See you in a few years

Almost every time I see someone make a promise, outline a big plan or announce a new project, I want to see how it plays out. But in the age of crowdfunding and rapid technological change very few people seem to look beyond what's happening now or reflect on how such a promise has played out.

I think there are two problems related to this:

1. a short attention span, e.g. being accustomed to just paying attention to something that's happening right now and not days, weeks or months in the future
2. no technology to track such things

Of course, there is the PredictionBook, but it's for predictions, not for tracking progress of projects. What I'd expect from a technology to track such things is something more data-oriented, on top of which predictionbook could be built.

To track such progress over years we'd have to register them somewhere else than in our minds & browser bookmarks and be reminded to check on them later. And if we want to learn something about them we'd also attach some data to those projects over time, such as estimated success, goals already reached and finally whether they failed or succeeded.

But I won't build that technology now, I'd just like to point out a few projects I am interested in and that I want to check back on in a few weeks, months or years.

Where will you be?

• innovative technology
  • LightTable, interesting new ideas about what an editor/ide should do and how it should work.
  • NoFlo, flow-based programming for JavaScript
  • Datomic, the database as a value
• web technology
  • AngularJS, one "popular" client-side framework in JavaScript. You could also pick any of TodoMVC, but this one is sponsored by Google and hyped right now, so it will be interesting to see where it will stand in the future
  • Meteor, a JavaScript framework that seemlessly integrates client and server-side parts. It doesn't seem to care much about URLs and APIs, but you can build a chat very quickly in it. Some people believe it will supplant Rails, others don't
  • Pedestal, a web-framework written in Clojure(-Script) that tries to bring a Clojure-inspired vision of programming/thinking to web applications
• games
  • Limit Theory, an ambitious procedurally generated space simulation, with interesting ideas about ai, procedural generation and software development. The author publishes a detailed, daily development log
  • Sui Generis, a beautiful RPG with a sophisticated physics engine (realistic combat), probably generated terrain and some interesting ideas about gameplay

There are a lot of other things I'd like to track, here are a few examples:

• usage & success of gesture control (for example LeapMotion)
• self-assembling robots
• big gaming projects like Star Citizen
• fate of YCombinator startups
• how the NSA surveillance revelations affect usage of web services over time, in Europe and elsewhere

And many more things, but I won't do that. Probably if I write something that lets me handle it easier or when I do start using PredictionBook.

We'll see.