Five years from now...

Interesting predictions from Seth Godin. They made me think...

Hard drive space is free

It's easy to see this happening already. Google's new gMail and Yahoo Briefcase are good examples. It's also remarkable how many places will host your images and other files for free.

Wifi like connections are everywhere

Yes, but with more and more Blade Runner/Minority Report-like advertising messages.

Connections speeds are 10 to 100 times faster

That would change everything. I wonder how much of today's hardware will be able to keep up with that. My hunch is that people are keeping their computer hardware longer. Are there any infrastructure barriers to this as well?

Everyone has a digital camera

No brainer. The camera is morphing into a device that is integrated into all kinds of other device platforms -- phones, PDA's, computers and camcorders.

Everyone carries a device that is sort of like a laptop, but cheap and tiny

I never would have believed that PDA sales would start tanking the way they have. Mine is indispensable. I guess they just don't improve productivity enough for many people. Whatever the replacement is, it will have to do a better job if it's going to take root.

The number of new products introduced every day is five times greater than now

At the rate things are coming out of China, it wouldn't surprise me. The growth in skilled product development and implementation there is mind boggling.

Wal-Mart's sales are three times as big

That's about 25% growth per year. They should easily get almost half that from their growth in the US. Factor in their international opportunities, and this is very doable.

Any manufactured product that's more than five years old in design sells at commodity pricing

This is almost true already. The Bose Wave Radio is the only exception I can think of off hand! Seriously, though, the product life cycle keeps getting shorter and shorter.

The retirement age will be five years higher than it is now

Will it really add a year each year? That seems a bit aggressive. Regardless of how fast it changes, people will certainly be retiring later and later in life.

Your current profession will either be gone or totally different

It's amazing how much it has changed in the past five years. Being in the CPG business, the rate of change is palpable. Our company figures that in five years, half of our current sales channel will be completely gone. We have five years to replace half our sales volume, or we're gone too.