Looking Ahead at Tech in 2012

One thing we do know is that our capacities for computation and communication and control will continue to grow. The constant change in the technology industry makes it fundamentally different from the political world, say. It's never "same stuff, different year" in technology, which is why you should prepare yourself with our list of stories to be on the lookout for next year.

• Governments reach for the social media controls
• iPhone 5
• The children of Stuxnet
• SOPA
• Paywalls
• The 2012 Presidential election
• Our evolving privacy expectations
• The Cloud
• Computing devices continue to follow gaming devices
• Start-ups bloom