British YouTuber’s predictions about 2022 from 10 years ago have all come true

YouTuber Tom Scott correctly predicted the arrival of 5G masts and changes to Apple iPhones with his 4.8m followers in 2012 and gave his forecast for another 10 years’ time

A tech guru who predicted 10 years ago how the world would look in 2022 has seen them come true.

YouTuber Tom Scott shared his thoughts with his 4.8m followers in 2012 and recently revisited the clip to see what he had got right and wrong.

The presenter correctly guessed that the borders of Apple iPhones would get smaller which he admitted was ” a very easy hit”.

He also rightly estimated that the tech giant would change their font and that 5G “now blankets the country.”

Mr Scott, of Nottinghamshire, suggested this was not necessarily difficult to foresee given that 4G was already being rolled out in 2012.

He then ran through the advances in technology over the past decade including Google Glass and the first Narrative clip which he said “came and went very quickly.”

“It turns out that so far, people just don’t seem to like the idea of remembering everything and storing that data forever with corporations.

“This talk felt like a warning but I didn’t know – no one knew – if it was a warning that was going to be needed.”

The YouTuber also detailed the misses he had made such as prioritising mobile-first use over desktop computers and the concept of private contractor body-worn cameras.

“It just hasn’t come true, completely wrong,” he said.

He also envisaged Apple headsets with cameras and microphones in them which would constantly record our lives and assumed they would still have wires, rather than the wireless AirPods that exist today.

“That’s another big miss,” he said but added that he still believes wireless headphones are a “terrible idea” and “cannot understand why anyone uses them”.

He also said his vision of websites for school alumni communities is far more likely to exist today as a Facebook group, Whatsapp thread or via Slack.

Mr Scott said another change he “just didn’t see coming” was the start of a transition to mobile-first in 2012.

He further highlighted that he did not spot the slow decline of blogging which became popular in the late 2000s.

However, Twitter took over by the mid-2010s with users able to share their views quickly via a single platform.

The tech fanatic took the opportunity to then share his predictions for 2032 saying he believes that short-form content will dominate over longer videos on websites such as YouTube.

“I think short-form video is going to do to YouTube what Twitter did to blogs.

“People will still be making long-form video content, it will still get linked to and watched, but short-form is so much simpler that there will be so much more of it.”

He added: “It’s not a perfect analogy, but I have a sinking feeling that short-form video is going to win just through sheer weight of numbers.

“The ability for almost anyone to compete on the same easy, low effort, low attention span playing field.”

His video concluded with a question on whether Google will decide to shut down YouTube by 2032 by which time the “boom times” for such platforms, he predicts, will be finished.