hit than US battleships. But if Iran is taking pot shots at oil tankers in the gulf and staights, that would drive the price of oil way up, and possibly way way up. $6/gal gasoline would be the low end of what I’d expect. The economic and political consequences (to the US and the world) be enormous and hard to underestimate. If we don’t attack Iran, however, we fall back into a business as usual. $3/gal gasoline, slowly attained, has a very different economic effect than prices doubling literally overnight.

Not to mention the fact that I apparently suck at prediction.

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