Of course: 2021 starts off with a lockdown, causing this post to be delayed! But here it is, so let's kick off my look ahead!

What I expect to 2021 to bring in the world

2020 was a year of many setbacks and a huge pandemic, but with hints of good news towards the very end. I expect 2021 to be no less turbulent, but with vaccines being delivered and Trump out of office, the struggle will be more evenly balanced.

But a struggle it will be... screen still from the movie Braveheart.

I expect there will be good news with lives saved through vaccines, countries managing to clear themselves largely, if not entirely, of COVID, and the climate change slowing down due to strongly reduced emissions in many places. It will also be a year of huge technological progress, and all the major powers (China, USA and the EU) are increasingly participating in a scientific race in many areas.

Work will not be the same again after 2020, as I expect many people to structurally work less in the office, and order products online increasingly often. Crypto will also almost certainly become more accepted and commonplace, in gaming, banking, investment and curation for instance (though I think full adoption will take 2-5 more years).

But not all will be well, and I do also expect there to be nasty surprises. This could include vaccine-resistant COVID-mutations, increasing geopolitical tensions, and a massive economic crisis resulting from the pandemic. A mixture of all three of them would make 2021 perhaps almost as dire as 2020.

But at least I feel there is a bit more sanity in the world, and we're collectively a bit better equipped to tackle the challenges we face than last year.

My plans for 2021

I learned a lot in 2020, but the year took a toll on my physically. So in 2021 I hope to lose some weight (perhaps 4-5 kilos), and become healthier in general.

Work-wise I want to make the various codes I'm working on a lot more sophisticated and useful, and try to find sustained funding for research, development and outreach in the second half of the year (the crowdfunder we tried out is a gentle experiment in that direction).

For my Coil blog I want to be creating more videos, and I would like to get more involved in some collective efforts with other people from Coil or other prominent crypto developers. I'm keeping a close eye on mg.social for instance, but also on several efforts to develop NFT-style games.

I don't think I will move my blog off Coil for now (it's easier to maintain it here, and I'm time-constrained usually), unless there are clear signals from Coil.com that it makes more sense to do so. But I will change the mix of content, possibly doing weekly or monthly update videos in addition to a few short written posts per month :).

As a sample, here's an update video I made for the fundraiser project yesterday...

... and as I post this I suddenly realize I should upload these to Cinnamon, not (only) YouTube! So I just requested an account on Cinnamon, which apparently will take up to 48 hours to be reviewed (more later).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7EmmDdTGWuM&feature=youtu.be

Wrap-up

So there you go! My quick look ahead to 2021! Let me know via Twitter (@whydoitweet) if you have any thoughts!

Credits

Header image courtesy of Pixabay.