I write The Digital Life, a monthly tech column in our sister Conde Nast magazine, GQ. This is my column from last month's issue (dated January). To subscribe to GQ, click here.

At this time of year, technology columnists are traditionally expected to stake their reputations on predicting crazily surprising developments for the months ahead. Well, I'm not falling for that one, just so this time next year you get to mock my ill-judged forecasts of fusion-powered jetpacks or robotic sex slaves. It's just too tough to make predictions, as Yogi Berra once said - especially about the future.

So I've swapped my crystal ball this year to look instead at the data -- and have come up with half a dozen trends on my mind that the hard, scientific evidence says simply have to be big in 2011.


And if I'm wrong? Well, GQ are printing this column in a special futuristic ink that disappears after six months -- so when you come back to fact-check my ass in a year's time, all you'll see is a photo of a robotic sex slave.

1 - Augmented reality grows up: After the hype and the lame advertising stunts, we're finally going to find genuine uses for augmented reality on your smartphone. Download the Plane Finder AR app, for instance, and you can point your iPhone camera at the sky and discover individual aircrafts' flight numbers, speed, altitude and distance. That's tons of fun, even if the paranoid are claiming it's the terrorist's wet dream. Then there are the applications being developed for Layar, on Apple and Android devices, which superimpose a layer of information on what you see through the phone's camera. My favourite: safety information about local buildings, which the Rotterdam fire brigade call up whenever they are called to control a fire. Genius.

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2 - Rentalship taking over from ownership: You're streaming music through Spotify or Zune, and accessing movies through internet-based "rental" services such as Blinkbox -- so the need to acquire the physical item becomes an irrelevance.

Now that attitude is moving to non-digital goods, and web-based services will proliferate to help you borrow things you don't, if you're honest, need to own. Need use of a car? Borrow one through Zipcar or Streetcar. Girlfriend needs a designer handbag? Rent one from BagBorrowOrSteal.com. Building a bookshelf? SnapGoods will help you rent a neighbour's drill for a day. And lo, consumerism takes a thump.


3 - Social TV: The next billion televisions will be internet connected. That's going to turn TV viewing into a much more social experience -- with comments from your friends' tweets and Facebook updates not only adding instant feedback to real-time broadcasts, but also helping program your set to record the shows it thinks you are most likely to enjoy, based on what your friends enjoy. Steve Jobs is naturally hoping to dominate this revolution with his Apple TV device, but he'll face competition from the likes of Boxee, as well as new services such blinkbox and Starling.tv, which lets viewers chat, play and generally interact with one another while watching Mad Men. Farewell, then, linear TV -- and if you do know any schedulers, be nice as they scramble for new careers.

4 - Epic visualisations will turn data into information: We're in a world ever more saturated with data: Eric Schmidt, the Google boss, recently estimated that we're now generating five exabytes (or billion gigabytes) every two days, which is the total amount we produced in all human history up until 2003. So how do we make sense of all these zeroes and ones? Simple: we develop visualisation tools that help us spot the patterns, and produce stunningly sexual images at the same time. Already smart design-led companies such as ITO are visualising real-time transport data so you can save precious minutes on your journey home; and the clever people at McLaren are using their Formula 1 expertise to map airports with sensors so the resulting screen images let you predict exactly when your plane will start taxiing.

Over the next year, expect dataviz porn to go mainstream as more industries use it to make sense of rough numbers.

5 - Money goes mobile: It's your music player, your video camera and your geolocation-based check-in tool -- so why shouldn't your smartphone also be your wallet? This year mobile payments will take a leap closer to mainstream acceptance, as services such as Zong and Boku convince us that it's safe and convenient to spend money using your phone number. The social networks too are moving fast into financial services -- from Facebook Credits to Twitpay, which lets you make payments via Twitter. In Kenya, already 10 million people are using a service called M-PESA to transfer cash -- so it's no wonder the traditional banks are getting nervous. Hurrah: finally the bank manager's days are numbered.


6 - Artificial intelligence finally gets smart: OK, on behalf of the futurists' union I accept that we may have oversold this one a few times in the past. But trust me, this year AI will take a big leap towards cracking the "is it a machine or a person?" Turing test. From cars packed with "intelligent" safety features so they autonomously adjust the steering, to advertising hoardings that target you personally based on your gender and estimated age, we're going to find machines understanding our desires and needs more than ever.

And if I'm wrong? Just blame the computer algorithm that wrote this column for me. Happy new y...#%!# SORRY, 404 ERROR, PAY-OFF LINE UNAVAILABLE

David Rowan is the editor of Wired magazine