In terms of mining the future is more or less known, the mining difficulty will only ever go up unless the process is somehow compromised and dies which is unlikely.

The next drop in block reward will really separate the righteous devoted miners from the casual miners because the mining process will just become a much more serious fiat money pit unless btc "worth" rises significantly.

The people I feel sorry for are those who were ordering KnC miners with their life savings and expecting to be millionaires in a year, they were warned.. but greed has that effect.