Welcome to CNET Top 5, where each time we meet we count down another prescient
CNET list. I'm Tom Merritt.
2008 was pretty rotten. Especially if you were a stock or a house. Time to put this year
to a close and look at a brighter tomorrow.
So I pondered the 23rd quatrain of the prophesies while in my sweatlodge last night and
now I'm ready to count down my Top 5 Tech predictions for 2009.
At No. 5, Good-bye GPS. This year the smartphone will suck in the portable GPS device
the way it has the MP3 player and PDA before it. It will be survived by it's cousin, in-
dash GPS.
Coming in at No. 4, a mind control game peripheral will hit the mainstream. These things
already exist. The only question is whether Microsoft, Sony, or Nintendo will boost their
game sales by introducing one to the masses. Bonus prediction. It won't work as well as it
did in the labs.
Up to No. 3, Android will outsell iPhone. The openness of Google's Android platform
and the unleashing of several devices on multiple carriers will make Google's phone OS
top dog.
Sliding in at No. 2, Bandwidth riots. OK, maybe not with pitchforks and torches, but the
showdown between ISPs and regular users, not just the top 1 percent, is going come to
an angry head before the year is out. Mark my words.
Before we get to No. 1, let's look at some of the best astute predictions being made out
there on the Internet by others. Three years running on the someone buys Yahoo meme!
All right. Let's get to our No. 1. My top prediction for 2009.
At No. 1, It's...
A disastrous security breach. One so large and so damaging it causes the Internet
protocols to be seriously revamped for the first time in the modern era. Our system of
transferring data on the Internet is admitted to be outdated by any of its top experts. This
year something big will either take down the Internet, or cause a data security breach of
such massive proportions that RFCs on e-mail, http, and TCP/IP will rise again.
Cheery wasn't it?
Well That's it for this edition of CNET Top 5. Look for our worst predictions of 2008 for
a grading card on how I and others did last year.
I'm Tom Merritt. See you next time.
