This is nothing more than my gibbering mind dreaming up vague probabilities. I can’t account for whence some of it comes, but take full responsibility for the idiocy.
Linux will soon be almost entirely a corporate product. It will remain Open Source, but will fragment severely between a handful of big players, with only a very thin scattering of independent projects. The newer generations aren’t volunteering to code and the older is getting too old to carry it all. So the bulk of development will pass to those few businesses that stand to make money keeping things alive; they will host the developers who will be devoted almost entirely to their corporate needs.
The desktop will remain alive for some years to come. Some types of work can only be done that way and it involves way more folks than the big CEOs want to believe. Because the serious need for millions of work stations will continue, the hardware will continue in production. Linux will become more standardized in terms of the desktop interface — that is, in the sense that almost no one will use anything except what comes on the corporate work stations. Linux will probably grow in numbers quietly among business and government offices. Microsoft had better wake up and bring back their desktop with serious support.
The NSA won’t go away, but they will be severely weakened, as will most similar agencies. Exposure means people will make it a whole lot harder real soon. Protocols and means of transmission more resistant to such efforts will proliferate and the surveillance industry will be weakened badly for quite some time.
More and more Internet endpoints will be dominated by local mesh networks. These will be quite independent (at least potentially) and serve to mask an awful lot of users. In urban areas, the mesh networks will take over and some ISPs will struggle to survive as a business. Those who survive will figure out why they are losing customers and start delivering services instead of working so hard to deliver customers to the marketers and governments.
As the Network Civilization arises, many old business will drop off the Net. Old models of making a profit will sputter out rather suddenly and only those entrepreneurs keeping up with the changes will make any money. It really isn’t that hard to extrapolate and innovate when you realize what simply will not work any more, and what it takes for people to give up their money. They surely will, but not for the same things as previous generations.
In a year or two we can all reread this and laugh.
