The prediction of short form content *completely* taking over long form content reminds me almost exactly how mobile games were "destined" to kill the traditional gaming industry. "Why make a console game if it cost 10x the amount and made 10x less money?" "Everyones going to have a phone, they won't need a console!" We now know how both can co-exist and continue to grow, but 10 years ago it really felt like it could happen. I think there's a very good place for both and it'll still be that way in 10 years. Short form will be king (it currently is), but long form will stay healthy and continue to grow.
Except the mobile games cost a tenth the effort/money to make and have the potential to make over ten times more in 'micro' transactions. So many companies started shoving crap instead of quality
The primary reason why mobile gaming isn't much more huge is that most companies would rather produce cheap low quality mindless crap (which absolutely isn't necessary if you look at a game like Hearthstone which has been an excellent mobile game for years), but the other big hinderance is the control scheme. Only touch controls is very limiting. That said, if companies focused more on quality than whatever makes them the most money (which obviously will not happen), mobile gaming could potentially become better and more respected.
Worse yet, some... 'less-democratic' governments are _known_ to have used the phones of activists and trouble makers to eavesdrop on their conversations. (as for the more-democratic governments, it's hard to say whether they never do that, or are just better at hiding it)
I got a sinking feeling of dread when I saw the last panel. It's not even that I love TH-cam but the sheer amount of human knowledge and work and experience that is on TH-cam and will come to it in 10 years time. Gone from public eyes forever, with a single press of a button. It is unfathomable.
I don’t think such a prediction is accurate. The technology for short form has been out for a long while now, and if short form is so good, it should have completely taken over by now. Also sure, short form videos are becoming increasing popular, but long form videos have many advantages over short form.
I think 2012 was the perfect year to have done this because it felt like a big transition year for smart phones and social media. Definitely didn’t see the death of blogs for a couple of years
@DAVID 2012 had a special end of the world energy, it was the Mayan prophecy thing. No year since then had that - we traded fun, immediate, supernatural apocalyptic notions for depressing, distant, concrete, and constant ones.
TH-cam getting shut down is honestly a scary thought to me. Not in terms of privacy, but in terms of how much information I have absorbed through it (like learning how to use an oscilloscope), or reconnected with from before TH-cam existed (like obscure TV show clips), that would have all been severed with one swift stroke.
It will still be used for educational purposes, just less for entertainment. Just take tiktok for example, you cant even go to a specific timestamp or forward or reward by 10 seconds etc., it would be very annoying to watch a documentary there, TH-cam ist just way better for that. So in the bigger picture it might actually be a good thing; youtube being more educational than a potential distraction is something im looking forward to
I honestly think TH-cam does more good for the world than bad, but the censorship and demonetization and shadow banning of creators is really bugging me. I hope the content of youtube just gets reuploaded in other platforms and it dies, or, better yet, google decides to stop being evil again and lets freedom of speech have its place.
I think they'd keep the content in some history of some sorts, so they wouldn't remove all of this from ever existing. I bet though there's gonna be a new big social media, like how when Vine died a thing called Tik Tok appeared and now Tik Tok is a massive social media site.
Problem with predicting anything is that predictions tend to just take the current trends and imagine that they will go on indefinitely. Real-life is full of plot twists, unexpected developments, and for that matter fads that just fizzle out on their own.
Back around 2005-2006 I remember seriously wishing there was some way I could get the internet into a car so that I could listen to internet radio there. If you want to know what's going to happen in the next 3 or 4 years in tech, just ask a teenager what's missing.
He was actually right about Apple wanting people to record their entire lives. One of the big "selling points" of the Apple Vision Pro is being able to record your life and "relive" memories. He was just a year off
There’s 3 rules in predicting tech. 1. The laws of physics never change 2. Average consumers will always prefer simplicity (abstraction) over performance. 3. Technology can never solve social problems on it’s own.
@@_blank-_ depends on the technology and depends on the social problem. Now if you're going to tell me social media makes divides in society worse then absolutely I agree with you on that. But if you're going to tell me that technology makes Healthcare worse I'm going to sit here and laugh at you for about 3 hours and then move on with my day as dealing with people that dumb is just a waste of time.
It's never occurred to me that Google might eventually shut down TH-cam, considering how much valuable content there is on it, but it makes sense. I hope people will make an archive until then.
I remain surprised that TH-cam hasn't been shut down. Google has a well-earned reputation for buying services and shutting them down a few years later. In fairness, I also expected TH-cam to be merged into Google Video after the buy, not for the two to operate alongside each other independently until Google Video was deleted.
@@Nekotaku_TV it's not terrible, it just has some management issues, and as a consequence of being too big & diverse it can't please everyone. I though Tom Scott himself highlighted how if it wasn't for TH-cam's content id most content creators probably couldn't have made half the stuff they do now & not a fraction of the exposure, and getting a copyright strike or demonetisation is just better than dealing with lawsuits or not being allowed to make anything. The oversensitivity to various topics is truely annoying but they're at the whim of advertisers since TH-cam Premium never took off to the level of a streaming service (despite honestly having much more interesting content) Some niches are certainly better off having their own platform though
As of Feb. 2020, 30,000 hours of content were being uploaded to TH-cam per hour. I can't see that having decreased by 2022. I would hate to see it all lost, but good luck with being able to back-up all that data.
I believe there's a value in making these predictions 10 years in the future. Your predictions, while wrong in many cases, were well informed and researched at the time and provide us a reference to see the real change that happened in the subsequent years. We experience change incrementally which makes it very difficult to see how big the change is over a span of time without having a reference point that captures the sentiment at that time, almost like taking a screenshot of history.
They were already skyrocketing in popularity back then. In fact, this prediction was a bit late - Tik Tok use has actually levelled off, by the looks of things. The average adult spends the same amount of time on TikTok today as they did in 2021.
If it helps you sleep at night, it's somewhat astroturfed. The algorithms are all set up to reward short-form videos AND on top of it all, these videos are forced onto mobile users as autoplay when you start up the TH-cam app. Longform videos still have a lot of viewers, though.
I would say that the whole "iLife" prediction actually ended up being right in the watered down form of Snapchat stories and Instagram stories. I still get notifications to this day of a "memory" from 6 years ago.
Same as Google, I get notifications about pictures taken 15 years ago. Now that because for some reasons those photos have the wrong date attached to them, 2007 instead of 2012, they are clear of the Olympic torch relay going through Barkingside.
@@shambhav9534 WHAT THE HECK😳😭... I cannot process this! I can’t believe it. I’ve aged 4 years since 2020... it’s all hitting me now. Time has gone so fast like I can’t process the fact that 2020 was 3 YEARS AGO!! Like I lost a close friend to covid and I remember the exact date too (February 13th 2020) I’m scared of how fast time is going because I remember everything that happened in 2020 like yesterday, like I could literally make a whole documentary on it and remember every detail😳 Also how fast we’re aging... it’s actually scary to think about😰
"Back in summer 2012 this was a warm, friendly temporary festival site with a load of people on it, and now it's a cold, run-down, deserted bit of scrubland" - well, this sums up the difference between 2012 and 2022 quite well, doesn't it?
"And it's better than the alternative!" well said...we lost a friend of ours at 29 so whenever the rest of us hit a milestone birthday now we think of what the alternative is to getting older.
Same here exactly. Im turning 30 this year and because im a recovered addict ive seen a few dozen people die before 30. Its bittersweet. Im greatful to be here but it hurts thats all those people arent. even 2 of my exes overdosed.
I'm not entirely sure if I agree with it. At least until the algorithms improve. My biggest problem with shortform is that most of what is recommended to me is garbage.
I don't think it would happen, it's the same when people though mobile games are going to replace PC games.... that's still not happening. Also most short videos are complete garbage. Recently I tend to watch even longer videos than before, not shorter ones... so no... not after 10 not after a 100 years, short videos are not going to replace anything.
@@Slav4o911 the mobile gaming market is bigger than the pc and console markets combined no? its a massively lucrative business and at the very least it's killed browser games
You’re right to say blogs are less significant now, but I don’t think it’s because of twitter, I think podcasts and high quality youtube essays+lifestyle vlogs are simply an evolved form of simple text blogging. Short form videos are nice but they really won’t be able to satisfy my need to interact with a content creator’s high level ideas.
Honestly I don’t watch blogs at all. It does not give information. Or maybe they do? At the certain age of people which I completed (I’m getting old) now I watch just much more information videos and documentaries
I thought of this original video more as a warning tale. Kind of a shorter term 1984. The fact that we haven't gone where you feared completely is a good thing for humanity as a whole.
I feel like the point about "iLife" not being real because "people don't like remembering everything" is not 100% wrong. Services like iCloud/Google Photos (and even Snapchat and Facebook) have everything stored in the cloud and would periodically throw up memories when you open those apps. It's not exactly the same sort of thing but I think it's a small piece of what Tom was going for.
Google Photos also seems to be suspiciously good at identifying people in photos and videos at this point too, though they don't notify you if you've appeared in someone else's photos (yet)
And maybe kinda Google Timeline (Location History) on Google Maps, tracking your locations every day and giving you an overview. Sort of similar in a tiny sense.
That's what I was thinking. The fact that your phone is constantly tracking your location and saves it to the cloud is accurate too. You can check maps and see everywhere you've been. I think he's being a bit too hard on some of his own predictions, not taking them with the pinch of salt that they need
@@Communist-Doge Yes, Google Location History is a similar thing! But then your photos are automatically geotagged so that's just another piece of data for making it even more accurate
I don't think TH-cam will ever be shutdown. The historical value of the information stored on this site is too great. They might slowly reduce the amount creators receive and save costs by further raising the bar for new uploads, but I just can't imagine the world without TH-cam for the next 20 years atleast. In the far future if it must be shutdown, I believe a lot of the videos will be archived.
Given what happens to so much old media combined with hosting costs I doubt it's possible that youtube would be archived indefinitely, just considering the sheer amount of videos.
@@xerzy "For $10000, you too can enjoy a three day free-form exploration through the audio-visual media consumed in the 21st century." Some rich mcguffins would probably pay for the hosting...
The thought of TH-cam shutting down is rather terrifying. So much of our modern culture is recorded here. I was no longer using Yahoo mail when it ended premium accounts and didn't notice that memories I was archiving there was missing until it was irretrievably just gone. One day Flickr will probably do the same.
There are still active communities on Flickr, especially for those in virtual worlds such Second Life--for blogging (although the line between influencer and blogging is blurred these days) and photographing, which I do. It's also easy due to their idiot bots or some asshats out there, for your account to be terminated and for you to lose all of those photos or blog posts. I made the mistake of putting all of my eggs in one basket there--spent most of last year regaining my following, and re-establishing the rep I had/have in SL.
I really wish that in 2012, you would have filmed yourself answering interview questions from yourself in 2022. And you stitch it together to make it seamless as much as possible. That would be so cool to see and would have been a fantastic way to end your TH-cam career. We'll miss you, Tom!
"TH-cam has now closed. Thank you for watching." Hits hard as a creative who grew up with/alongside TH-cam. The idea of this formative piece of my life being removed because the company behind it isn't making money anymore or whatever is super sad. I don't think it will come to that in the next 10 years but still, super not fun to think about. Love your stuff as always x
As nothing said, google looses money on TH-cam. What they gain from it is information. Google will only consider shutting down TH-cam if the amount of viewers declines too much. I have a feeling TikTok will start to stagnate before seriously harming TH-cam. There might, however, be a shift towards content with less editing on TH-cam as a result of Twitch and TikTok.
That's too scary to think about for me as a channel owner with more than 2000 videos on it. And if it does happen, I really really hope that the videos on this platform will still be archived somewhere.
There's many of us archiving videos we like or think are important, but no individual person has the means to host such a huge amount of content for so many people. If you don't have a personal archive of your stuff, start now. Storage is not that expensive. Redundancy is important.
You looked like a hippie Tom! I will say that you have matured very gracefully I appreciate your channel and I look forward to any and all new content and predictions of the future thank you for your hard work Tom
I can see a future where podcasts, longform content and TikTok/TH-cam Shorts-like snippets of such content become fused in some sort of combined media platform. Right now TH-cam is easily the most versatile. We can get music, movie clips, shows, podcasts and gameplay streams all in one place, but they may not stay on top forever.
I think clips are going to become bigger. WAY bigger. Longform content is still required for others to make the clips, but I think some kind of integration of clips into the same destination as its parent content is kind of inevitable. Imagine videos or vods with 'clip reel' attached to them, kind of like the clip reels in twitch, but for all content, and there being crossplay of you being able to look at a clip and then continue the video from that point onwards, for example.
@@Dark_Side_Productions That and any phrases implying the same are outlawed by law 189 article 3 of the constitution in the ass of the main commentor 😅
Think about this. Those episodes of Cartoon Network you were wishing would play when you got home only to miss it by 30 minutes and now you have to wait for 3 days? A kid today will probably have an tablet of any sort, with media apps, whilst the parents keep the subscription for that platform. They can Bing watch an entire series in a few days. And never miss an episode
I'm already a TH-cam Boomer since it was new when I was a preteen just making dumb videos. It surprises me is that there are now young adults who have never existed in a pre-TH-cam era.
Welcome to the club. I miss the good ol' days, when TH-cam was a small independent website, with a huge mess of nothing but David Icke conspiracy theories and blurry clips of flying saucers...
Despite making errors, Tom Scott was actually kind of very realistic about our future/present, let's just hope we begin to do things to save our planet
@@PocketSinner and to install cameras at home. I have friends who have a camera inside the house so they can keep an eye on their dogs. Hell, even my 73 year old dad has installed a camera doorbell.
As long as it doesn't make our world turn into a global surveillance state. Then again, considering people still refuse to listen to people like Edward Snowden, we're already getting there, just not exactly through camera surveillance.
It’s sad to me that a lot of the ways in which Tom was wrong pertain to the increased centralization of the internet-the effective replacement of blogging and private forums with the same few social media sites that everyone uses nowadays. They may be more convenient to use and easier to find other people & communities with, but I’ve always been wary of this model and I hope some cultural shift occurs soon that makes decentralization popular again (but I don’t actually expect it).
As with all learning, from walking to politics, it's a helical process, where you go too far in one direction, and then too far in another, so that in the middle, you tend to be balanced and moving forward. We'll start seeing more localized networks and self-hosting content again, while also having some centralized platforms as well, but they will likely stop being for-profit companies, as that's just stupid altogether. For-profit companies make life worse, for everyone, in the long run. Corporations and national governments (non-consensual laws) are the dinosaurs of memetic evolution. Too big and dangerous to last, as compared to small and furry pro-social memes.
This has definitely been a rising concern in recent years, I think. We've seen a lot of high-profile, widespread outages recently that definitely would not have been anywhere near as severe as they were if the internet wasn't so overcentralized, and there's definitely a big concern with respect to how vulnerable some platforms (Discord in particular) actually are. The internet as-is really isn't sustainable. But unfortunately, corporations do not care about sustainability in any form.
I think the answer should be democratic control of the internet by its users rather than going back to decentralisation. Most if not all of the downsides to the sort of centralisation we have now is due to the fact that it's owned by huge private companies that leave us no say in how we interact on the internet.
@@jishnudayanidhi9326 that’s funny. My school has literally used discord before and I’ve seen other schools use it too. You’d be surprised with how ridiculous schools can be.
TH-cam deserves some kind of protection like a world heritage site. It's one of the biggest libraries to ever exist, it would be an injustice to wipe perfectly logged history and education let alone the livelihoods of independent artists and content creators which rely on this platform to survive.
na, looking on what happened since 2016 on TH-cam I would say we should burn it to the ground and not look back. I think it is best to stop when something is awesome instead of continuing and making it worse and worse by the years.
Appreciating your intention to share many failures in how difficult it is to predict the future..well done i hope to be able to see your next 10year prediction..thanks!
This is why I am concerned with products getting transmogrified into "services" with terms and conditions. Services that could be terminated at the provider's discretion without prior notice. Never get rid of a product when it is replaced by a service. Just hang on to your product. You never know when you will need it.
Absolutely. Not to mention, a good way to avoid this is to use libre/open source software wherever you can. Krita instead of Photoshop, Libreoffice instead of Office 365, Kdenlive instead of Premiere, and while you're at it why not switch to Linux? :) dual boots are easy to achieve, and 80% of people will find themselves gravitating to Linux once you know how to do everything. It's like all the good parts of macOS with even more freedom than Windows.
@@edherdman9973 eventually, once self-driving cars have progressed enough to become the norm, I could easily see a lot of people just getting self-driving Ubers or whatever every time they need to go somewhere. It would be so much easier than having to worry about maintenance or paying bills or whatever
I just hope you're wrong and people will get fed up with extremely short, superficial TikTok videos. Your type of content/format is the one i prefer, and i hope it never dies.
I don’t see shortform videos going away anytime soon but I do think if it isn’t changed and more people use it to further spread misinformation that its growth will halt or be slowed
There was this thing called Vine which hosted 7 sec long videos and it's gone now. I hope tiktok will be gone too as it's super bad for people's brains but I'm afraid that it is too important for the Chinese government to allow it
TH-cam won't die, there's still way too many types of video that can't be conveyed through a TikTok. Yes we'll still see people release 20 part series through 2 minute long videos but the concept of 10-20 minute gaming/storytelling/tutorial type videos will never disappear
I'd like to hear that from a Gen Alpha. I'm a Get Y. I thought there's no way Orkut would die out, and after a few years I thought Facebook will be THE social network... But nah... Orkut is long gone, and Facebook (not Meta) is slowly dying (even Get Zs aren't using Facebook). I love TH-cam, but I won't be surprised if, ten years from now, Gen Alphas labelled TH-cam as "the video sharing website for oldies".
@@தமிழோன் There's a problem with your assessment TH-cam is being run by a multi-billion dollar company so until do we get a website that is exactly like 2016 TH-cam, TH-cam will just change
20 min video game videos usually don’t get many views unless they are from a big TH-camr like markiplier or PewDiePie with a devoted fan base. And even then they still get fewer viewers than shorter ones. Peoples attention spans are become much smaller. TH-cam won’t die but with the way it’s going with their management, I can see Tik Tok becoming bigger.
"If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear...right?" is such a powerful statement. I'd never be willing to let the state know where and what I'm doing at all times, even if it means that terrorism would be investigated slower
@@bsbg-lifts the worse thing is that the people who brought you the patriot act perpetrated the biggest attack on the US government since its inception. and it didn't intercept that, either.
Almost shed a tear at the thought of TH-cam being shut down. That was a sad and unexpected hit of reality...so many memories on this site. So much time spent watching the world's video gallery. I hope it never dies, but wouldn't be surprised if it did.
I wouldn't be too concerned. If TH-cam goes away within 10 years (because it absolutely, positively WILL go away eventually), it will only be because it had been replaced by some superior delivery platform. And it wouldn't be immediate, but would take place over several years.
Uncertainties like whether or not short form content will kill off long form content makes me weary about pursuing TH-cam full-time. I don't think short-form content can outright kill long-form content, as more complex character development, themes, and plot are only available in long-form content, but who really knows what will happen in this unstable world of ours.
We already have short form video content, and have for awhile. Vine, Instagram video, TH-cam shorts, etc. people watch it, but you get fatigued after too many. People still want to read others thoughts and listen or watch a deep dive into things they’re interested in.
I think that short form hasn’t fully taken over TH-cam in the same way, but rather, has acted as a sort of supplement. Stuff like TikTok has taken over the instant gratification that TH-cam used to do, but now, I do all of that bigger binging on TH-cam instead of stuff like Hulu and Netflix.
Short form content is already massively on the rise, TH-cam "Shorts", TikTok, etc. I don't think it will replace standard length videos, but it is definitely something more and more people are consuming
every time I see TH-cam recommend me a video from a channel called "[TH-camr I've never heard of before] Shorts" I feel like the algorithm has completely ignored the types of videos I prefer to watch
People who like short content are of the lesser compared to people who like Longer content. Why do you think they introduced 3 minute videos on their app?
I'm very surprised at how emotional I got seeing the "TH-cam has now closed" card at the end of the video. For the last ten years or so, its been a very big part of my life and has introduced me to more new loves and hobbies than I can count. In ten years, I'll be nearing 40 years old, and I'm curious to see whether TH-cam is still a big part of my life at that point.
I'm younger (25), but I felt the same way. Honestly, TH-cam was a formative influence for me and my age group, as well as a cultural touchstone for the rapidly changing times into which I was born. As such, my generation and I feel a strong personal connection to the site. I feel like shutting down TH-cam at any time would be politically difficult, though, due to the increasingly vast amount of personal and archaeological significance it bears. However, I could imagine that one day, people would be banned from uploading on this platform, so it would become a vast digital archive. I just can't imagine a world where Google users let Google get away with deleting TH-cam for good.
For what it's worth, I think Google would be much more inclined to *sell* youtube than to just discontinue it if they decided it was no longer worth the effort to avoid all the bad press from nostalgic people, and since there are so many career youtubers it could very quickly cause a Lot of bad press.
It was the fact that you pointed to the social differences of 2012 in the 50% smartphone thing that really hit me. You don't notice social change (you're too much a part of it) until you look back!
The most noticeable thing about this (and incredibly, it was Clarkson on Top Gear that pointed it out) is actually seeing evolution in action. Ask people of different generations to press an imaginary doorbell. Older people will use their index finger, younger people who grew up with smartphones and texting will use their thumb.
I never quite forgotten that change because i get reminded about it a little everytime i see someone leaned into their phone and never really gotten that absorbed myself. I recall specifically 2006 and me and my classmates were discussing Elder Scrolls Oblivion outside the classroom in 9th grade (last year before high school in our case), actually having a proper talk without distractions. Im very grateful growing up in that time now. Techwise ofc not as good esp the 90s but socially really good. :) And then 10 years later in the same school people probably talked alot less and be looking at their phones instead.
I work at a factory and we have a shared breakroom. When I look around, probably 75% of the people are staring down at their phones, 24.9% are having a conversation, one lonely guy is watching birds out a window, and I'm the other weirdo who's reading a paperback book.
You could have defended your “mistakes” out of ego but you just admitted to them, which is both more entertaining to watch and a more humble/realistic… well done.
Whenever I watch an old video by me I always get the urge of just redoing it from scratch. So many wrong things, bad editing and even mistakes in there.
I’ve watched TH-cam videos everyday since I was 12 and I’m 22 now. This site has shaped my personality, my humor, my social behavor, I even learned full fluidity on a second language because of TH-cam only. It’s a habit that I’ve tried to cut but haven’t been able to. I can’t imagine my life without TH-cam
i remember downloading DanTDM video on my ipod and show it to my classmates in... elementary school(i think). actively watched YT videos since then. now i'm 20 :
I predict that in 10 years it will be 2032. Might sound crazy now but we'll see who will get the last laugh in ten years when I would've successfully predicted 2032.
Honestly, no matter how correct or how wrong you are on a prediction, it just shows your open-mindedness on the future, both for good and bad. Lots of respect for that, Tom.
@@gizmodobaggins7040 I get what you’re saying, I suppose I was more targeting just that predictions are a good way to see the possibilities for what could be, and I just think it’s cool that Tom revisited them. I can see where you’re coming from, though, predictions can also be just fun and not deep.
One of the changes over the last ten years that has amazed me is the availability of live video from anywhere in the world streaming into my living room in near real time. Just before watching your video I was checking out a watering hole in Namibia and a bird feeder in South Africa while sitting comfortably in Southern California, thousands of miles but only seconds away. Your closing on the demise of TH-cam also struck a chord. For many years I created technical training animations using Adobe Flash, and all that content is now just vapor. This period in history may become another dark age when all of our documents and records become unreadable at some point in the not too distant future.
"watering hole in Namibia " Same here! Talk about a live stream from the middle of nowhere! About Adobe Flash; any time you create content that depends on someone else's technology or player there is some risk; even with JPEG and MPEG. But at least JPEG and MPEG specifications are more or less public so a suitably talented person could in theory re-create players for JPG and MPG and MP4 (and GIF and TIFF and so on).
You’re right. Whenever ppl make this type of prediction, they daily to acknowledge the inevitable flaws that exist with each software/algorithm/system/tech.
On Tom's prediction at the end; I think it's interesting to see how TH-cam has become the go to place specifically for long form content now. So many video essays and supercuts and 100%'s etc. that mean new life has been given to the platform because it is now the place you go to for your videos above 15 minutes. Tiktok provides the shortform, TH-cam provides the longform.
Yes, watch time has been a significant factor in YTs algorithm for over a decade now. The platform would need a really significant change in monetisation strategy to change that, as few longer videos simply keep people on the site than lots of short videos
The trick to predict the future is rather simple and can be summarised in two points: 1. Same stuff, just different. 2. What is technologically expensive or time consuming today will be cheap and quick tomorrow.
Quick maybe. But things haven't really been getting cheaper. More accessible and more ways to pay, sure. What's really been changing is the amount of money people have access to. Of course there's also inflation so it's kinda hard to tell.
TH-cam may die, but I really doubt long form will. Podcasts, books, films, theatre, tv series show there is a innate market need for long form content. The issue is TH-cam are chasing after TikTok/ Insta's market and it is risky. As if they aren't successful in capturing it and they let go of their strong hold on long form, another platform will take their place for long form, maybe Netflix. I could see TH-cam pushing shorts and eventually doing away with thumbnails/titles in place and bring it auto play algorithms, I'd even suspect they'd autopay you a segment from long videos that have high engagement.
Personally, I'm really not a fan of short-form content, it's okay for links, jokes or mindless memes, but generally it's really hard to say anything interesting about anything in 280 characters or a minute.
I’m purposely writing this because I feel a sense that I will definitely come across this video 10 years from now and I just want to write a friendly reminder to myself that keep doing what I’m doing and keep tackling life no matter how hard it gets👍
I understand that's just an opinion, but I think Tom went too far when he said "I can't understand why anyone uses them." Just because you hate them doesn't mean no one should use them.
He probably uses sh*t wireless products, my Marshall headphone is 3 years old, still working perfectly and still needs to be charged once a week with everyday usage
@@a14bs bc wired headphones are just the superior version. it is harder to lose them, they dont have a battery, and they are insanely inexpensive. airpods, the most famous version of wireless headphones, are just a way of making more money. thats the point
Another small miss: Nowadays, it would be "Apple Life", not "iLife". Apple has been moving away from "i_____" branding for new products since at least the Apple Watch, since it was a difficult trademark to defend.
@@3nertia Having the letter “i” in front of a word has infinitely more possible contexts than just being an Apple product. Because of that, other companies that want to use that kind of naming scheme would have an easier time defending themselves if Apple were to sue them. Having “Apple” is a lot more specific to the brand and harder for a third party to justify using.
@@3nertia because the BMW I5 is not an apple product and neither is the book I robot. That makes the prefix I not exclusive to apple products ad thus almost impossible to defend.
I didn't really thought it was 3 years since 2019 ended. It just feels like last year for me and sometimes I wonder this is 2021/2020 right and snapping back into reality hits hard when I realise its 2022
I'm glad you posted this. Just the other day I was thinking how the 2010s don't feel too different from the 2020s (so far) but this proves otherwise. I'm still dumbfounded by the choice to remove earphone Jack's on phones
Just in the last week, a news site posted photos of my hometown from the 90s, which is when I was growing up. I had been thinking 'have things changed that much?' Looking at those photos now felt like how I used to look at photos from the 60s and 70s when I was a kid. Even though I remember that's what things were like, it feels like a generation has passed and I just hadn't noticed until now.
I like this type of “a look back” videos, because it shows how much humanity has progressed since the video was made. Very cool video, Tom. Edit: I guess humanity has progressed technologically, but we’re going down a dark hole of uncertainty during these times. Let’s hope we can pull ourselves out of it.
"Progressed", ah you mean fallen much much deeper into the problems we already had then. Solved almost no real problems. But hey ad based content sharing platforms are more convenient now! (and as a consequences are killing our critical thinking skills)
We've got to start valuing and welcoming uncertainty if we want to mature as a species. Trying to force things to be predictable and boring is why we have wars. Life isn't supposed to be predictable and boring. It's supposed to be creative and wild and free.
When you suggested at the end that Google may decide to shutter TH-cam in ten years time, I audibly gasped with a weird emotion. I imagined the announcement coming out and finding myself distraught that such a monolith of my younger years could be going away. I wonder if that happens to every generation.
I genuinely can't imagine a world without TH-cam. So much of my childhood lives here that if TH-cam really were someday closed down I think I would genuinely need a day to grieve
@@DoodleSamurai I defiantly agree with you. My childhood mostly was TH-cam as well and I have so many memories there. It would be horrible if it was ever deleted especially seeing how far it has come.
Im not a very old individual, but,, I was a Google Plus user. And I had to start detaching myself from the friends I'd made and stuff I'd been doing on Google Plus since i heard about it shutting down soon. i was not okay for quite some time... I still have the same website bookmarked and visible in my tabs; a reminder of my mark on the internet; but its not what i remember it as anymore..
I agree with your prediction for A future, TH-cam has already added shorts and ticktock is immensely popular. the short form videos are going to overshadow TH-cam but not phase it out entirely, simply because some people (like myself) prefer to spend time more immersed in a video than for it to be over in seconds.
Yep I also like listening to long videos while I´m doing chores (like podcasts but sometimes I´ll look at them if there´s something interesting xd), I think it will be difficult to replace that with short videos in the the next years.
The current path has taken us down two opposite extremes The way of streaming, Live content running 1-12 hours and then gets archived And the way of shorts, being less than a minute, and often being contained in stories that aren't archived or saved at all
2:47 I like that "half the population could cheat on pub quizzes" is a metric used to describe how many people had modern smart phones. It has also been a sad reality because even when the bar makes you put your phones in a bucket before the game starts, people still cheat with their smart watches 😔
Wait until 2042 when it's "even when they make you put your cloud connectivity antennae in the bucket people still cheat with their data archival implants"
I suppose you could make it a "how fast can you find this information" game, but then it would depend on what hardware you have. I guess if you make it something difficult-to-find that might reduce the effect of hardware?
Predicting the future according to Tom Scott: He got it wrong: "that was wrong, we were wrong back then" He got it right: "that was right, but than again anyone could have guessed that"
@@electricant55 meaning is not dependent on accuracy, actually. You can make accurate non-meaningful predictions, inaccurate meaningful predictions, inaccurate, non-meaningful predictions and yes, accurate meaningful predictions too
2:01, Are you kidding me?? You got the exact planet wallpaper as well. Including the position of the planet being on the left side. Thats an absolute hit!!
@@animeloveer97 Dude did you look them up? None of them have the planet zoomed in and positioned on the left side of the screen like we see today. And in 2012 the common wallpapers for iPhone iOS 6 were a water droplet...
This is a partial. It's definitely meant to look like a planet, but it was actually a soap bubble. Although the composition is actually bang on! It released with the iPhone X in 2018.
It's really sad to see how everything online since then has only further centralised and de-individualised. I find myself longing for the times of old when people owning their own websites wasn't some celebrity and obscure tech geek thing. On the other hand, bus and train companies have finally figured out how to put their timetables and more online, which is something I was begging for back in the day.
I would add to that list is menus from restaurants WITH prices hahaha I hated the fact at the time i could maybe get a menu online... if i could it would have no prices and a shot in the dark as to how much it would cost to go to that restaurant for dinner...
One thing that is really annoying is bus companies in my area have removed the physical timetables however. So I have to go onto the stagecoach app praying my small amount of signal will get me to the timetable. That is usually wrong as well
The 'quantified self' prediction is really interesting to me, because i think it did pan out but more subtly. I did my dissertation in 2015 on modern depictions of surveillance in literature. One of the books I studied was The Circle by Dave Eggers, released 2013. That book completely takes on that idea of tech companies pushing constant video/audio recording in a very dystopian way. But actually, what we'd already started to see by 2015, and much more so today, is subtly different in that most people are uncomfortable with something constantly listening, BUT totally happy to input all sorts of detail about their life and be constantly sharing via things like Snapchat or insta stories, detailed food diaries and exercise trackers, even heart rate monitors. To me that's a significant distinction- in a nutshell, many of us happily surveil ourselves, and lots of tech focuses heavily on that 'quantified self' concept. And this is kind of neatly tied up tied up the fact that a game show all about how you present yourself online began a few years ago called....The Circle. I often think about going back and doing an updated version of that dissertation - maybe in 2025!!
That's an interesting distinction! I wonder if the distinction exists because of the tropes needed to make dystopian fiction. I'd imagine to make these kind of stories, you have to make it clear to the reader that the speculative future that they are reading about is something to be feared. So naturally the writer will focus on systems that result in the loss of personal agency. But obviously real companies that create these kind of systems have to make these system marketable. So it seems like dystopian fiction writers kind of have to gloss over the fact that the people in their stories may have wanted these systems in order to make the fear of these systems more believable to the reader.
I worked in software support in 2019 and 2020. All of our phone calls were recorded and for a time we were video'd at our desks to make sure we were being productive and anyone at the company could see every persons video stream at all times. The backlash from the latter eventually led to the full recordings being replaced with a basic motion sensor in our cubicles to determine if we were in there or not. It was all very uncomfortable.
4:14 Apple does this, Facebook does this, even messages you type into Facebook and delete are saved (by them, for them). Google definitely does this. They call it quality checking. The reality is we have no idea where the transcripts of what these listening devices take down go, or who has access to them or for how long.
I guess ten years ago companies and governments pretended to be coy about invasions of privacy. Now it seems like everybody has grown accustomed to those invasions, and have been distracted from a freer and wilder time before the centralized version of the Internet took shape. Saturation with entertainment and easy false gratification has led humanity to a dark and isolated existence... Or perhaps just myself, for that's most of the humanity I intimately understand anyway.
And yes, to avoid the obvious comments: I have aged in the last ten years. It'll happen to you, too. And it's better than the alternative!
Inevitable, isn’t it?
Impossible 😂😂
jesus the wall is brutal
XD
Lies
I can't imagine a world without TH-cam, where would I procrastinate all day to avoid my responsibilities??
You'll be old enough for Bingo soon.
I feel personally attacked by your statement ...
Tiktok? Nah.
No need to worry, TH-cam will probably replaced by something else counterproductive
Tiktok but its made by a new startup and that startup bought a declining TH-cam for 2billion usd
The prediction of short form content *completely* taking over long form content reminds me almost exactly how mobile games were "destined" to kill the traditional gaming industry. "Why make a console game if it cost 10x the amount and made 10x less money?" "Everyones going to have a phone, they won't need a console!" We now know how both can co-exist and continue to grow, but 10 years ago it really felt like it could happen. I think there's a very good place for both and it'll still be that way in 10 years. Short form will be king (it currently is), but long form will stay healthy and continue to grow.
Tom's prediction is not that bold. It's already started happening. TikTok has taken over for most of the z-generation as the go to platform
"Do You Guys Not Have Phones?"
Except the mobile games cost a tenth the effort/money to make and have the potential to make over ten times more in 'micro' transactions. So many companies started shoving crap instead of quality
The mobile games industry now makes more money than Hollywood. Look it up!
The primary reason why mobile gaming isn't much more huge is that most companies would rather produce cheap low quality mindless crap (which absolutely isn't necessary if you look at a game like Hearthstone which has been an excellent mobile game for years), but the other big hinderance is the control scheme. Only touch controls is very limiting. That said, if companies focused more on quality than whatever makes them the most money (which obviously will not happen), mobile gaming could potentially become better and more respected.
petition for tom scott to come back from retirement in 2032 and react to this
Nah. The Deconstruct: 2030 talk is probably better for this. (the video's called "Privacy's dead", more or less)
(To OP, not @revolver265): SIGNED!
He's not in permanent retirement. It's just temporary
@blackwing1362 thanks for ruining the nostalgia session i was having just now. im happy to know that though
By then, we can ask his AI double to react to this.
"Our phones will record everything we say."
Tom : "Ah,I got this one wrong".
Facebook and Google that are listening to send you ads : sigh of relief
Thought the same thing 😂
And Alexa, etc can probably hear everything you say
Worse yet, some... 'less-democratic' governments are _known_ to have used the phones of activists and trouble makers to eavesdrop on their conversations.
(as for the more-democratic governments, it's hard to say whether they never do that, or are just better at hiding it)
@@MrNicoJac 😂😂😂😂 so profound wow very insightful 😂😂 get back to work bozo
@@fischy947 keep working to get that GED you’ll do it one day buddy!
I got a sinking feeling of dread when I saw the last panel. It's not even that I love TH-cam but the sheer amount of human knowledge and work and experience that is on TH-cam and will come to it in 10 years time. Gone from public eyes forever, with a single press of a button. It is unfathomable.
I can see Google making it harder to upload videos, but I don't see them shutting down the service entirely in the near future.
simple, make youtube a public service. like water.
No different than throwing a book or your phone away. Information is always around, access to it is the issue.
@@nabicx 10 years later youtube is now pbs everyone has access to to it for ever
:( This already happens to TH-cam who cover “sensitive” subjects or expose people/corporations.
I was dreaming of wireless headphones when I was skateboarding as a teenage kid. In my 30's now and the dream has finally come true. 😁
Hey champion
I had the same idea
Yoo I did the same! I remember tying my earbud wires to my hoodie strings so they wouldn’t get tangled or rip out of my ears haha
Wireless headphones existed when you were a teen though.
@@MK8MasterJunjie How the hell you have 150k subs but only average 200 views per video? Paid?
I really like how you have no issue admitting where you were wrong, it's humbling and serves as an example to a few of us, myself included 😊
The end of this video genuinely sent a shiver down my spine as someone who relies on longform content.
i also got that shivers, i just can't imagine the world without youtube and the ogs videos
hey, love ur vids bro.
It gave me a very sad, sinking feeling.
That battle has already been fought, and Vine lost. I wouldn't worry about it too much.
I don’t think such a prediction is accurate. The technology for short form has been out for a long while now, and if short form is so good, it should have completely taken over by now. Also sure, short form videos are becoming increasing popular, but long form videos have many advantages over short form.
I think 2012 was the perfect year to have done this because it felt like a big transition year for smart phones and social media. Definitely didn’t see the death of blogs for a couple of years
Well, people did think it was the end of the world.
blogs didn't die. They just went into counterculture, and they're coming back in force now
True
@DAVID 2012 had a special end of the world energy, it was the Mayan prophecy thing.
No year since then had that - we traded fun, immediate, supernatural apocalyptic notions for depressing, distant, concrete, and constant ones.
@Paul B I think 2013-2015 was the transition, with 2014 being the main year. This is in terms of personal technology and culture.
TH-cam getting shut down is honestly a scary thought to me. Not in terms of privacy, but in terms of how much information I have absorbed through it (like learning how to use an oscilloscope), or reconnected with from before TH-cam existed (like obscure TV show clips), that would have all been severed with one swift stroke.
It will still be used for educational purposes, just less for entertainment. Just take tiktok for example, you cant even go to a specific timestamp or forward or reward by 10 seconds etc., it would be very annoying to watch a documentary there, TH-cam ist just way better for that. So in the bigger picture it might actually be a good thing; youtube being more educational than a potential distraction is something im looking forward to
I honestly think TH-cam does more good for the world than bad, but the censorship and demonetization and shadow banning of creators is really bugging me. I hope the content of youtube just gets reuploaded in other platforms and it dies, or, better yet, google decides to stop being evil again and lets freedom of speech have its place.
I hope before shutting down TH-cam gives creators the option to move their content their own servers or other services.
I think they'd keep the content in some history of some sorts, so they wouldn't remove all of this from ever existing. I bet though there's gonna be a new big social media, like how when Vine died a thing called Tik Tok appeared and now Tik Tok is a massive social media site.
It's scary to me too, just imagine the amount of productivity I'd regain for doing actual work!
If Google decides to "shut down this old product" I don't care. I would miss someone like you. You're intelligent and genuine and humble.
Tom don’t worry, looking back at your past self and being embarrassed is something we can all relate to
Ye I’m not sure that’s anyone who isn’t embarrassed by things their past self did
In fact we can look back at a something done yesterday and be "what fool has... Wait it was made by me"
its personal growth :))
Indeed, especially if it happens some nights while you’re in bed and just ready to get some sleep.
No I was born perfect
Problem with predicting anything is that predictions tend to just take the current trends and imagine that they will go on indefinitely. Real-life is full of plot twists, unexpected developments, and for that matter fads that just fizzle out on their own.
This is why "the future" in media in like the 50s, 60s, etc., looks like that era. You have no frame of reference other than your own current time.
pandemic completely changed everything and accelerated the growth insanely
But one if the best ways to predict the future is to look at the past because a lot of things are cyclic in nature
agreed, its called the ""heuristic bias"
Just like COVID. No-one could've predicted that.
Back around 2005-2006 I remember seriously wishing there was some way I could get the internet into a car so that I could listen to internet radio there. If you want to know what's going to happen in the next 3 or 4 years in tech, just ask a teenager what's missing.
Better things for disabled people :)
mm. Bigger nukes. Bigger guns. Bigger buildings. Bigger everything EXPAND THE WORLD
@@OpenFieldd bigger balls
@@OpenFieldd Ah yes good old dystopia
@@OpenFieldd haha planet go boom
He was actually right about Apple wanting people to record their entire lives. One of the big "selling points" of the Apple Vision Pro is being able to record your life and "relive" memories. He was just a year off
To be fair, the pandemic wasn't really expected by anyone.
@@cat1554 This wasn't caused by the pandemic though. Seems like it would happen one way or the other.
Also right about phones recording microphones, but in a marketing way
well not really, its just a form of 3d video. nothing like what was mentioned in the talk
he was wrong with only 2 min. details: - not optional ; products name is Pegasus 😅
There’s 3 rules in predicting tech.
1. The laws of physics never change
2. Average consumers will always prefer simplicity (abstraction) over performance.
3. Technology can never solve social problems on it’s own.
3. Technology makes social problems worse
4. Every optimistic prediction turns out to be the opposite.
@@_blank-_ depends on the technology and depends on the social problem. Now if you're going to tell me social media makes divides in society worse then absolutely I agree with you on that. But if you're going to tell me that technology makes Healthcare worse I'm going to sit here and laugh at you for about 3 hours and then move on with my day as dealing with people that dumb is just a waste of time.
@@_blank-_ Only because one of our social problems is that it's far easier to abuse than to use.
damn thats true and kinda deep...
It's never occurred to me that Google might eventually shut down TH-cam, considering how much valuable content there is on it, but it makes sense. I hope people will make an archive until then.
As long as most of it can be backed up, then it would be a good thing cause TH-cam is horrible, there just is no competition.
@@Nekotaku_TV that would not be a good thing
I remain surprised that TH-cam hasn't been shut down. Google has a well-earned reputation for buying services and shutting them down a few years later.
In fairness, I also expected TH-cam to be merged into Google Video after the buy, not for the two to operate alongside each other independently until Google Video was deleted.
@@Nekotaku_TV it's not terrible, it just has some management issues, and as a consequence of being too big & diverse it can't please everyone.
I though Tom Scott himself highlighted how if it wasn't for TH-cam's content id most content creators probably couldn't have made half the stuff they do now & not a fraction of the exposure, and getting a copyright strike or demonetisation is just better than dealing with lawsuits or not being allowed to make anything. The oversensitivity to various topics is truely annoying but they're at the whim of advertisers since TH-cam Premium never took off to the level of a streaming service (despite honestly having much more interesting content)
Some niches are certainly better off having their own platform though
As of Feb. 2020, 30,000 hours of content were being uploaded to TH-cam per hour. I can't see that having decreased by 2022. I would hate to see it all lost, but good luck with being able to back-up all that data.
I believe there's a value in making these predictions 10 years in the future. Your predictions, while wrong in many cases, were well informed and researched at the time and provide us a reference to see the real change that happened in the subsequent years. We experience change incrementally which makes it very difficult to see how big the change is over a span of time without having a reference point that captures the sentiment at that time, almost like taking a screenshot of history.
im happy for u bro or sad idk im not reading all that
In 10 years I'll be 10 years older than before
Well said Sir.👌.
@@doge_the_cat your missing out, eh. Sincere wisdom, is hard 2 find.
ok nerd
The fact that he was right in the way that short form videos are now really skyrocketing in popularity is making my heart ache.
They were already skyrocketing in popularity back then. In fact, this prediction was a bit late - Tik Tok use has actually levelled off, by the looks of things. The average adult spends the same amount of time on TikTok today as they did in 2021.
@@TitaniumDragon But youtube, facebook and instagram shorts have blown up.
This vid is 2 years old, that’s not a crazy prediction for 2032
If it helps you sleep at night, it's somewhat astroturfed. The algorithms are all set up to reward short-form videos AND on top of it all, these videos are forced onto mobile users as autoplay when you start up the TH-cam app. Longform videos still have a lot of viewers, though.
I would say that the whole "iLife" prediction actually ended up being right in the watered down form of Snapchat stories and Instagram stories. I still get notifications to this day of a "memory" from 6 years ago.
Even OneDrive does that.
I'm sure I clicked/tapped through some intro screen that set that up, but I don't recall doing it.
But it’s your job to create the memory, it’s not being involuntarily recorded
Google Photos and Yandex Disk do that too
Same as Google, I get notifications about pictures taken 15 years ago. Now that because for some reasons those photos have the wrong date attached to them, 2007 instead of 2012, they are clear of the Olympic torch relay going through Barkingside.
The whole life blogging has taken off because battery technology and camera technology doesn't allow it, yet.
I can't believe 2012 was ten years ago... life really seems to go by faster and faster as you grow up. Ten years. Wow.
2020 was 2 years ago. That's crazier.
@@shambhav9534 exactly
@@shambhav9534 WHAT THE HECK😳😭... I cannot process this!
I can’t believe it. I’ve aged 4 years since 2020... it’s all hitting me now. Time has gone so fast like I can’t process the fact that 2020 was 3 YEARS AGO!!
Like I lost a close friend to covid and I remember the exact date too (February 13th 2020)
I’m scared of how fast time is going because I remember everything that happened in 2020 like yesterday, like I could literally make a whole documentary on it and remember every detail😳
Also how fast we’re aging... it’s actually scary to think about😰
@@its_zayaan nah you just bored all that time
@@its_zayaan .omg sammeeee i cant get my mind out of 2020 being 2 years ago like i swear i was JUST in 2020 what theeee
Thanks for the thoughtful dread, Tom.
thoughtful dread XD
Tom Scott
LOSER! I HAVE A BETTER VIDEO!
I would definitely be sad if your videos were to be lost with TH-cam. I love your work.
Tom Scott LOSER! I HAVE A BETTER VIDEO!!
Bot
Another of those days where I just have to admit how much I miss these videos. I hope you are having the best time out there Tom, you deserve it!
2012: “The descendant of Siri will have advanced abilities”
Actual 2022: “Hey Siri, call my dad”
“Ok, showing google results for Call of Duty”
Bruh.
This has 3 really funny meanings
"Hey Siri, call me daddy"
"I don't see a father in your contacts"
@@pacifico4999unus annus
@@pacifico4999 that make sense tho because Irish english speakers say me instead of my alot of times
"Back in summer 2012 this was a warm, friendly temporary festival site with a load of people on it, and now it's a cold, run-down, deserted bit of scrubland" - well, this sums up the difference between 2012 and 2022 quite well, doesn't it?
I can't argue, you're right.
In 2012 all I could think about was the end of the world lmao
@@Smalls-eye24 what do you find yourself thinking about now?
@@Smalls-eye24 there’s a written theory out there that the world did “end” in 2012. Now I can’t find it.
no
"And it's better than the alternative!" well said...we lost a friend of ours at 29 so whenever the rest of us hit a milestone birthday now we think of what the alternative is to getting older.
Well tbh we dont know what the alternative really is like. Maybe the after life is cool af, so maybe no, its not better than the alternative
Same here exactly. Im turning 30 this year and because im a recovered addict ive seen a few dozen people die before 30. Its bittersweet. Im greatful to be here but it hurts thats all those people arent. even 2 of my exes overdosed.
@@saverio_6990 Whether there is an after life or not, it's still better to live out your full life so I would beg to differ
@@saverio_6990 We'll get there all eventually so it doesn't matter where it's cool or not. Or whether it exists or not. You're here now
@@marksilla8276 all I am saying is that you cant say for sure that this life is better than the alternative
It does give me some confidence watching stuff like this, that probably the dystopian predictions we have won't come true
That prediction that the world will increasingly focus more and more on short-form videos was one of the most depressing things I've heard in a while.
I'm not entirely sure if I agree with it. At least until the algorithms improve. My biggest problem with shortform is that most of what is recommended to me is garbage.
I don't think it would happen, it's the same when people though mobile games are going to replace PC games.... that's still not happening. Also most short videos are complete garbage. Recently I tend to watch even longer videos than before, not shorter ones... so no... not after 10 not after a 100 years, short videos are not going to replace anything.
@@shawno8253 but people still scroll and scroll waiting for one small good thing and they won’t stop.
@@shawno8253 Agreed. Once in awhile I do run into a short that's almost like an advertisement for a long video that I would be interested in though.
@@Slav4o911 the mobile gaming market is bigger than the pc and console markets combined no? its a massively lucrative business and at the very least it's killed browser games
Tom: When has anyone been ever able to predict politics?
The Simpsons: Hold my DUFF
TRUE
I was labeled a conspiracy theorist for the past 10 years now they are all coming true.
FINALLY SOMEONE WHO UNDERSTANDS
1:20
Amen xD
You’re right to say blogs are less significant now, but I don’t think it’s because of twitter, I think podcasts and high quality youtube essays+lifestyle vlogs are simply an evolved form of simple text blogging. Short form videos are nice but they really won’t be able to satisfy my need to interact with a content creator’s high level ideas.
I agree completely. Even watching a bunch of shorts the content is too simple
Honestly I don’t watch blogs at all. It does not give information. Or maybe they do? At the certain age of people which I completed (I’m getting old) now I watch just much more information videos and documentaries
I'd say blogs to a certain extent didn't disappear, but they did stop being independently hosted. These days people use sites like Medium instead.
@@NathanGriffithsNZ Either that or it’s overly sponsored
Also, things like long Facebook posts are sorta like blogs.
Rare for most users though
I thought of this original video more as a warning tale. Kind of a shorter term 1984. The fact that we haven't gone where you feared completely is a good thing for humanity as a whole.
I feel like the point about "iLife" not being real because "people don't like remembering everything" is not 100% wrong.
Services like iCloud/Google Photos (and even Snapchat and Facebook) have everything stored in the cloud and would periodically throw up memories when you open those apps.
It's not exactly the same sort of thing but I think it's a small piece of what Tom was going for.
Google Photos also seems to be suspiciously good at identifying people in photos and videos at this point too, though they don't notify you if you've appeared in someone else's photos (yet)
And maybe kinda Google Timeline (Location History) on Google Maps, tracking your locations every day and giving you an overview. Sort of similar in a tiny sense.
That's what I was thinking. The fact that your phone is constantly tracking your location and saves it to the cloud is accurate too. You can check maps and see everywhere you've been. I think he's being a bit too hard on some of his own predictions, not taking them with the pinch of salt that they need
@@skymin Facebook did, with their "is this you" feature that they pulled when they recognised your face in one of your friend's photos - scary stuff
@@Communist-Doge Yes, Google Location History is a similar thing! But then your photos are automatically geotagged so that's just another piece of data for making it even more accurate
I don't think TH-cam will ever be shutdown. The historical value of the information stored on this site is too great. They might slowly reduce the amount creators receive and save costs by further raising the bar for new uploads, but I just can't imagine the world without TH-cam for the next 20 years atleast. In the far future if it must be shutdown, I believe a lot of the videos will be archived.
Maybe they'll just phase out uploading so all the existing videos stay, but new ones can no longer be added
They said that about GeoCities...
Given what happens to so much old media combined with hosting costs I doubt it's possible that youtube would be archived indefinitely, just considering the sheer amount of videos.
They could keep that information but close it down for the public. They're on their legal right and it'd be far cheaper.
@@xerzy
"For $10000, you too can enjoy a three day free-form exploration through the audio-visual media consumed in the 21st century."
Some rich mcguffins would probably pay for the hosting...
The thought of TH-cam shutting down is rather terrifying. So much of our modern culture is recorded here.
I was no longer using Yahoo mail when it ended premium accounts and didn't notice that memories I was archiving there was missing until it was irretrievably just gone. One day Flickr will probably do the same.
I'm almost sure TH-cam will one day start to delete videos too old and with not enough views or whatever
@@redtro8678 at the very least crushing the quality and deleting higher quality versions. Only 144p available with ultra high compression
flickr is still around?
There are still active communities on Flickr, especially for those in virtual worlds such Second Life--for blogging (although the line between influencer and blogging is blurred these days) and photographing, which I do. It's also easy due to their idiot bots or some asshats out there, for your account to be terminated and for you to lose all of those photos or blog posts. I made the mistake of putting all of my eggs in one basket there--spent most of last year regaining my following, and re-establishing the rep I had/have in SL.
Tom Scott
LOSER! I HAVE A BETTER VIDEO!
I really wish that in 2012, you would have filmed yourself answering interview questions from yourself in 2022. And you stitch it together to make it seamless as much as possible. That would be so cool to see and would have been a fantastic way to end your TH-cam career. We'll miss you, Tom!
waht an original idea, saw it dozens of times
"TH-cam has now closed. Thank you for watching." Hits hard as a creative who grew up with/alongside TH-cam. The idea of this formative piece of my life being removed because the company behind it isn't making money anymore or whatever is super sad. I don't think it will come to that in the next 10 years but still, super not fun to think about. Love your stuff as always x
crowdfund a TH-cam trust fund, pool money and run it on the interest indefinitely
the thing is though that youtube has actually never made money. google can afford to run youtube at a deficit and always has done.
@@Nothing-pb8hu TH-cam made $15 billion in 2019 alone, and who knows how much more during the pandemic since everyone is at home
As nothing said, google looses money on TH-cam. What they gain from it is information. Google will only consider shutting down TH-cam if the amount of viewers declines too much. I have a feeling TikTok will start to stagnate before seriously harming TH-cam. There might, however, be a shift towards content with less editing on TH-cam as a result of Twitch and TikTok.
@@Nothing-pb8hu TH-cam has been profitable for some years now.
I think the lesson we can take away here, is that nobody can truly predict the future, no matter how knowledgeable you may be in the topic.
Omg it’s you
@@justsomeguycalledkaraka5614 omg its a bot!!! 😱😱😱
@@Bleeped ?
I would never predict Javascript would be used in everything, which is why I quit programming and become a musician.
@@justsomeguycalledkaraka5614 oh I see, this goes even deeper. So are you running all these accounts? I feel like I have stumbled on a rabbit hole
That's too scary to think about for me as a channel owner with more than 2000 videos on it. And if it does happen, I really really hope that the videos on this platform will still be archived somewhere.
Please keep personal backups. Google has a history of killing its products and TH-cam has not been making as much money as they want for years now.
Save your backups now, don’t count on google being reasonable about it.
E
There's many of us archiving videos we like or think are important, but no individual person has the means to host such a huge amount of content for so many people. If you don't have a personal archive of your stuff, start now. Storage is not that expensive. Redundancy is important.
You could convert them to mp4 files and put them on a hard drive if you wanted to
You looked like a hippie Tom!
I will say that you have matured very gracefully I appreciate your channel and I look forward to any and all new content and predictions of the future thank you for your hard work Tom
I can see a future where podcasts, longform content and TikTok/TH-cam Shorts-like snippets of such content become fused in some sort of combined media platform. Right now TH-cam is easily the most versatile. We can get music, movie clips, shows, podcasts and gameplay streams all in one place, but they may not stay on top forever.
Your content is a prime example of excellent longform. Loved the cyberpunk retrospective!
They will they have a monopoly but the us government doesn't care
I think clips are going to become bigger. WAY bigger. Longform content is still required for others to make the clips, but I think some kind of integration of clips into the same destination as its parent content is kind of inevitable. Imagine videos or vods with 'clip reel' attached to them, kind of like the clip reels in twitch, but for all content, and there being crossplay of you being able to look at a clip and then continue the video from that point onwards, for example.
I think you got that right. But hey, 10 years from now is a long time.
How many subscribers can I get from this reply
Current 89
Tom has some of the most creative and engaging content I’ve seen on this platform. It’s always something different, new, and entertaining.
I agree
I agree
I agree
I agree
I agree
Moral of the story: Tom is much better at predicting the past and present, and being thrown through windows, than predicting the future.
How many subs can I get from this
Current 89
@@notcason none
@@notcason none
@@notcason none
Postdicting
Holy crap it's only been 10 years that our entire lives have been mobile? How... did that feel embedded, like breathing, so quickly?
As long as you include the words “big” and “disaster” in somewhat close proximity then yes you predicted correctly
😂😂😂
Very true
“There will be no big disaster”
@@Dark_Side_Productions That and any phrases implying the same are outlawed by law 189 article 3 of the constitution in the ass of the main commentor 😅
@@Dark_Side_Productions exactly, its a perfect year. Also nothing happened in Tiananmen Square.
As someone who grew up using this site, it's hard to imagine that there may be a future generation that doesn't grow up watching youtube....
Children are already all watching Tik Tok a lot instead
Think about this. Those episodes of Cartoon Network you were wishing would play when you got home only to miss it by 30 minutes and now you have to wait for 3 days? A kid today will probably have an tablet of any sort, with media apps, whilst the parents keep the subscription for that platform. They can Bing watch an entire series in a few days. And never miss an episode
Damn, fam, I'm probably just 4-5 years older than you, and I'm part of the generation that didn't grow up with this site. We didn't miss much.
i believe so too.
As long as they dont grow up watching tik tok
I'm gonna be the boomer talking about the good ole youtube days
You ain't alone buddy
This is Sparta!!!
Bring it back
I'm already a TH-cam Boomer since it was new when I was a preteen just making dumb videos. It surprises me is that there are now young adults who have never existed in a pre-TH-cam era.
Welcome to the club. I miss the good ol' days, when TH-cam was a small independent website, with a huge mess of nothing but David Icke conspiracy theories and blurry clips of flying saucers...
I never even thought about the fact that I don't see blogs much anymore til I watched this.
Despite making errors, Tom Scott was actually kind of very realistic about our future/present, let's just hope we begin to do things to save our planet
There's a lot more dangers to humanity than the climate
@@nolongerjuicyboiz4413 and all of them come from humans
@@zexfafa2794 no, it comes from the universe's existence.
@@Skemmm exampel
@@zexfafa2794 duck the Politicians and there supporters
Tom Scott made this to throw us off the scent that he's actually 400 years old and can travel forwards and backwards in time
@@slevinchannel7589 Scott the woz
tom is the doctor...?
@@slevinchannel7589 I like Scotty Kilmer more
He's John Titor
@@TheEmolano John Scott
4:02 - not completely wrong - body worn cameras are common in some areas where staff interact with the public - police, security and others.
And it's more and more common for the general public to use dash-cams and the like in their cars/other modes of transport
@@PocketSinner and to install cameras at home. I have friends who have a camera inside the house so they can keep an eye on their dogs. Hell, even my 73 year old dad has installed a camera doorbell.
Like watch dogs?
Most police officers use camera on them
As long as it doesn't make our world turn into a global surveillance state.
Then again, considering people still refuse to listen to people like Edward Snowden, we're already getting there, just not exactly through camera surveillance.
4:14 Well, two years after this video came out, this is now a definite hit as well.
It’s sad to me that a lot of the ways in which Tom was wrong pertain to the increased centralization of the internet-the effective replacement of blogging and private forums with the same few social media sites that everyone uses nowadays. They may be more convenient to use and easier to find other people & communities with, but I’ve always been wary of this model and I hope some cultural shift occurs soon that makes decentralization popular again (but I don’t actually expect it).
*All human history says* Hasn't happen yet.
As with all learning, from walking to politics, it's a helical process, where you go too far in one direction, and then too far in another, so that in the middle, you tend to be balanced and moving forward. We'll start seeing more localized networks and self-hosting content again, while also having some centralized platforms as well, but they will likely stop being for-profit companies, as that's just stupid altogether. For-profit companies make life worse, for everyone, in the long run. Corporations and national governments (non-consensual laws) are the dinosaurs of memetic evolution. Too big and dangerous to last, as compared to small and furry pro-social memes.
This has definitely been a rising concern in recent years, I think. We've seen a lot of high-profile, widespread outages recently that definitely would not have been anywhere near as severe as they were if the internet wasn't so overcentralized, and there's definitely a big concern with respect to how vulnerable some platforms (Discord in particular) actually are.
The internet as-is really isn't sustainable. But unfortunately, corporations do not care about sustainability in any form.
I think the answer should be democratic control of the internet by its users rather than going back to decentralisation. Most if not all of the downsides to the sort of centralisation we have now is due to the fact that it's owned by huge private companies that leave us no say in how we interact on the internet.
Web 3.0
2022 Prediction: The school works on Disco.
Actual 2022: The schools work on DISCOrd and alternatives.
You were 2 characters off Tom, not that bad.
No school will use DISCOrd but instead zOOm and alternatives
@@jishnudayanidhi9326 that’s funny. My school has literally used discord before and I’ve seen other schools use it too. You’d be surprised with how ridiculous schools can be.
@@sauceboss3901 discord added a thing to put an edu email
@@sauceboss3901 "you'll be surprised how ridiculous schools can be" they never disappoint, do they 😂
@@jishnudayanidhi9326 Discord is quite popular among schools in Poland
TH-cam deserves some kind of protection like a world heritage site. It's one of the biggest libraries to ever exist, it would be an injustice to wipe perfectly logged history and education let alone the livelihoods of independent artists and content creators which rely on this platform to survive.
It literally won't shut down if it keeps generating revenue
There are some sites that saves many TH-cam videos
@@fos1451 youtube is run at a loss, so if anything happens to Google, well ggs
@@MsDestroyer900
TH-cam is run at a loss? Where do you even get that information
na, looking on what happened since 2016 on TH-cam I would say we should burn it to the ground and not look back. I think it is best to stop when something is awesome instead of continuing and making it worse and worse by the years.
Appreciating your intention to share many failures in how difficult it is to predict the future..well done i hope to be able to see your next 10year prediction..thanks!
This is why I am concerned with products getting transmogrified into "services" with terms and conditions. Services that could be terminated at the provider's discretion without prior notice. Never get rid of a product when it is replaced by a service. Just hang on to your product. You never know when you will need it.
Absolutely. Not to mention, a good way to avoid this is to use libre/open source software wherever you can. Krita instead of Photoshop, Libreoffice instead of Office 365, Kdenlive instead of Premiere, and while you're at it why not switch to Linux? :) dual boots are easy to achieve, and 80% of people will find themselves gravitating to Linux once you know how to do everything. It's like all the good parts of macOS with even more freedom than Windows.
@@Cobalt985 I cautiously agree.
I'm really 'excited' about that whole prediction we only will get to rent cars, especially considering they should be darn near maintenance-free...
@@edherdman9973 eventually, once self-driving cars have progressed enough to become the norm, I could easily see a lot of people just getting self-driving Ubers or whatever every time they need to go somewhere. It would be so much easier than having to worry about maintenance or paying bills or whatever
In the future you will subscribe to everything.
I just hope you're wrong and people will get fed up with extremely short, superficial TikTok videos. Your type of content/format is the one i prefer, and i hope it never dies.
it's a trend cycle, keeps falling in and out of popularity
I don’t see shortform videos going away anytime soon but I do think if it isn’t changed and more people use it to further spread misinformation that its growth will halt or be slowed
agreed
There was this thing called Vine which hosted 7 sec long videos and it's gone now. I hope tiktok will be gone too as it's super bad for people's brains but I'm afraid that it is too important for the Chinese government to allow it
Google already started TH-cam Shorts.
TH-cam won't die, there's still way too many types of video that can't be conveyed through a TikTok. Yes we'll still see people release 20 part series through 2 minute long videos but the concept of 10-20 minute gaming/storytelling/tutorial type videos will never disappear
And there's still a place in this world for non-vertical video viewing.
I'd like to hear that from a Gen Alpha. I'm a Get Y. I thought there's no way Orkut would die out, and after a few years I thought Facebook will be THE social network... But nah... Orkut is long gone, and Facebook (not Meta) is slowly dying (even Get Zs aren't using Facebook). I love TH-cam, but I won't be surprised if, ten years from now, Gen Alphas labelled TH-cam as "the video sharing website for oldies".
Now you've jinxed it
@@தமிழோன் There's a problem with your assessment TH-cam is being run by a multi-billion dollar company so until do we get a website that is exactly like 2016 TH-cam, TH-cam will just change
20 min video game videos usually don’t get many views unless they are from a big TH-camr like markiplier or PewDiePie with a devoted fan base. And even then they still get fewer viewers than shorter ones.
Peoples attention spans are become much smaller. TH-cam won’t die but with the way it’s going with their management, I can see Tik Tok becoming bigger.
And here we are a year later, nine years ahead of prediction, short-form video taking over. TH-cam Shorts, Tiktok, IG Reels
"If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear...right?" is such a powerful statement. I'd never be willing to let the state know where and what I'm doing at all times, even if it means that terrorism would be investigated slower
The funny thing is that the Patriot Act hasn’t intercepted a single terrorist attack
@@bsbg-lifts the worse thing is that the people who brought you the patriot act perpetrated the biggest attack on the US government since its inception. and it didn't intercept that, either.
@@kenbrown2808 IIRC those weren't exactly the same people, it was the same party, but it wasn't the same people.
@@foxtail286 no, a lot of them are the same people who have been in power this whole time.
@@kenbrown2808 i guess? but the main person who created the patriot act (bush) criticized trump's actions
Almost shed a tear at the thought of TH-cam being shut down. That was a sad and unexpected hit of reality...so many memories on this site. So much time spent watching the world's video gallery. I hope it never dies, but wouldn't be surprised if it did.
It will be nationalized as the International Museum of A/V Crap.
I really hope that a new site appears and TH-cam dies. Killing TH-cam would be a mercy kill at this point.
Zero chance of that happening. Google makes an absurd amount of money from TH-cam.
I wouldn't be too concerned. If TH-cam goes away within 10 years (because it absolutely, positively WILL go away eventually), it will only be because it had been replaced by some superior delivery platform. And it wouldn't be immediate, but would take place over several years.
I hope it dies and I have TH-cam premium. The censorship has gotten out of control
Uncertainties like whether or not short form content will kill off long form content makes me weary about pursuing TH-cam full-time. I don't think short-form content can outright kill long-form content, as more complex character development, themes, and plot are only available in long-form content, but who really knows what will happen in this unstable world of ours.
We already have short form video content, and have for awhile. Vine, Instagram video, TH-cam shorts, etc. people watch it, but you get fatigued after too many. People still want to read others thoughts and listen or watch a deep dive into things they’re interested in.
Hi dad
Oh hey! You're here. 😃
Well, I mean people still watch movies right?
I'm gonna be the biggest artist on earth by the end of the year 🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀
I think that short form hasn’t fully taken over TH-cam in the same way, but rather, has acted as a sort of supplement. Stuff like TikTok has taken over the instant gratification that TH-cam used to do, but now, I do all of that bigger binging on TH-cam instead of stuff like Hulu and Netflix.
Short form content is already massively on the rise, TH-cam "Shorts", TikTok, etc. I don't think it will replace standard length videos, but it is definitely something more and more people are consuming
idothatwithreaxtovids (short commenting will be the thing in 2032)
every time I see TH-cam recommend me a video from a channel called "[TH-camr I've never heard of before] Shorts" I feel like the algorithm has completely ignored the types of videos I prefer to watch
going both ways tho
on the other side of shorts and clips is streaming
but yea the middle of those two will probably become rare
you say on the rise as if tik tok hasn't already overtaken youtube in watchtime
People who like short content are of the lesser compared to people who like Longer content. Why do you think they introduced 3 minute videos on their app?
I'm very surprised at how emotional I got seeing the "TH-cam has now closed" card at the end of the video. For the last ten years or so, its been a very big part of my life and has introduced me to more new loves and hobbies than I can count. In ten years, I'll be nearing 40 years old, and I'm curious to see whether TH-cam is still a big part of my life at that point.
Oof, you got me there bud. Same age, same thoughts.
I'm younger (25), but I felt the same way. Honestly, TH-cam was a formative influence for me and my age group, as well as a cultural touchstone for the rapidly changing times into which I was born. As such, my generation and I feel a strong personal connection to the site. I feel like shutting down TH-cam at any time would be politically difficult, though, due to the increasingly vast amount of personal and archaeological significance it bears. However, I could imagine that one day, people would be banned from uploading on this platform, so it would become a vast digital archive. I just can't imagine a world where Google users let Google get away with deleting TH-cam for good.
Rashly deleting all TH-cam would be akin to the fire of Alexandria. Enormous vacancy of knowledge would set humanity backwards for awhile.
For what it's worth, I think Google would be much more inclined to *sell* youtube than to just discontinue it if they decided it was no longer worth the effort to avoid all the bad press from nostalgic people, and since there are so many career youtubers it could very quickly cause a Lot of bad press.
@@Drekromancer 20 and same thoughts, but I don't think tik toks or any other short video form can't replace youtube.
It was the fact that you pointed to the social differences of 2012 in the 50% smartphone thing that really hit me. You don't notice social change (you're too much a part of it) until you look back!
The most noticeable thing about this (and incredibly, it was Clarkson on Top Gear that pointed it out) is actually seeing evolution in action. Ask people of different generations to press an imaginary doorbell. Older people will use their index finger, younger people who grew up with smartphones and texting will use their thumb.
I never quite forgotten that change because i get reminded about it a little everytime i see someone leaned into their phone and never really gotten that absorbed myself.
I recall specifically 2006 and me and my classmates were discussing Elder Scrolls Oblivion outside the classroom in 9th grade (last year before high school in our case), actually having a proper talk without distractions. Im very grateful growing up in that time now. Techwise ofc not as good esp the 90s but socially really good. :)
And then 10 years later in the same school people probably talked alot less and be looking at their phones instead.
I work at a factory and we have a shared breakroom. When I look around, probably 75% of the people are staring down at their phones, 24.9% are having a conversation, one lonely guy is watching birds out a window, and I'm the other weirdo who's reading a paperback book.
You could have defended your “mistakes” out of ego but you just admitted to them, which is both more entertaining to watch and a more humble/realistic… well done.
“I don’t like looking back at things I made in the past”
I relate so hard
💯
I think everyone relates
When I look back it usually has the n word in it
I do. It’s nice to remember a time when I still had energy, time and creativity…
Whenever I watch an old video by me I always get the urge of just redoing it from scratch. So many wrong things, bad editing and even mistakes in there.
I’ve watched TH-cam videos everyday since I was 12 and I’m 22 now. This site has shaped my personality, my humor, my social behavor, I even learned full fluidity on a second language because of TH-cam only. It’s a habit that I’ve tried to cut but haven’t been able to. I can’t imagine my life without TH-cam
i remember downloading DanTDM video on my ipod and show it to my classmates in... elementary school(i think). actively watched YT videos since then.
now i'm 20 :
TH-cam and games helped me more with learning english than school.
Same, for another 10 years I say?
@@durururururururu TDM and Fine Bros…21 now, but looking back…wow. The memories
-touch grass-
I predict that in 10 years it will be 2032. Might sound crazy now but we'll see who will get the last laugh in ten years when I would've successfully predicted 2032.
*Wow, you will be predicting something no one will ever predict! That’s crazy of you!*
plot twist: historians find out jesus' birthdate was wrong and they change the calendar
I predict the end of civilization in 2088
Take off the tin foil hat
would be funny if they just skip a year or somethind and it'd be 2033 in ten years
Respect to you for making some bold guesses, missing a few, but having the guts to share this with us.
Honestly, no matter how correct or how wrong you are on a prediction, it just shows your open-mindedness on the future, both for good and bad. Lots of respect for that, Tom.
indeed
@@DyslexicMitochondria heyyy bro. I watch ur vidz. Love ur channeI
I don't even get this compliment. Like how is making a prediction "open-minded". Like mate I think this was just a bit of fun, nothing deeper.
@@gizmodobaggins7040 I get what you’re saying, I suppose I was more targeting just that predictions are a good way to see the possibilities for what could be, and I just think it’s cool that Tom revisited them. I can see where you’re coming from, though, predictions can also be just fun and not deep.
Okayyyy very deep🔥🔥🔥 I’m trying to get my subscribers up too💯 keep it up❤️
One of the changes over the last ten years that has amazed me is the availability of live video from anywhere in the world streaming into my living room in near real time. Just before watching your video I was checking out a watering hole in Namibia and a bird feeder in South Africa while sitting comfortably in Southern California, thousands of miles but only seconds away. Your closing on the demise of TH-cam also struck a chord. For many years I created technical training animations using Adobe Flash, and all that content is now just vapor. This period in history may become another dark age when all of our documents and records become unreadable at some point in the not too distant future.
Im skeptical. No media platform has ever come close to rivaling youtube's size and importance.
Not that it can't happen, but it hasn't yet.
"watering hole in Namibia "
Same here! Talk about a live stream from the middle of nowhere! About Adobe Flash; any time you create content that depends on someone else's technology or player there is some risk; even with JPEG and MPEG. But at least JPEG and MPEG specifications are more or less public so a suitably talented person could in theory re-create players for JPG and MPG and MP4 (and GIF and TIFF and so on).
"TH-cam didn't kill television and television didn't kill radio"
But video, video killed the radio star
BIG reference
👍👍
But in my mind? And in my car?
You’re right. Whenever ppl make this type of prediction, they daily to acknowledge the inevitable flaws that exist with each software/algorithm/system/tech.
Television isn’t dead yet, but it’s user base is dying. Literally
On Tom's prediction at the end; I think it's interesting to see how TH-cam has become the go to place specifically for long form content now. So many video essays and supercuts and 100%'s etc. that mean new life has been given to the platform because it is now the place you go to for your videos above 15 minutes. Tiktok provides the shortform, TH-cam provides the longform.
Yes, watch time has been a significant factor in YTs algorithm for over a decade now. The platform would need a really significant change in monetisation strategy to change that, as few longer videos simply keep people on the site than lots of short videos
The trick to predict the future is rather simple and can be summarised in two points: 1. Same stuff, just different. 2. What is technologically expensive or time consuming today will be cheap and quick tomorrow.
Except for the really expensive stuff. That'll be normal expensive. Oh! And oil.
Quick maybe. But things haven't really been getting cheaper. More accessible and more ways to pay, sure. What's really been changing is the amount of money people have access to. Of course there's also inflation so it's kinda hard to tell.
Kinda yeh
Which will totally miss all the new stuff.
Then invest in those things and get rich.
TH-cam may die, but I really doubt long form will. Podcasts, books, films, theatre, tv series show there is a innate market need for long form content. The issue is TH-cam are chasing after TikTok/ Insta's market and it is risky. As if they aren't successful in capturing it and they let go of their strong hold on long form, another platform will take their place for long form, maybe Netflix.
I could see TH-cam pushing shorts and eventually doing away with thumbnails/titles in place and bring it auto play algorithms, I'd even suspect they'd autopay you a segment from long videos that have high engagement.
Personally, I'm really not a fan of short-form content, it's okay for links, jokes or mindless memes, but generally it's really hard to say anything interesting about anything in 280 characters or a minute.
I think the only issue is that there are kids being brought up on it that may never have the attention span for anything longer.
@@guppy719 exactly
Not to mention how well Twitch has been doing, the content you see on there is hours long. However it's usually only watched live.
Didn't know you watced Tom. Nice to see you here.
I’m purposely writing this because I feel a sense that I will definitely come across this video 10 years from now and I just want to write a friendly reminder to myself that keep doing what I’m doing and keep tackling life no matter how hard it gets👍
+
i was here
I exist
Hey future me
No shi your purposely writing it what did you do accidentally type a paragraph
It's interesting seeing the prediction at the end about short videos, given TH-cam's massive focus on shorts these days.
YT Shorts was released globally from 2020-2021, and there was a huge promo and push on it initially. It's just going off that initial launch
I feel so validated knowing that Tom Scott also hates wireless headphones.
Me too!
I understand that's just an opinion, but I think Tom went too far when he said "I can't understand why anyone uses them." Just because you hate them doesn't mean no one should use them.
@@luisferlcc he argued the reasons not to use them though, too.
He probably uses sh*t wireless products, my Marshall headphone is 3 years old, still working perfectly and still needs to be charged once a week with everyday usage
@@a14bs bc wired headphones are just the superior version. it is harder to lose them, they dont have a battery, and they are insanely inexpensive. airpods, the most famous version of wireless headphones, are just a way of making more money. thats the point
Another small miss: Nowadays, it would be "Apple Life", not "iLife". Apple has been moving away from "i_____" branding for new products since at least the Apple Watch, since it was a difficult trademark to defend.
How was it difficult to defend?
@@3nertia can't just trademark the letter i
@@3nertia
Having the letter “i” in front of a word has infinitely more possible contexts than just being an Apple product. Because of that, other companies that want to use that kind of naming scheme would have an easier time defending themselves if Apple were to sue them.
Having “Apple” is a lot more specific to the brand and harder for a third party to justify using.
bro what is on ur profile
@@3nertia because the BMW I5 is not an apple product and neither is the book I robot.
That makes the prefix I not exclusive to apple products ad thus almost impossible to defend.
I didn't really thought it was 3 years since 2019 ended. It just feels like last year for me and sometimes I wonder this is 2021/2020 right and snapping back into reality hits hard when I realise its 2022
Pandemic time. Everything from 2020 til now just feels like a blur
@@kendrickpfaff4805 yep but the pandemic is cooling down so i think time will come back
its 2020 too
2019 hasn't *ended* 3 years ago yet
we're still living in 2020
1 year after "there is no money in twitter" and now people are getting bags left and right
I'm glad you posted this. Just the other day I was thinking how the 2010s don't feel too different from the 2020s (so far) but this proves otherwise. I'm still dumbfounded by the choice to remove earphone Jack's on phones
Insane
@@kyled2153 Complete heresy
Well, Technology advances so much. Still feels currently like late 2010s. It’s only when in a few years time you can tell there was a difference
It's a really great thing as long as your headphones are wireless
Just in the last week, a news site posted photos of my hometown from the 90s, which is when I was growing up. I had been thinking 'have things changed that much?' Looking at those photos now felt like how I used to look at photos from the 60s and 70s when I was a kid. Even though I remember that's what things were like, it feels like a generation has passed and I just hadn't noticed until now.
Well, one prediction I can tell about 2032 - we'll still be laughing about 10 years old predictions about the future
We'll all be gone. Hahahaha we'll never grow up everyone will die lmfao
@@XxLutanixdamexX ?
@@XxLutanixdamexX Be gone nihilist
One thing I'll predict right now is, no one is going to be worried about the coof in 2032.
Welp im leaving this world on Jan 7 2089, im migrating to mars
I like this type of “a look back” videos, because it shows how much humanity has progressed since the video was made. Very cool video, Tom.
Edit: I guess humanity has progressed technologically, but we’re going down a dark hole of uncertainty during these times. Let’s hope we can pull ourselves out of it.
you misspeled "regressed" ;)
"Progressed", ah you mean fallen much much deeper into the problems we already had then. Solved almost no real problems. But hey ad based content sharing platforms are more convenient now! (and as a consequences are killing our critical thinking skills)
Was gonna say, you mean human regression despite technical progression
we live in hope.
We've got to start valuing and welcoming uncertainty if we want to mature as a species. Trying to force things to be predictable and boring is why we have wars. Life isn't supposed to be predictable and boring. It's supposed to be creative and wild and free.
9:44 "There's no money in Twitter"
Oh man how badly i wanted this to be true
When you suggested at the end that Google may decide to shutter TH-cam in ten years time, I audibly gasped with a weird emotion. I imagined the announcement coming out and finding myself distraught that such a monolith of my younger years could be going away. I wonder if that happens to every generation.
I genuinely can't imagine a world without TH-cam. So much of my childhood lives here that if TH-cam really were someday closed down I think I would genuinely need a day to grieve
Yep.
@@DoodleSamurai I defiantly agree with you. My childhood mostly was TH-cam as well and I have so many memories there. It would be horrible if it was ever deleted especially seeing how far it has come.
Im not a very old individual, but,, I was a Google Plus user.
And I had to start detaching myself from the friends I'd made and stuff I'd been doing on Google Plus since i heard about it shutting down soon.
i was not okay for quite some time...
I still have the same website bookmarked and visible in my tabs; a reminder of my mark on the internet; but its not what i remember it as anymore..
Sammee
I agree with your prediction for A future, TH-cam has already added shorts and ticktock is immensely popular. the short form videos are going to overshadow TH-cam but not phase it out entirely, simply because some people (like myself) prefer to spend time more immersed in a video than for it to be over in seconds.
Yep I also like listening to long videos while I´m doing chores (like podcasts but sometimes I´ll look at them if there´s something interesting xd), I think it will be difficult to replace that with short videos in the the next years.
tik tok is for stupid people with mental issues . everyone doesnt care about crap formats like tik tok and 30 second clickbaits
The current path has taken us down two opposite extremes
The way of streaming, Live content running 1-12 hours and then gets archived
And the way of shorts, being less than a minute, and often being contained in stories that aren't archived or saved at all
@@thoticcusprime9309 and this is exactly what was said about TH-cam when it started
@@blackvirus07 while that is somewhat true, the average length of most quality TH-cam videos has increased since then.
2:47 I like that "half the population could cheat on pub quizzes" is a metric used to describe how many people had modern smart phones. It has also been a sad reality because even when the bar makes you put your phones in a bucket before the game starts, people still cheat with their smart watches 😔
Wait until 2042 when it's "even when they make you put your cloud connectivity antennae in the bucket people still cheat with their data archival implants"
I suppose you could make it a "how fast can you find this information" game, but then it would depend on what hardware you have. I guess if you make it something difficult-to-find that might reduce the effect of hardware?
Interesting video. I’m very impressed. Well done.
Predicting the future according to Tom Scott:
He got it wrong: "that was wrong, we were wrong back then"
He got it right: "that was right, but than again anyone could have guessed that"
Um
@@ZayeedBaksh go on, don’t be shy. What’s “um”?
@@agent_a_art uhmm 👉👈😓
He's not wrong, meaningful predictions will never be accurate
@@electricant55 meaning is not dependent on accuracy, actually. You can make accurate non-meaningful predictions, inaccurate meaningful predictions, inaccurate, non-meaningful predictions and yes, accurate meaningful predictions too
2:01, Are you kidding me?? You got the exact planet wallpaper as well. Including the position of the planet being on the left side. Thats an absolute hit!!
It already existed before 2012…
Dude look up 2012 iphone default wallpapers
Keep in mind the iPhone 5 came out in 2012
@@animeloveer97 Dude did you look them up? None of them have the planet zoomed in and positioned on the left side of the screen like we see today. And in 2012 the common wallpapers for iPhone iOS 6 were a water droplet...
This is a partial. It's definitely meant to look like a planet, but it was actually a soap bubble. Although the composition is actually bang on! It released with the iPhone X in 2018.
i really don't want youtube to ever end . this is closest thing we got to a time machine ! 😭
Good observation!
TH-cam ended not that long ago tbh...
Actually NO. The closest thing we have to a time machine is a telescope so you are WRONG
@@shogunmaster3191 You can't see music through a telescope.
@@seekingfinding6204 actually you can
Short form video is already winning
It's really sad to see how everything online since then has only further centralised and de-individualised. I find myself longing for the times of old when people owning their own websites wasn't some celebrity and obscure tech geek thing.
On the other hand, bus and train companies have finally figured out how to put their timetables and more online, which is something I was begging for back in the day.
Agree, we need to rebuild the internet.
I would add to that list is menus from restaurants WITH prices hahaha
I hated the fact at the time i could maybe get a menu online... if i could it would have no prices and a shot in the dark as to how much it would cost to go to that restaurant for dinner...
Ha! What a joke. VRChat is no less centralized than Facebook and Google. Second Life was closer to the "old internet".
One thing that is really annoying is bus companies in my area have removed the physical timetables however. So I have to go onto the stagecoach app praying my small amount of signal will get me to the timetable. That is usually wrong as well
Internet was more of a tech geek thing back in the day, where I grew up at least.
The 'quantified self' prediction is really interesting to me, because i think it did pan out but more subtly. I did my dissertation in 2015 on modern depictions of surveillance in literature. One of the books I studied was The Circle by Dave Eggers, released 2013. That book completely takes on that idea of tech companies pushing constant video/audio recording in a very dystopian way. But actually, what we'd already started to see by 2015, and much more so today, is subtly different in that most people are uncomfortable with something constantly listening, BUT totally happy to input all sorts of detail about their life and be constantly sharing via things like Snapchat or insta stories, detailed food diaries and exercise trackers, even heart rate monitors. To me that's a significant distinction- in a nutshell, many of us happily surveil ourselves, and lots of tech focuses heavily on that 'quantified self' concept.
And this is kind of neatly tied up tied up the fact that a game show all about how you present yourself online began a few years ago called....The Circle.
I often think about going back and doing an updated version of that dissertation - maybe in 2025!!
That's an interesting distinction! I wonder if the distinction exists because of the tropes needed to make dystopian fiction. I'd imagine to make these kind of stories, you have to make it clear to the reader that the speculative future that they are reading about is something to be feared. So naturally the writer will focus on systems that result in the loss of personal agency. But obviously real companies that create these kind of systems have to make these system marketable. So it seems like dystopian fiction writers kind of have to gloss over the fact that the people in their stories may have wanted these systems in order to make the fear of these systems more believable to the reader.
I feel like that says more about society than about technology.
I worked in software support in 2019 and 2020. All of our phone calls were recorded and for a time we were video'd at our desks to make sure we were being productive and anyone at the company could see every persons video stream at all times. The backlash from the latter eventually led to the full recordings being replaced with a basic motion sensor in our cubicles to determine if we were in there or not. It was all very uncomfortable.
4:14 Apple does this, Facebook does this, even messages you type into Facebook and delete are saved (by them, for them). Google definitely does this. They call it quality checking. The reality is we have no idea where the transcripts of what these listening devices take down go, or who has access to them or for how long.
Apple claims that they don't do this, unless you opt in to "improve the service". The rest just does it openly.
I guess ten years ago companies and governments pretended to be coy about invasions of privacy. Now it seems like everybody has grown accustomed to those invasions, and have been distracted from a freer and wilder time before the centralized version of the Internet took shape. Saturation with entertainment and easy false gratification has led humanity to a dark and isolated existence... Or perhaps just myself, for that's most of the humanity I intimately understand anyway.
Definitely right about the growth of short-form. Didn't predict AI content farms though, and I can't blame him