Reviewing my predictions from 2006

For Space I predicted Solar sails in space 2006-2010.
Solar sail by 2010 is clearly correct. Japanese solar sail was deployed and flew in space this year. IKAROS was the world’s first spacecraft designed to use solar sailing propulsion to be successfully launched

China second largest economy in straight currency conversion measures 2013-2015
China passed Japan economy this year. So this happened earlier than 2013. The Japanese economy was weaker than I thought it would be and China’s economy was a bit stronger and there was a restatement of China’s economy where it was found to be bigger.

China largest economy in PPP (Purchasing Power Parity) terms 2009-2012
This is on track for 2012 based on the Conference board and PPP based on Angus Maddison’s Statistics on World Population and the Penn World Tables version 6.3 provide PPPs based on previous rounds of prices, which indicate much lower price levels in China and, therefore, much higher GDP. According to these measures, China’s GDP would have been 75–80 percent of the U.S. level in 2005 and would have already surpassed the U.S. level by now.

Real-time biomarker tracking and monitoring 2008-2012
Real-time personalized exercise trainer and diet guide 2008-2012

There are real time fitness and exercise monitors
In 2009, Wired wrote about exercise by the numbers

Marc Digesti logs on to one of the weight-free CPro resistance stations at the Core Performance Center in Santa Monica, California, and downloads a custom workout designed by his new coach: an algorithm. After tapping through a body-part map that allows him to note injuries, Digesti begins pulling a cord as directed by an onscreen video.

At Core Performance, personalized workouts have been digitized and automated — think Club One run by Deep Blue. The gym’s founders spent two years poring over decisions made by a coach and embedding them into workout equipment that compares a gym rat’s goals (say, run a marathon) with their stats (like VO2 max) and nutrition habits to calculate a progressive series of workouts

Training Peaks 3.0
Training Peaks sucks up data from dozens of fitness devices and reports back with visualizations of heart rate, power output, speed, distance, elevation, and much more.
$119/year, trainingpeaks.com

RunKeeper Pro
Turn your iPhone into a mobile fitness center. Using the GPS chip in 3G iPhones, this app tracks speed and distance and lets you upload and share your routes on the company’s site.
$10, runkeeper.com

WeEndure
Performance monitoring meets Web 2.0 trash talk. This social network not only logs your data, it also shows your friends’ numbers so you can “comment” on their workouts.
$20/year, weendure.com

SMHeart Link
This little gadget syncs with your favorite exercise gear — heart rate monitors, power meters, even fitness equipment — and sends the data back to your iPhone or iPod Touch wirelessly.
$125, smheartlink.com

Real-time personalized disease treatment 2008-2012
There is better diabetes monitoring

Insurance pricing based on maintaining biomarkers in optimal ranges 2008-2012
Self insurance magazine discusses chronic disease monitoring

Simple and inexpensive wireless devices now exist that can be used in the comfort of one’s own home and as effortlessly as literally stepping on a scale and walking away. There is no need to interact with any special software or computers in many of the available solutions. The patient simply performs the biometric step (e.g. taking their blood pressure or glucose) and the wireless nature of the devices reports the results to some nearby transponder and makes the data available in the patient’s medical record.

Collecting the data is part of the solution. Re-presenting the data is just as important. This means deploying software on innovative devices that allow a patient to know their status and provide encouragement as well as gather additional non-biometric data (e.g. How do you feel today?). Some attractive counter-top Internet Picture Display devices are being used that automatically change what they are displaying based on a variety of conditions (perhaps showing a chart one day, and encouraging pictures the next). Messages to your cell phone (reminders for example) and email are typically part of a solution. In fact, you might imagine some day checking into a Marriott hotel or sitting in your BMW and having to interact briefly with your health record.

It turns out that if an average Diabetic paid a little more attention to their health and lost a few pounds, kept their blood pressure where it should be, and monitored their glucose closely, they’d cost their health system about $6,600 less each year.

Condition management programs are becoming widespread. Looking at 343 large employers: the number of employers targeting diabetes and cardiovascular disease—two of the costliest and most prevalent chronic conditions in America—increased by almost 30 percentage points, to 75 percent and 70 percent respectively. Additionally, 56 percent of companies are targeting asthma, up from 36 percent in 2008, and almost a third (32 percent) are targeting depression, up from just 17 percent in 2008.

Individual medical modeling computational 2008-2012

The wildcard predictions listed were wrong based on the dates.
US War with Iran 2007
US War with Syria 2008
Successful terrorist attack on Saudi Oil Infrastructure, oil goes to over $10/gallon 2006-2010

Their could still be a war with Iran and there has been activity with Iran and Syria with Israel.

Wildcard predictions that we are in the date range and have not happened yet

Millions dead from Africa and Asian poor riots  2010-2020
Nuclear war with North Korea                  2007-2015
Room temp superconductors                  2007+ (+ means anytime in the future so long as it happens)

Gene doping muscle enhancement at 2006, 2008, 2010 Olympic games 2006-2010
Gene doping detected at 2012 games 2012
Gene doping rampant in horse and dog racing 2007-2008
The gene doping prediction assumes that it is not caught at the time. This was in the explanation. We now know that steroid use was rampant in baseball for a long time and in cycling and other sports.

Air taxis prediction was wrong. Those companies failed. There was only some small start ups in Florida

The Thousand CPU FPGA was built. In my explanations I clearly pointed out the project that I was referring to.

NRAM did not happen.

Links below to earlier reviews and explanations of my predictions (the nanowerk predictions are mine)

I made my own set of 156 predictions in 2006

Here is an article that linked to supporting information about the predictions and some explanation of what was meant

I reviewed my own predictions in 2007

I reviewed my own predictions in 2008

I will add more prediction reviews related to nanotechnology, wireless and computing.

If you liked this article, please give it a quick review on ycombinator or StumbleUpon. Thanks

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