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1. Although the worst is probably over, there will be no major recovery in 2002. Things will stabilize during the first half of the year, with modest gains from there on.
   This will be the year of the virus. Security will become an ever-increasing concern.
2. There will be increasing calls for comprehensive Internet legislation, as the Internet becomes more critical to the lives of millions. Copyright, crime and terrorism will be the focus of much legislation.
3. Spam will continue to be a major problem, and will be one of the key reasons people will want a more regulated Internet.
4. Bankruptcies, mergers and consolidation will continue. More people will go to fewer websites, as the Internet becomes controlled by a few mega-corporations.
5. The PC crisis will continue. For a significant percentage of the population there will be no compelling reason to buy a PC. For those that have one, there will be few compelling reasons to upgrade.
6. The wireless and telecommunications sector will continue to flounder. Too much cost, too much hype and too little demand for all these wonderful extra services, will badly hurt these industries in 2002.
7. A two-tier Internet will clearly emerge: for-free and for-fee.
8. Information architecture will become the crucial discipline in website design. This means a greater focus on getting your metadata, classification, navigation and search right.
9. Amazon.com will make a profit.

Predictions for 2003

1. The global economy will remain sluggish. The IT sector will struggle to regain momentum. Web services and wireless communications will massively over-promise and under-deliver. This incessant hype that the IT industry is prone to, will damage the genuine potential of these technologies.
2. Organizations will standardize and streamline more and more of their web operations. Multiple websites, with multiple design approaches and publishing processes, will be frowned on as budgets are tightened.
3. Organizations will finally begin to develop return on investment models for their Internet operations. Many will find that their websites are simply not profitable.
4. Information architecture will grow in importance. More organizations will recognize that organizing information efficiently is one of the key challenges they face.
5. The intranet will expand its role as a critical tool by which an organization increases productivity, improves communication and reduces costs.
6. The role of women on the Internet will increase. An example will be in intranet management. Here, the shift of responsibility from IT to corporate communications will gain momentum. (Women dominate corporate communications.)
7. We will see the emergence of the 'de-merger,' where large, unwieldy mergers from the boom era, are taken apart so as to make them more efficient and profitable.
8. Spam will continue its inexorable rise. The principle of charging for data sent will begin to gain currency, as the global economy realizes how much spam, and other wasteful communication, is costing.
9. The myth that the Internet is borderless, and thus lawless, will finally die and be buried in 2003. Spam, viruses, terrorism, identity theft, and copyright infringement will be the key drivers for a raft of legislation.
10. Recession or no recession, boom or bust, the Internet revolution will continue apace. More and more of our business, commerce, communication, work and leisure will happen online. In many ways, the Internet revolution has only just begun.

Gerry McGovern
 

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