Wired Home Internet
HTRN says that noisy and metal-laden electrical environments still make WiFi iffy. Maybe there will be a better generation of wireless, but for sheer reliability wires still rule. Ethernet over powerline is neat and those wires aren’t going away any time soon.
Dedicated Cameras and Camcorders
HTRN says that you can always get more guts in your camera if you don’t have to worry about packing a cell phone in it too. Now wireless cameras, we’ve already got.
Landline Phones
HTRN is bemused at how the quality of cell phone communications still ranges from barely tolerable to stink. Wires are old fashioned but they still rule when the quality of your call matters. Even semi wired services over the internet often beat the quality of cell phone communications.
Slow-Booting Computers
HTRN says this technical problem should have gone away a decade ago with the advent of the reliable flash drive if it were only the OS loading up into main memory that mattered. However, as long as peripherals have to be initialized the OS has to bring each one up every power cycle. Engineering will eventually solve the problem, but it will take a new generation of peripherals.
Windowed Operating Systems
HTRN says that until the greasy fingerprint has also been outmoded, people won’t want touch screens unless the format is so small there is no choice.
Hard Drives
HTRN says that the sheer capacity of electromechanical drives will continue to beat the pants off of anything solid state. The future will have a mix of both.
Movie Theaters
HTRN thinks the nostalgia factor will probably count for a lot. Operations that manage to be economical will survive.
The Mouse
HTRN thinks people will still prefer mice or track balls to a greasily fingerprinted screen.
3D Glasses
HTRN predicts a eyeglass version of the movie screen that is light enough to comfortably put on. The visual equivalent of stereo headphones. Don’t walk around with these on, though.
Remote Controls
HTRN wonders what a TV that reads gestures would do if a pet wanders into the room. Or one that listens to voice commands would do if it overhears a phone call. However there ought to be a universal remote control that knows what to do in a roomful of equipment without being programmed — it would recognize what’s there and configure itself. (If it’s any consolation you can get programmable ones from the dollar store today. $1 at Dollar Tree.)
Desktops
HTRN says that probably the works of what we call a desktop now will fit into a pill bottle by that time. But there’s still the screen, keyboard, and loudspeakers which can’t be equally lilliputian.
Phone Numbers
HTRN says that until the whole globe gets its phone system Internetified, people will still be dealing with phone numbers. How else does someone in Outerghanistan call you or vice versa?
Prime-time Television
HTRN agrees, TV on demand will eventually make scheduled TV obsolete. How soon that happens is anyone’s guess. Large swaths of the country still do not have practical broadband.
Fax Machines
HTRN already scans stuff and emails the graphic files to those who would have otherwise gotten faxes, and there are free or cheap services on the internet that make and receive fax phone calls. Still, scanning could stand to be made much more of a standardized task (as, for that matter, printing). You ought to be able to plug anybody’s scanner (and printer) into anybody’s computer and voila, they auto configure to one another. None of these proprietary drivers.
Optical Discs
HTRN says that these will still prove useful as storage media for loading things offline. And how will you watch a movie in Timbuktu where you can’t get at the cloud?
I tend to agree with your analysis of the article. I’m not sure what the original author of this article does for a living but he seems to be missing some basic understanding of technology.
A lot of what you address, while correct, will become edge cases.
Wired Home Internet - “microcell” tech may dominate, bringing a small cell to your neighborhood rather than installing wire to each home, and balancing the convenience of wireless with its lack of capacity/speed. For many/most, wired internet runs at speeds on par with wireless providers. Only re-wiring the country for seriously high-speed service (a la >100Mbit fiber) will preserve that paradigm.
Dedicated Cameras and Camcorders - people are willing to shell out a few days’ pay for several cubic inches of the best imaging technology that can be crammed therein. When cell cameras get on par with current dedicated ones, the tech will shift to other non-tiny products (light field, 3D, etc.). Good lenses are big, bulky, and expensive - and there will always be a market for them; it’s a matter of physics, not Moore’s Law.
Landline Phones - sound quality is a matter of the service. Whenever I use Skype over cellular 3G people comment on how remarkably clear it is. The one benefit of landlines is assurance that the darned thing will STAY PUT and BE ON; having kids, I’m considering installing one (which is little more than a nailed-down cell phone) just for 911 and other emergency availability. Keeping pocket phones handy & charged seems a challenge for some people.
Slow-Booting Computers - I’ve long wondered why computers aren’t instant-on. It’s not a matter of hardware, it’s a matter of SOFTWARE designed to get the user-facing activity up & running ASAP while letting further back-end stuff take longer to set up in the background. No excuse, coders!
Windowed Operating Systems - It’s a convenient paradigm, akin to books. Will continue to dominate but will cede much territory to touchscreens. I’m more expecting/desiring expansion of “tablet” interfaces to cover the entire desk & wall.
Hard Drives - maybe for seriously large-scale storage, but personal-use storage will give way to flash & cloud storage.
Movie Theaters - nostalgia is the only thing that will keep ‘em going. Lots of us have given up on theaters save for rare movies demanding 3D and/or BBBIIIGGG screens. That’s a lot of space to commit to diminishing profits.
The Mouse - looking at a long slow fade. Other tech translating tiny gestures will arise.
3D Glasses - just 5 years away for the last 30. For about 6 months I used a set as my sole TV screen; tech just hasn’t improved enough since.
Remote Controls - MUST DIE. A box of badly-designed buttons sucks. Here’s hoping Steve Jobs did, in fact, have a brilliant breakthrough.
Desktops - there will always be a need for computing power 10-100x beyond phone/tablet tech. In fact, methinks the tablet has saved the desktop by making mobile whatever one needs mobile, with cloud/wireless tech making ubiquitous instant integration with massive multi/huge-screen multi-core multi-terabyte physically-large-whatever staying at your desk.
Phone Numbers - will fade away, but take a long time to.
Prime-time Television - the brain-dead TV model has yet to be replicated. TV on-demand will dominate (many of us have gone there), but nothing has equated to “turn it on, watch whatever’s there” brain-dead model.
Fax Machines - just about gone. Ubiquitous coordination is still a challenge.
Optical Discs - with terabyte drives fitting in a pocket, and cloud storage making wireless transfer trivial, little need for physical media will remain. But it will remain - bandwidth of a case of discs way exceeds any streaming connection. We’ll want to own tangible copies of at least some content. But note that even Timbuktu will get internet & wireless, and you’ll with ease carry in a small box containing all the content you’ll want.