A Quirky Set of Technology Predictions for 2012

The yearly technology forecasting game tends to be too earnest and too obvious. In part, that is because when the big research houses, like IDC and Gartner, prepare their lists, it is a consensus of their analysts. And why not? The strength of the large research firms is their deep benches — the breadth and depth of their industry smarts. The results, though, are works of what today is called collective intelligence and what used to be called a committee.

A bracing contrast comes from Mark R. Anderson, chief executive of the Strategic News Service, a predictive technology newsletter. His list is decidedly the idiosyncratic work of one man. If distance lends perspective, he has it; Mr. Anderson resides in Friday Harbor (WA), a town on San Juan Island, about halfway between Seattle and Vancouver.

Here are a few of Mr. Anderson’s prognostications:

• “TV becomes the new center of gravity in the tech universe, as all other devices find their niches in the TV galaxy.” Signs of progress, he said, will include Microsoft’s deeper integration of Kinect, its voice- and gesture-controlled add-on to the Xbox, to television sets. And “smartphone TV integration software becomes a new category,” he said.
• “Google loses technology control of Android,” Anderson said, as Asian manufacturers increasingly develop unlicensed versions of Google’s open-source operating system for smartphones and tablets.
• “Siri stuns the world,” he said. The door will open to more Siri-style digital personal assistants. “It’s not unlikely that we’ll see duels between assistants, a la ‘Jeopardy’ for handhelds, as the media gets the idea,” he said.