In the interest of being able to look back on myself in 12 months time to laugh at how naïve I was, here are some things I think will happen in 2024. (month’s, months’, months1)
Tech
We’ll have large language models – LLMs – on our phones
With Google producing Gemini Nano, and with recent research by Apple, I think we’ll have some smaller LLMs available to us on our phones. They’ll be on-device, rather than needing an internet connection. They may not be a ChatGPT-like interface where you can just have a conversation, but you’ll be able to type (or, likely speak) a request in natural language, and your phone will know what to do. Essentially a huge level up for Siri or (the superior) Google Assistant.
The Apple Vision Pro will be delightful, but initially very limited, but begin a change in interface design
From the reviews I’ve read from those who have had the opportunity to try this thing in-person, they have primarily focused on the “spatial” photos and videos, and fairly consistently have said that they’re a new level of immersive. I fully expect the first set of folks who can afford to buy this thing to say similar things, with wide acclaim. Then, I think, folks will start to talk about the UI and the UX of the SpatialOS / VisionOS (or whatever they call the final, released version) and how the concept of looking at an icon and then pinching your fingers is more than a gimmick, but actually a really new, but natural, way to interface with the technology.
Then, I think, people will be at a “now what?” phase. Probably saying things like it’s a one-trick pony, too expensive for what it does, and laugh at the battery tether some more.
Once these things become more widely available, to more than just US Residents, and more people start using them, I believe we’ll see a move away from the ‘flat’ design that has been adopted for the past few years, more towards a 3D, kinda 2010 vibe for interface elements, but cleaner and crisper. As we’ll have the way to really “see” the depth, rather than it being a fake 3D element on a 2D screen, it’ll have more value in being actually 3D. This will then to begin to be pervasive across mediums, even those that aren’t “3D”.
Twitter/X won’t be dead, but it’ll be on life support
Threads – which I personally don’t use, but understand why people do – will start to eat its lunch, more consistently, and the concept of “The Fediverse” will become more mainstream. People won’t necessarily KNOW what the fediverse is (neither do they need to), but once brands and organizations start moving off X en masse, and (I hate to say it) once “Celebrities” start to move from The HellSite, there’ll begin to be a sea change.
WordPress “market share” will be pretty level but be a a more usable, useful piece of software than it is now.
I don’t really care about this number, to be absolutely honest, but it’s a decent metric I can compare directly in 12 months. As I write this the reported market share for WP is 43.1% according to w3techs which seems to to be the site most people cite. I don’t see that number being north of 45% by this time next year, and, if anything, I think it might go down a touch. (That being said, it’s possible the most recent “Oh Substack is okay with Nazis?” thing might change things, but I doubt it)
The site editor will improve in 2024. I’ve really struggled to work it out this year – both in terms of how I’m supposed to be using it, and how I’m meant to help others use it. The different concepts within the site editor seem quite disparate right now. I think that will change – for the better – in 2024. Once the concept of semi-synced patterns lands, where the content within a pattern is abstracted away from the structure of the pattern, and this gets applied on a site level, I believe things will start to click. More theme developers will embrace it, the documentation will improve, and the tooling will improve.
The block editor which is still, in my eyes, very distinct from the site editor, will stabilize. Semi-synced patterns are the last big piece to allowing sites to differentiate the ‘theme’ from the ‘content’ again. I say again, because that’s what we had in PHP, and we’ve not truly had in the block editor for the past 5 years.
Multi-lingual won’t land in 2024. And the ‘multi user editing slash google docs thing’ won’t be fully baked either. There will be multiple issues with getting this to work on shared hosting, not insurmountable, but not doable in the time frame I think people think it will be.
Not Tech
Elections
There will be a General Election in the UK in 2024 (even though technically it doesn’t need to happen until January 2025). And the Conservative party will get routed. Labour will have a majority in a landslide victory.
The Orange Man will not win the election in the United States.
Outside bet: there’ll be a general election in Canada in 2024.
Geopolitics
The war in Ukraine will continue throughout 2024, it won’t receive anywhere near as much attention as it should. No progress will be made in ending the war.
The war in Gaza will end, and the true levels of the war crimes that have been committed there will begin coming to light. There won’t be anywhere near the right levels of ramifications coming to those who committed or ordered those war crimes.
Argentina’s economy will stabilize, and in the short-term the country will benefit from that. The long-term implications of the way that stabilization comes about, however, will not set up the country well for the future.
Sweden will be admitted into NATO.
Other / Random
The Miami Dolphins will win a playoff game for the first time since 2000.
The St. George Rainway project will not finish next year.
The Toronto Blue Jays will not make the playoffs and John Schneider will be let go.
The City of Vancouver will be told by the province that it can’t unilaterally disband the park board. The City, in turn, will do something petty like reducing the funding for it down to $1. And there’ll be a legal dispute, meanwhile, we all lose because of it.
The City of Vancouver will get nowhere near its target number of new homes built and there’ll be reports that the $115m of federal funds it received have been wasted on “improving processes” which haven’t improved.
I’ll break 1600 for my daily rating on chess.com
I’ll regret writing this in 12 months.