Top 10 things I don’t want to see happen in 2008

1. Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer hold a press conference with Eric Schmidt by their side to declare the war is over and they will jointly develop all new products

2. Or – Google, now YouTube’s parent company, partners with Amazon and eBay to offer an opt-in video experience where a 10-second affinity ad is played before every video. In return, viewers get a 5 percent discount on anything.

The idea proves so successful Google removes the opt-in part.

3. The Federal Judiciary Conference reconsiders its recently amended Federal Rules for Civil Procedure and mandates that just in case anyone decides to sue you for any reason whatsoever, current e-discovery rules for archiving email, instant messages, voice mails, text messages, and multimedia messages aren’t comprehensive enough.

As a result, we are all given digital tape recorders with enough flash memory to hold a year’s worth of conversations that happen anytime, anywhere.

One presidential candidate proposes giving the digital tape recorders to illegal aliens as well, thus setting off a new national debate over whether non-citizens should have the same rights to tape record themselves as U.S. citizens.

After the polls show that no one likes the idea, the candidate who made the proposal says he [or she] misspoke.

4. The Judiciary Conference then decides even taping every conversation is not enough and we must archive every Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, and LinkedIn entry ever made.

5. A new social networking site makes all the other social networking sites look like Stone Age carvings on rocks, and I have to start entering my profile, friends, and contacts all over again.

6. Wireless carriers actually make it easy for my non-tech friends and family to send photos from their cell phone to mine.

7. WiMax proves to be an instant success, replaces Wi-Fi, and deploys nationwide practically overnight, thus rendering my current dual Wi-Fi/cell phone obsolete and, of course, forcing me to enter my contacts all over again.

8. The FCC revises its digital mandate and rules that all television broadcasts must be in 1080p digital not 720p, forcing me to replace all four of my flat-panel TVs by February 2009 and sending me into bankruptcy.

9. Apple drops the price of the iPhone by another $200, thus obligating the entire blogosphere, including me, to fill the world wide Web with millions of words of worthless commentary.

10. And finally, here’s the one non-high tech event that I don’t want to see or hear — the hype leading up to yet another dull, anti-climactic Super Bowl.