I've already told you what not to expect in the coming year. With any luck, you've been lulled into a false sense of security, confirmed in your lazy belief that nothing important ever really changes. Great! I've totally set you up for the shocking revelations to come.
1. PC vendor consolidation Shocking, I tell you! Actually, this has been a trend for a long time, with Acer buying Gateway and eMachines almost a decade ago and Hewlett-Packard buying Compaq before that. In a down market where PC unit shipments and prices continue to fall, something's gotta give. One unlikely scenario: HP and Lenovo create a goliath and plot for world domination. A more realistic expectation would be for HP or Lenovo to purchase Acer or Asus. I can also imagine Acer purchasing Asus -- a redocking with the mothership, given that Asus was founded by former Acer employees and has been struggling. Either way, there will be fewer choices for businesses, but probably not higher prices in the near term.
2. Trans-Pacific Partnership One of many U.S. trade agreements being done in secret, the Trans-Pacific Partnership is giving extrajudicial enforcement powers to corporations. If you were concerned about the surveillance state in 2013, you're going to love what the government is doing on your behalf in 2014. TPP back-doors some of theSOPA and PIPA stuff we protested and Wikipedia blacked out for in 2012, but without all of the inconvenient democratic process. The Obama administration is looking to fast-track this through Congress. If it doesn't succeed this time, the administration will back-door this junk in some other agreement.
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