My general thoughts about tech predictions like these:

1. Anything involving display technologies is likely to be way off in either direction (and you have no idea which). In 2003 it was "obvious" that we'd have mass market flexible displays and e-ink billboards. We aren't there, but we focused on drastically increased resolution, color, brightness, and touch parallax distance instead.

2. Our lifestyles 10 years from $PRESENT aren't likely to look shockingly different. We'll still go the grocery store, go to parties, complain about in-laws, and wear blue jeans. The sunglasses-as-contact-lense prediction fails mostly on this point. It only considers the "wouldn't it be spiffy" aspect of the technology and ignores the market considerations. People like sunglasses. Similar for the selective noise-canceling ear plugs: the technology is not the issue. Convincing the general consumer market to buy and use such a thing is.

3. This is my personal opinion (and I've stated it before on HN), but as technology gets more advanced, expect future styles and gadgets to look LESS futuristic, not more. The iPhone Watch is a perfect example. If anything I would expect to see more vintage watches with overt technology increasingly disappearing... first into our pockets, then our eyeglasses, then our contacts, then ultimately into implantable neural interfaces. The OUTSIDE world will probably become more... I hate to say this... kitschy. Multi-material high-precision 3D printing will likely accelerate this. I may have Google Glasses, but I still want a steampunk pocket watch.

4. We can be fairly confident that the future will bring a plethora of new sensors that come standard on our mobile devices. Everything from the existing cameras, accelerometers, and GPS to (perhaps) software-defined radio transceivers, ultrasound, terahertz imaging, and other things we can't think of right now. What I DON'T think we can predict is which sensors will be mainstream and which will be niche. Nor do I think we can confidently say "at some point everyone will be carrying a device more powerful than a tricorder". Again, market forces dominate here.

5. Speaking of software-defined radio, I expect SDR will be a big thing in the next decade, but I have no idea what that will mean. Some things, like cognitive radio and the disappearance of special purpose transceiver chips are likely, but SDR is the kind of thing that can bring innovations few of us can predict. There are other "disruptive" technologies like this: nano-engineering, synthetic biology, metamaterials, 3D printing, quantum computing, memristors, and so forth. What they will ultimately enable (and which things we take for granted will be made obsolete) is anyone's guess.

As silly as these future predictions usually are, I'd really like to see Wired (and other publications) do more "rolling prediction-retrospective-prediction" formats like this. If we were more disciplined about analyzing our past predictions and figuring out what went wrong and what went right, maybe we would get a little more accurate in our predictions. It's also more entertaining copy than just a new list of predictions every year.

I think, on the whole, we're actually witnessing a slow "maturation" of the whole future-prediction schtick. As an example, future predictions today seem far less wonky and out there than, say, predictions of the year 2000 in 1950. A good example of this can be seen in the 2023 predictions of this article. They are more reserved and conservative. This line bodes well for us:

"Look, this was a dumb idea, okay? We admit it. You know what you'll wear in 2023 to protect your eyes for the sun? Sunglasses."