Make predictions about anything is a tricky business. It is often fraught with problems compounded by two factors: too many variables and too many people.

Making predictions in the world of technology is almost as hard as it gets. You see a trend, a fad or fashion a new, jump on it, extrapolate, then go and get it all completely wrong.

As an example, on the eve of the 20th century, it was predicted that the passenger air balloon – for the first time by the likes of Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin – mass consumption would become the pre-eminent means of public transport . In fact, it would be so popular by the 1980s, people who have their own personal air balloon as their main mode of transportation.

Obviously, this look into the future, ignoring the plane, which ended the pearl of the forecast.

The main problem is that people feel like it does in so painfully straight lines as the previous example shows. The phone is another good example, who could have predicted mobile phones at the time of Alexander Graham Bell was fuss around with the technological equivalent of paper cups and string wet?

No one could have. Besides, how could anyone have predicted that these mobile phones one day have built in cameras? Or you can send messages written on them? You only have to go back 10 years, and these ideas would be derided as silly nonsense.

The future is somewhat curly, and in the wonderful world of information technology, the driving force behind much of the confusion is convergence.

Now there’s a buzz word, if I hear one. And this becomes a major problem that comes with the prediction of future trends in technology: we will have two really cool gizmos and combine them, people will love it!

Err, no! What drives the desire is unknown. What drives the need to use is: two very different parts of the brain are being exercised here, one more than the other!

If something does not comply with a practical purpose, then neither use nor ornament.

This future, predicting what is even more difficult these days, but in a way, even the most outlandish theory may have its day. Things are changing so rapidly that new technologies are emerging literally overnight. And because people’s needs are also changing, evolving, and emerging, who knows?

Going further back, the desire, the need – call it what you will – has a common origin. The engine of change is people, society, lifestyle, and a requirement for management, change route and / or where appropriate, delegate all of this data and information.

The Apple Newton was ahead of its time. A lot of smart guys n girls’ sitting in a room and made a remarkable prediction about how people “consume” the data and information, and they were right on the money – the only problem is that there were over 10 years!

Now, people are moving. People work in the movement, hold down long-distance relationships, working with colleagues across time zones and maintaining bank accounts in a cafe over a cup of chai.

The only certainty is the same that was pontificated since time immemorial: things change. Things often come together.