These 2 cars are fine examples of what I need. A super cheap.. super efficient automobile.

This is a car which may soon be manufactured in India by joint effort from Renualt-Nissan and Indian car company Bajaj. It will cost only $3,000 and get a mileage of 70mpg.

Another car is the Tata Nano. I had talked about it earlier since it was supposed to go on sale in Europe.  It’s even cheaper.. but gets less gas mileage.. they have a hybrid coming out but I have no Idea what the mpg is.

I wonder is a US car maker will be able to compete in this market and produce a car as cheaply…

Your Home Computer - will likely look mostly the same, but how you get apps is likely to change, very soon we will be seeing more App Stores on just about everything.  You *may* see the emergence of the ebook reader / tablet it’s been out a couple of years now, and it’s possible it will replace traditional printed media, but I can imagine that death will be a hard death.  You will see some PC’s come out with browser only interfaces as we shift from local applications to ones that are online only.  It’s going to still be a mix I think by the end of the decade.  I don’t think it will ever end up one way over the other.

Your TV – Cable / Satellite is dying.  When you have digital cable you get On Demand with most providers.. but you are still at the mercy of what they carry, but online.. you don’t have to worry about these restrictions, people will start migrating to IP based shows on demand like Hulu (of which there are many) and you will see a broad market open for HTPC’s and set top boxes.  This will eventually make Media like DVD useless since you will buy the content once provided on those discs online.  I’m going to say that due to this, in the next 10 to 20 years Premium based TV will die, and the infrastructure that is left behind will be geared towards giving you more bandwidth.

Your Phone – Your old landlines days are numbered, once again.. internet will replace it with VOIP.  It’s also possible that in the next 10 years you will see mobile VOIP phones, pretty much devices with an EVDO data connection or better and some hardware and software for VOIP, we may or may not see a change in the traditional phone number eventually as well.  I’m going to call this an eventuality, and I can’t say it’s going to be everywhere by 2020.

Your Car - Your car will be a bit smart with systems like Sync being available, another competitor I’m sure will come along soon enough and it’s also likely that an open source project will also be around by the end of the decade.  Your car will be more fuel efficient.  More Hybrids / Electrics will be available.  It’s possible there might be a large leap in fuel efficiency by 2020.

Internets – the speed and available bandwidth will increase, and the price will likely go down I’d think. you can expect some new tech (like in the last decade Flash Video and Ajax were everywhere.)  It’s hard to predict what else will change.  there will be a push to get broadband in places it can’t reach currently.

Your Work – With good easy to use VPN available you will see more companies with people who work from home full time.  It just makes real sense that this is going to happen given that most people would prefer to Work from home.. likely in their jammies.. and that employers won’t have to pay the cost of having to maintain a building for you and your coworkers.

I’m pretty excited to see if any of this gets close to what we get.. I think lots of it will.