Pandora, last.fm, playlist.com, music blogs, plus the future. Because playing files is less convenient than going to a website.

I have four devices to listen music on (my desktop PC, my mac laptop, my iPhone, and my car). Moving mp3s between all four is a pain.

There could be 3 checkboxes by each mp3 for "where else do I want this." If I check "Car," it connects via Wi-Fi and drops it there.

Microsoft can't hack cloud computing though. It's 2009 and between my laptop and desktop, file-sharing only works one way. (Guess which!)

All paragraphs written with Twitter's 140 character length constraint.

Ten years from now, there will be no more phone rings. Instead, everybody will live in a world of dings. Dings for emails, txts, tweets, wall-postings, voicemail. Phone will probably just go straight to vibrate for most people, if even that.

This thought came to me when just now, I received three beeps that I received a new email. One from my Mac Gmail notifier, one from my Windows Gmail notifier, and one from my iPhone.

In Saudi Arabia, cell phone penetration is at 170%! If you sit in the car of a local, you'll find their deck filled with cell phones, each for a different purpose.

We will be there too.

I'm going to keep riding my predictions kick.

My belief is that Obama will win a second term, but in 2014 he will be faced with a majority (or near-majority) Republican congress, and by 2016 a Republican will be president and/or the Republicans will have the majority of Congress.

This libertarian movement that we saw in this most recent election will further gain root because of the tripling of the number of voting-age video gamers. Video gamers are skewed toward libertarian thinking because they spend more than a third of their waking lives as a lone, self-reliant avatar against the oppressive forces that be. This has an effect on their cognition, which then affects their politicization. As a result, the Republicans will find their voice around 2014 by co-opting libertarian principles.

Obama will still be a great speaker, and his policies will have made great strides. However, the Democrats in Congress will have become so drunk with power that they will engulf themselves in scandal. Some of that scandal might happen close to Obama's inner circle, but Obama himself will keep his nose clean.

This is pretty much how I view the future and the past two thousand years:

From Kurzweil's PowerPoint at TED.

Here's my response to all of this:

Imagine all the creative ways that technology will continue to plague us. Imagine the possibilities!

I can probably see the presence of Twitter pools in the form of Twitter knock-offs. Your mom will use some multi-Social-Networking-Service spam device to post on your MySpace/Facebook/Twitter to "Please come check out my [Insert Trendy Name for Family-Values Twitter knock-off]." There will be Twitters for goths. Twitters for dating.

Also, people will become less scared of non-YouTube sites, as almost every video sharing site has the same exact features and ease-of-use. Webcams will be integrated into every screen (including cell phones), and everybody will be video logging. EVERYBODY. Imagine!

What will the future be like 10 years from now? If you're Microsoft, you think it will look like Minority Report.

Here's a portion of my take on "the future will be boring" theme. It focuses on where social trends may end up in 2019:

The Mormon population in the United States will increase from 5 Million to 8 Million. A knock-off "purpose-driven" Mormon-lite movement will form and eventually take the country by storm. Abstinence education will have become more popular, not less (although still not work). Now the vast majority of parents will have at least tried drugs. Marijuana will become legal but will also become increasingly uncool. Kids, being the willful contrarians that they are, will become more straight edge and abstain from drugs. They will still be slackers, but instead of flaunting their "could-give-a-fuck" attitude, they'll be obsessed with authenticity. They will be reactionaries to what they perceive as an over-saturation of "reality" TV (now the majority of television programming) and fake YouTubes.

There will be more strange admixtures of culture and conservatism. If you thought Christian Rock was annoying, wait till Christian Rap becomes the norm at mega no-drug festivals, where tattoos, black clothing, piercings, and tattoos are the norm, but it's "not cool man" if you toke. Cigarette smoking will go the way of California, and become both more unhip and banned.

As urban density continues its perpetual rise, so will the number of blue states. The number of states legalizing gay marriage will be maybe 10-15. Polygamists will start asking to come out of the closet and be beating down the door of the Supreme Court (thanks in no small part to the hit Big Love, by then a classic with 7 seasons on Blu-ray).

This is Microsoft's Vision of 2019:

Here's a relevant quote from Bill Gates:

The video is well done. Although, when I imagine the real future, I see more people addicted to MMORPGs like World of Warcraft. And instead of pretty glass interfaces wherever we go, I see social media pop-ups. Chairs in restaurants will stop facing each other as everybody is texting and updating their feeds, even on dates.

(via RNA Labs)