No doubt the year ahead will be no less interesting than the year behind. For good or bad, the universe sorta works that way. I suppose it’s also true that the future wants to (as it always has) come rushing toward us like a puppy, head over heels, panting for love, yapping for attention and peeing all over itself (and us) from the pure joy of its arrival.

Puppy love or not, this year I find myself twisted inside-out, turned into a scowling cynic. Well, as twisted as ever, but more cynic than usual.

Now that Big Business owns the future, I fear that innovation is no longer really real. Instead of leaping into our arms, the future gets doled out to us when some Suit decides the time is right (or the money rich enough) for an unseemly profit. And what we’re being sold (most times) are bargain-priced replicas of the promised goods. Somewhere, I’m sure, someone somewhere really owns the real thing, but most of us get low-cost floor-sweepings from cheapo-land. Not only has Big Business sold our jobs, they’ve outsourced the future to the lowest bidder.

Why so bitter? In this week alone, a computer monitor died (moments after its warranty expired), a TV went blank (because Dell opted to use the cheapest possible chips) and my recently-replaced snowblower cable shredded and snapped (I now fear we import our wires, too). I’m frozen in place wondering what wonder of modern technology will implode next, its obsolescence carefully planned even as it was being born.
With all that in mind, these are my visions of the near future. Now do your part. Hurry, hurry, buy lots of stuff now so that everything can break in time for whatever waits in the wings.

1. HDTV pales next to Ultra-DTVâ„¢, which will be announced late in 2010, just in time for the next round of Holiday shopping.
2. More Hollywood films will shoot and deliver in 3D while lame adventures in 4D will go back to whatever dimension brought them. Will anyone care about the story anymore? Or just the space it lives in?
3. An Astonishing New Camera will manage to make Ultra-Defâ„¢ Video look better, brighter, bolder than film. Film gasps on, even as its image slowly fades away. Film is so 20th century anyway.
4. After six months & seven updates, the original version of The Astonishing New Camera will sell at Wal-Mart for $100 ($99 at Costco).
5. The netbook will grow smaller and smaller until it finally morphs into a smart-phone that slides into a shirt pocket.
6. A shirt-pocket-sized, solid-state drive holds two hours of Ultra-Defâ„¢ video. It sells for $100. Cheapo-land is named the exclusive manufacturer of shirt-pockets; price rises precipitously.
7. The Next Big Thing is the One-Com©. This amazing wonder shoots 3D stills & Ultra-Defâ„¢ video. It delivers concert-hall-quality sound, includes script writing software, an edit bay and a telescope. Even has a decent phone.
8. Someone finally figures out what kind of movie actually looks great on a wristwatch. Big Business sells lots of new Wristies© as Hollywood churns out endless new shows and millions watch. Meanwhile filmmakers keep waiting, keep waiting, keep waiting for their residuals.
9. Film unions begin to disintegrate as more indie productions shoot with more indie crews. Farewell pensions, bye-bye health-care, so long retirement. And everyone wonders when their deferred wages will arrive.
10. Cloud computing wins. No one owns anything. Hardware downloads everything from the ether. Big Business sells access to lots of clouds. Everyone else gets water vapor.
11. With ever-lower prices on hardware, Everyman is finally able to electronically encode endless images of everything. The results flood We-Tube©. We watch, eyes crossed. A rare few still make movies, even fewer remember what a real movie really is.
12. And as the year staggers toward the wings, I’ll have become a year older, though that’ll have little impact on me, less on the world.