Worse, predicting the future can be a way of trying to control it. Since the future is what we make, limiting our openness to change, setting our expectations on the level horizon ahead of us, affects the future we are trying to make together. Here's an example. Make your prediction. But the truth is that we don't know and we can't know because the Web is unleashing new forces.
TV makes couch potatoes.
We're unable to talk back to the broadcasters, and, more important, we in the audience are unable to talk with one another while watching. The Web is a phenomenal medium for enabling huge numbers of people to communicate behind the backs of broadcasters. So, the commercial that's insulting to me and to you now via the Web we can make fun of together. This type of active audience simply has never existed before on this scale. We can't know because the Web's going to change the nature of broadcast TV to shape it to the will of a new type of active audience that's just beginning to emerge.