In well-developed countries, I believe we are reaching a asymptotic bound on how much further we can improve the efficiency in our lives. We have washing machines, dishwashers, microwaves, toaster ovens, robotic vacuum machines and various other time-saving devices. True, these will only become better and faster, but the leaps and bounds over the last 100 years will be hard to beat.

I thus predict (well, it’s already happened over the last 20 years) a change in demand from “hard” products to “soft” products. Hard products being defined as something tangible that you can hold, and soft being the (mathematical) complement to hard products–things you cannot hold onto, or touch.

Soft products would include watching movies at a movie theater, going skiing, traveling, eating at restaurants, exercising, concerts etc… The list goes on and on. Included in this list could be demand for products such as MySpace or Facebook, which help document these soft product experiences–fittingly, a social network cannot be touched as well.

The shift from hard to soft products is most easily characterized by the shift to a service economy. All of the above soft products are service based–they require a service to function.

Perhaps this has already been defined previous to me (probably 20 years ago!)–but I believe the internet has amplified soft product exposure and availability. Soft products can be easily shared through Web 2.0 services–flickr, YouTube, blogs, and the aforementioned social networking devices.

The coming years, supposing a steady or consistent growth of income will only expedite this adaptation. During the coming decade, I predict the leaps and bounds of health, education, and social equity changes will drive further growth into the soft product industry. There is already strong rebellion against product advocacy–Palahniuk’s Fight Club being the most fitting example off the top of my head–a glorification of experience, and damnation of hard products.

Granted, this is not as much a shift from hard products to soft products, but more of an addition of demand. Because our incomes have far outgrown our demand for hard products (well, at least the marginal happiness we gain from “one more washing machine” is much less), we crave something new–our brains have decided that experiences and soft products are a good thing to add into the mix.

Now that wiretapping (or alternatively, “tapping” to see who is sharing what music files) is well known to the general public, I predict one or more of the following:
1. Individuals/businesses will spend more to ensure communications are even MORE secure (SSL, encrypted conversations, legal teams)
2. This above spending will subside in 5 years time, once either wiretapping stops, or businesses forget (less they be reminded through media coverage)
3. Wiretapping will stop within 5 years due to privacy advocates becoming angry (and a shift of political opinion)

Other notables: in the future it will take on iTunes and MTV (?!?) on the path to consume MySpace Music.

Google doesn’t make phones. They have made a few mobile applications. My prediction: Google is competing with Microsoft here. The Gphone will not reach the “cool” market that the iPhone has targeted and succeeded with in the past. Microsoft has tried and succeeded in certain markets for years with their mobile OS to do what Google (presumably) is trying to do. I believe both companies (GOOG and MSFT) are approaching the product from the same frame.

Google’s products have OK design. Take Google’s search engine–it’s simple. KISS rules (Keep it Simple Stupid). And yes, gmail is pretty good too, but there are still times where I am confused by the interface–sometimes the flat boring colors are just that–flat and boring.

Apple is the behemoth of Industrial Design, and I highly doubt Samsung+Google+Verizon, or some other permutation of companies will be able to compete easily with Apple’s iPhone. Key word here: easily. Perhaps they’ll be battling the iPhone, but I doubt it.

In short: Gphone is battling Windows Mobile–not the iPhone.

Tech Crunch coverage
GigaOM Gphone Coverage

In the end it’s better for the “consumer” either way–more competition means a better product, and that’s good for everyone. Choice drives innovation, and hopefully in this case, trust in Google will lead to a great product that lots of people use. Do no evil indeed.

A counterpoint
TechCrunch coverage

Confirmation through academia is nice, however. Research done at INSEAD has shown that consumers feel more rich when using a lower valued nominal currency. As an example, they state the following:

“Imagine going to the bakery with FF65 in your wallet and buying a baguette for FF6.50. You’d have FF58.50 left over after the purchase. Now imagine going with €10 in your wallet and spending €1 on the baguette. You’d have €9 left over.

Psychologically, the 9 euro currency units feel a lot less than the 58.5 French franc currency units. So you end up feeling poorer when both your budget and the price you pay are measured in a low – as opposed to high – numerosity currency. The existing research until now didn’t look at the effect of taking your budget into account and so came up with different results.”

In conclusion, I’ll be changing out all of my money for pennies to ease the burden of the slacking US dollar performance.

Luckily the web has graced us with trackback links, to trace a post to it’s original owner. That and the ability of links in certain posts to state at the end of a news story where they received their information. Combined, this could prove to be a way of “verifying” where the original person found their news.

The news process would essentially be a simple tree, with the source node being at the very top of the tree. Depending on how many posts post about that original post, and so forth until the latest posts are counted, one could generate a relative “popularity.” One could also form a system of linking to the original article, which would be the most useful to the reader, and would lend the most credibility to a the original poster/page (say, in Google PageRank).

This will be the next challenge of the web–wikipedia is already tackling the problem in their own way. Eventually, the above system could weed out “the middle men,” and move towards less clicking, and happier users. This system should not be lumped with centralization of information–granted, any blog could be the original poster/news post, thus all blogs that are “useful” will benefit, as well as benefiting the users, and improving blog quality (automatically!).

Although there are questions regarding the ethics that Stein mysteriously leaves out of the equation, I do agree with Stein’s remark about our pals in China:

“(And let’s not forget our dear pals in China, who are offsetting all of our “green” efforts a million times over with their ruthless murder of the planet in the form of massive, unchecked pollution of the air and water.)”

My thought on this is that it’s all in the name. Government organizations are widely recognized for their extensive bureaucracy, and the only way to include the entire tree of departments is through an acronym. Starting from the top organization down to the specific department doing work.

It’s really just an economy of space.

The great thing is that one could argue that this is a place where markets excel–marketing (no pun intended). Perhaps people would recall the name of a program if it was catchy and developed after years of market research. Apply this theory to Medicare (which, although has a short name without an acronym, is not thoroughly adopted) and hey, we’ve got a cheap way to expand adoption of the program.