Technologies on the rise in 2008
A number of technologies have exploded throughout 2007 from Facebook and the iPhone to the Nintendo Wii. — But what will be making the headlines over the next 12 months? — Here the BBC News website gives its predictions for five technologies that could become big in 2008.
Context & Ripple Effects
This piece closes a dense December forecasting cluster: the Economist ran Technology in 2008 on 23 December, ReadWriteWeb published its web-specific predictions the next day, and Popular Mechanics listed ten concepts to watch — all after the BBC's own year-end retrospective on 2007's most impactful technology. BBC News is thus both participant and bookend, converting its backward-looking review into a forward-looking slate of five candidates.
What makes the exercise legible is the confirmed baseline: Facebook, Apple's iPhone and Nintendo's Wii all broke out explosively in 2007, so any 2008 shortlist is implicitly being judged by whether it spots the next one of those. The story travelled only within the BBC at publication — no syndicated pickups — which fits a house editorial product rather than breaking news.
First-order effects
- Facebook, the iPhone and the Wii enter 2008 as the confirmed measuring stick: BBC's five picks, like the Economist's and ReadWriteWeb's lists before it, are effectively claims about which candidate can repeat that trio's 2007 trajectory.
Second-order effects
- When four major outlets publish overlapping December forecasts, the technologies named repeatedly gain concentrated press attention at the start of the year — coverage itself becomes a force pushing the predicted adoption, and the outlets' hit rates turn into a public scorecard readers can check next December.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, the year-ahead roundup hardens into a fixed genre of technology journalism — a seasonal cycle where each December's consensus list becomes the benchmark against which the following year's retrospectives, including the BBC's own, are written.
The trend: Technology media is institutionalizing the annual prediction cycle, pairing every December's forecast slate with a year-end audit of the last one.