As I've noted before, these "year ahead" articles are not really about crystal ball predictions of specific future events. Instead, the hope is that the act of recognizing and examining current trends will enable us to find ways to deflect or divert the course of history away from a future we'd rather not see and toward possibilities we wish would transpire.

With that spirit in mind, I find it more and more difficult to shake the conviction that technological developments will shape the narrative of 2017. If this does turn out to be so, it would hardly be the start of some new, never-before-seen trend. Yet even though it's no longer novel to observe that the pace of technological change is accelerating, there are certain inflection points where those changes stop being so theoretical and start impacting our daily lives. I contend that we are living through one such inflection point right now and that it will manifest in all sorts of ways over the next year.