Just in addition to that very nice paper - if we want to play some prophecies about LC developments in the next decade - I think that one aspect of the predictions was forgotten, or - just because of the certain circumstances - omited:
I believe that in the next 10 years there will be a further intensive development of chromatographic method development software (not the expert systems, however!) noticeable. Perhaps it was not convenient for the author to call his company's product on the stage, but I believe that software like DryLab or ChromSword (or couple of others perhaps) will become a significant part of a future's LC laboratory. So far the programs are not perfect, indeed, however, they are constantly improved and they already save considerable amounts of time to those who use them wisely. Couple of future steps in the software's development must certainly concern automatization (I believe, in this particular case DryLab will have to follow ChromSword's attempts), but also new gradient types (I'd give you a hint what kind of gradient if you asked me :-) and the entire field of CE, CEC and MEKC that are waiting in genomics and proteomics.
Eventually, I can envision the LC method development software fully automatized and integrated to the other programs such as mass spectra interpretation tools. Complex mixtures separated within hours and identified by a single PC machine.
Therefore, let us be optimistic about DryLab, too!