Many years ago I was a budding Futurist (not an Italian painter), someone who supposedly could facilitate groups through a process of imagining their own futures in whatever area of specialist industry they work in. I learned tools like Delphi and scenario planning. Admittedly, I wasn’t very good and so carried on being a writer….but the future still fascinates and daunts me in equal measure.

I’ve written many columns over the years about technology innovations and trends that would change the way we work/travel/make fun etc. The timescale is usually a couple of years. Looking back through this archive of deadlines missed (isn’t Google great for finding those articles you wish were buried), some technologies are finally taking hold. I first wrote about M2M in 2002, and while the there are tens of millions of connected devices in operation today, its not the billions I expected.

But does it really matter if you get the timescales wrong? (Admittedly, it does with catastrophic events like climate change) What’s important are ideas. So here are a few of the standout tech memes for the next 10 years, even though some are already 10-20 years old. Maybe their time has come…

• Convergence of robots, artificial intelligence and genetics: we’re all doomed said Bill Joy in his famous “Why the future doesnt need us”  - from Wired back in 2000
• Spimes and blobjects - the chatter of a vast internet of self-regulating motes. Bruce Sterling again.
• Vernor Vinge’s Singularity (concerned with transhumanism), Bruce Sterling’s repose, and Ray Kurzweil’s singularity (an update to the Age of Spiritual Machines)
• Why we should all live in cities if we want to save the natural world – Stewart Brand’s seminar at SALT
• Good Enough technology revolution (where the best fails, and the quick/cheap/dirty fix dominates) versus The Long Tail where niche rocks.
• Expanding cone of uncertainly and problems with predicting technological revolutions by Paul Saffo at the Institute of the Future

Could you recommend some other prophecies and memes for the Tens?