If 6 out of 17 predictions correct with the only unambiguously correct predictions being trivial or vague is "nailing it," then I probably won't be taking stock advice from you any time soon. On the other hand, predicting the future is kind of hard. IsaacL made some really conservative predictions, sticking to things that seemed obvious. In fact, most of the wrong ones would be perfectly reasonable predictions for the next 10 years. It just goes to show how hard making predictions really is.

Below is how I calculated 6 out of 17 predictions correct

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> Facebook will not be displaced by another social network. It will IPO some time in the next two years.

Correct

> Twitter will become profitable, but not as much as some expect. It will be less profitable than Facebook, and may sell to another company.

Correct (profitable since last year)

> Microsoft will .. have shrunk and may have evolved into a consultancy company on the lines of IBM

Wrong

> Internet Explorer will shrink, but won't go away

Correct? (debatable, since software never completely goes away, but MS is no longer developing it and Edge doesn't use the same rendering engine)

> Chrome OS or a similar operating system that relies on web access may grow extremely slowly at first, before rapidly gaining share amongst certain market segments. It will be most successful in places like cities that grant free municipial wifi access.

Wrong

> Mobile phones won't replace computers, but increasing penetration amongst the poorest in developing countries, and increasingly capable handsets in developed countries (and developing countries) will make them a colossal juggernaut. Many of the really big changes, especially social changes, will be caused by mobiles.

This was already true in 2010, so it doesn't even count.

> For any definition of 'success', there will be more tech startups reaching that level in the 2010s than in the 2000s. For example, there will be more than four startups of Youtube/Facebook/Twitter/Zynga proportions.

Wrong.

> In addition, at least one of the 'big' startups of the second half of the decade will have been possible with 2009 technology. By this I mean that people will still be discovering new potential for browser-based web applications built with current client-side technologies, which will remain ubiquitous, although new alternatives will appear.

Correct, but the predication that there will be at least one new web-based startup is not very interesting.

> It will be an even better time to start a startup in 2020 than it is now. One of the key drivers of ease-of-starting-up-ness will not be new technology, but new platforms - like Facebook and viral marketing, but better; or that solve other problems like micropayments, customer development, retention, and so on.

Wrong.

> Hence, starting up will become a more attractive career option, though well-meaning family will still say "at least finish your degree first".

Wrong.

> As Moore's Law marches on, dynamic languages that are even slower than Ruby are likely to catch on. They may be to Ruby what Ruby is to Java, trading even more programmer time for CPU time.

Wrong.

> Having said that, Moore's law will at least hiccup and may stop altogether in the middle of the decade, as semiconductor feature widths drop below 11nm. Since this will likely encourage investment in quantum computing and nanotechnology, by 2020 we might be seeing something faster than Moore's Law.

Wrong, IMO (transistors are still on the curve, but the performance impact of adding more transistors doesn't matter the same way it used to; but he cited Moore's Law specifically, so he's wrong).

> An international deal, of the kind that was aimed for at Copenhagen, will be reached over the next five years, though it might not be far-reaching enough to limit warming to 2 degrees in the long-term. (Despite the failure of the Copenhagen talks, it appears that world leaders almost universally recognize the need to take action over man-made climate change, though the various political problems will remain hard problems). China may not be part of such a deal, though the US likely will. Environmental disasters will begin to increase through the decade, as will disasters that are probably not caused by anthropogenic global warming but will be blamed by it anyway; this will provoke more of a push for action.

Wrong.

> Increasing fuel prices, and green taxes or incentives, will mean large shops will begin to replaced by warehouses, as traditional retail gives way to home delivery.

Wrong, but only because he cited a reason. Otherwise, the prediction that brick-and-mortar stores will continue to be replaced would have been correct.

> China will not become a democracy, or even make moves in that direction. However the rule of law will strengthen, and some civil liberties will increase. Internet crackdowns will continue, and may increase in severity, and will still be rationalized by porn.

I want to say the civil liberties situation in China is the same, but I don't know enough about China to comment on it.

> Despite multiple new fads that purport to make software development ten times faster and error-free, it will remain a hard problem.

Correct, but trivial. Of course writing better software is hard.

> You still won't be able to talk to your fridge, and gesture-based HCI will remain a fun gimmick.

I'm counting this as wrong because of Alexa.

> Virtual worlds like Second Life will remain niche, but World of Warcraft will pass 20 million users and a Facebook game or similar will pass 200 million users.

Wrong.

> The next big thing will be something totally unknown and unpredictable now, as user-generated content and social networking were in 1999. However, when it does appear, various 'experts' on it will spring from nowhere to lecture us all about it. It will still be really cool, though.

Wrong, but maybe I'm forgetting about some big tech thing in the 2010s. It seems that the biggest disprupters was a modernization of cab companies and hotel bookings. We may be on the dawn of several actually unpredicted new things, like driverless cars and the use of neural networks for some kind of cool new applications, but there's been no killer app. These are hopefuls on the horizon, not profitable products and industries.