Microsoft is toast because we're moving to a post-PC era;
HTML5, the new web standard that allows to make interactive web pages, is going to revolutionize the media and advertising industries;
Social is "done", it's now a feature, don't go do a social startup.

Now's the time of year for everyone to write about the trends they see in the coming year. I've resisted that in the past, but this year I'll make an exception. We'll see if it becomes a tradition. Here's my quick list of six themes to watch in 2011:

Do you think we will survive?
I'm an optimistic pessimist. I think it's wrong to assume we'll survive 2 °C of warming: there are already too many people on Earth. At 4 °C we could not survive with even one-tenth of our current population. The reason is we would not find enough food, unless we synthesised it. Because of this, the cull during this century is going to be huge, up to 90 per cent. The number of people remaining at the end of the century will probably be a billion or less. It has happened before: between the ice ages there were bottlenecks when there were only 2000 people left. It's happening again.

I don't think humans react fast enough or are clever enough to handle what's coming up. Kyoto was 11 years ago. Virtually nothing's been done except endless talk and meetings.

I don't think we can react fast enough or are clever enough to handle what's coming up
It's a depressing outlook.

Not necessarily. I don't think 9 billion is better than 1 billion.