Another thing that kind of builds off of this that I've been thinking about lately after reading sama's blog posts. Do top VC companies that make predictions on the future of big companies shape the outcome of future startups? For example, if all the top VC firms are saying widgets are going to be the biggest thing in the next 10 years, does that cause enough of an influence to create that market and persuade people to go into that field rather than the one they were already intending on?

Most definitely. It's kinda like technical analysis in stock markets - it works because it's a self-fulfilling prophecy, people vote with their wallets. At the end of the day consumers don't really know what they want before it's marketed to them, as Steve Jobs has shown time and again.