Predictions for 2023

Super Whimsy

02 Jan 2023 • 2 min read

Being wrong is fun.

Thought it might be fun to be wrong in public for a dash, sharing some of my personal predictions across art to tech for the current present and possible future that is 2023.

Paper Consoles

There is magic happening throughout both Europe and the US, with interactive print comics and interactive fiction finding their footing in creative ways. With only 7% of people reading exclusively ebooks, the opportunity for print books to explore fresh ergodic forms is more tangible than ever.

Responsive Realities

Words like "metaverse" or "augmented reality" don't really capture why these technologies will be so interesting. Movies or TV, which walk linearly through pre-made content, are passive mediums. When Apple hits the market, which I feel is a 50/50 shot for 2023, we'll understand how very interactive (and highly personal!) these technologies are.

Consolidation of Everything You Love

This year we saw some insane acquisitions. Microsoft (tried to) buy Activision! Adobe bought Figma! Musk bought your personal data! Consolidation will continue unabated, sometimes in unexpected ways as many duopolies have hit their peak and require creativity to continue their impossible growth.

Reductive Devices

Tech is getting increasingly homogenous. Place a phone, tablet, or laptop on a table and try to tell what brand it is without glancing at the logo. Unless you're a die-hard fan, the odds are it is slick, black, beautiful, and boring as hell. Reductive devices that nail a few things well will continue to emerge and find success.

AI Moves Beyond "Toy"

Silly is the precursor to useful. People laughed at AI art: in early 2022 out of whimsy and in late 2022 out of fear. In 2023, AI will go beyond parler tricks and the usefulness will seep into everyday places. It will go from uncool, to standard use within five years. And I say this with a heavy, complicated sigh as a professional illustrator for a dozen books.

Kitbashed AI

Right now AI is blazing fast at achieving a singular goal. Expect 2023 to highlight apps which connect multiple AI APIs to come back with with something larger than the individual parts. A system of refined systems.

COVID changed many things about the way we live and work, but I think one of the most profound happened in the connection with social media. There was a realization that social media is no replacement for reality. It's fun, but they aren't corollary. Said more directly: social media is, at least in the way your behavior is incentivized via analytics, inherently anti-social.

AI Will Not Be Legislated

There are many who believe that AI imagery is copyright infringement and that those using it today will be fined severely. I believe these orgs will see a fine, but given many companies launched this year have multi-billion dollar valuations, they will be astonishingly small. If so, expect an alarming level of adoption.

Tik Tok Will Be Legislated

Tik Tok can be fun, but fun can be used for nefarious purposes. Expect Tik Tok to be heavily legislated. Bonus (yet increasingly unlikely) hope: all Tencent investments will see the same level of scrutiny.

Friendship Interoperability

Musk's seemingly unironic Twitter theatrics are perfectly designed to create outrage (in sharp contrast to Jack Dorsey's Zen atelophobia), but can this continue? It seems unlikely, which is why we'll likely see new management come in, sweep the floors, and toss on a new coat of paint in 2023. But before that I'm hopeful we see a movement towards streamlining moving to new platforms, sort of like hardware standards. Just like Apple uses Messages as a moat to prevent platform transition, so do "social" apps in their hostage of your personal network.