In before "2014? There's not going to be a world in 2014, idiots."
This is INTP forums, you aren't going to find any idiotic prophecies here.
As for what will really happen in 4 years, I'd rather make predictions ten years from now, in 2020. Four years from now, not much will be different. Ten years from now, the world will be a completely different place.
I might as well, though. Some of these predictions are bold, but I'll go ahead and make them.
2014:
- The majority of people own a tablet PC (50% or more). (This will happen regardless of how the Ipad fares. There are plenty of alternatives to the Ipad, ranging from a $150 piece of junk from Dell to a $1000 "Look at me! I'm rich!" tablet from Lenovo. And in 4 years, they will be much better than they are today)
- Most people own a smartphone (75% or more).
- Free wifi everywhere in cities. Possibly on major highways, also. (For example, I wouldn't be surprised if the entire interstate highway system gets free wifi. 2014 might be too soon for that, but it might not. It's a definite maybe)
- Windows 8
- 4G (I don't think there will be a 5G - 5G will be Wifi)
- Virgin Galactic replacing space shuttles. (2014 is too soon for the moon - wait until 2020 or 2025)
- Cures for some genetic diseases. (Possibly some forms of cancer. I'm going to avoid making too many cures predictions because that's less predictable)
- Rise in oil and gasoline prices, along with rise in renewable energy use. Probably passing peak oil, if we haven't already.
- LHC will make some discoveries, assuming it works. (Which it should - many of the problems have been dealt with.)
- Major innovations in web browsing technologies - in 2006, nobody had heard of Firefox (If it even existed then - I don't know the exact timeline) and we were stuck with IE 6.
- DVDs obsolete - or at least reduced to the status CDs hold now - good for some purposes, such as small media storage, but not for much more than that. In 2004, games came on 6 CDs. In 2014, a game might take up 10 DVDs, if they're even released on DVD
- No, you won't have Blu-Ray replacing DVDs. USB sticks, SD cards and the internet will have replaced them.
- Hard drives measured in terabytes, 16 GB of RAM common
No, it's not all optimistic:
- China will continue to censor the internet.
- Internet censorship in general will rise - governments can't stay out of anything that important
- Global climate change will continue
I can't think of any more right now, since I'm going to eat dinner in a few minutes, but I'm sure there's more that I can think of.
EDIT: More terrorism, because the US will be out of Afghanistan (hopefully) by then. You can expect a major attack sometime between now and 2014.