191–200 of 1001 posts
China doubles down on censorship and authoritarian government, but in the same time becoming world leader in some technology frontiers, stabilizing its government and leading to further polarization in tech. America no longer maintains its technology edge in silicon over the rest of the world. Hong Kong becomes just a providence in China not because military intervention but because economic stagnation. New houses ar…
* Augmented reality glasses become commonplace and people care more about what the world looks like in their glasses, than what real life looks like.
* The ability to resist mobile phones (and AR glasses) becomes the best indicator of future success in life.
* There are no new discoveries in Physics. Dark matter and Dark Energy still make no sense (i.e. have no explanation), but are still held onto as theories.
* Non-computer progress slows down, both because software development is so easy, and because the green revolution means hardly anyone wants to make things anymore.
* The world because more conservative as a backlash to the current ascendancy of liberalism.
* The world becomes more peaceful, with even fewer wars, and fewer people living without basic needs. (Because physical items like food become so cheap even fewer people lack it.)
* The current business model for TV collapses. Something else emerges that is not based around a 3 hour block of drama and comedy.
* There are no autonomous self driving cars. But there are trials on "rail road" like trails for cross country trucking. (i.e. trucks autonomously drive on highways, sharing with human controlled traffic, but not into cities)
* Humans do not land on the moon or mars. But there are more humans in orbit than before.
* Several major candidates will lose an election because of their internet usage history earlier in life
* Much of the inflation that the US hasn't seen over the past decade will come back, in line with a recession. Very few investments will be safe. It'll come at the time, or just before the time a democrat is elected to office, and retroactively blamed on that democrat.
* The evangelical movement collapses under the weight of its own cognitive dissonance, in response to a well organized criticism campaign
* Amazon suffers a major misstep of their own making and loses a significant enough amount of customer trust to affect its growth rate.
* Home prices in San Fransisco and Seattle do not fall. Homelessness is the same or worse in each area by the end of the decade.
* A major new region becomes popular for tech workers to move to, on the back of major corporations moving there rather than startups
* Startups that exist and succeed are more rare, and larger. This decade is the age of the corporate titans, and the small are agile but most cannot compete.
* No major structural reform put to climate change
* Trump re-elected
* VR remains niche
* Worldwide poverty is continuously reduced
* A civil war or conflict takes place in a european country
* As the power changes hands to millenials, countries liberalize the social safety net
1. Electric cars will go from niche for the rich to something for everyone.
2. Genetic testing will become even more commonplace and even more useful.
3. ipv6 will become dominant, but there may be holdouts.
4. Freezing your sperm / eggs / stem cells will become something everyone does.
5. Using a non-memory-safe language for servers will be seen as building SQL queries with string concatenation.
6. Self driving cars are currently only very narrowly available: I think it's like 1-3 cities with good climate (https://www.theverge.com/2019/12/9/21000085/waymo-fully-driv...) They will be more available than they are now, and it will have effects on the economy.
7. Containerization is adopted by companies that are a bit behind the curve.
8. Parallelism will keep becoming more important.
Other predictions, less certain:
1. Political polarization increases in the west.
2. There will be startups taking a crack at the real estate market. They will attack cost of construction by using robots and standardized components. They will attack land cost by artificially engineering the network effects that gives land value.
3. Use of force in the form of sanctions against countries that release too much CO2
4. A significant minority skewing intelligent leave facestagram and twitter for decentralized platforms, but the majority of users stay on centralized platforms.
- A major, non-amyloid, non-tau hypothesis for Alzheimer's. Because the old guard supporting these dogmas is falling out of vogue.
- Really great advances made with CRISPR and immunotherapy, especially with respect to cancer treatment. The immune system already targets cancer or disease-state cells, but perhaps we can give it a little nudge?
- Human cloning. It isn't at all infeasible, just politically/morally questionable. Someone will do it.
- Insurance companies get ahold of biometric and DNA data. They're salivating for it. Google's purchase of Fitbit is scary. 23andme's recent sale of data is also troubling.
===== Politics / Global / Society =====
- Democracy begins to fade. Trump's war on the media is the canary in the coal mine. Social platforms erode our critical thinking and ability to see through the miasma. The success of China's surveillance state and the fact that they can succeed without democracy sends the wrong message to the rest of the world.
- Diversity increases in Hollywood, high-paying jobs, and political candidates. Racism and sexism begin to wane.
- Millennials and GenZ (Zoomers? Zoomies? :P) come to the political forefront. GenZ is more politically active than GenX or the Millennials. There may be some cross-generational war with some younger candidates campaigning on cutting social security, pensions, and benefits.
- As more young people move to cities, housing prices in all major cities will skyrocket. They're already steep, but this trend will continue. Housing prices in the suburbs will collapse as boomers retire/downsize and nobody wants to live there.
- People spend even more time on screens.
===== Economics =====
- We won't have a recession at the same level of the 2008 recession.
- China has a recession.
- Cryptocurrency is dead, no thanks to government regulation and crackdown. Bitcoin is $0.01.
- We become a cashless society.
===== Energy / Transportation =====
- Elon Musk becomes even wealthier. Tesla catches on like wildfire with lower-cost models, and they dominate the EV market with their healthy lead. But the real story is SpaceX leap frogging defense contractors and becoming the world's gateway to space. Starlink, if successful, might spawn a new era of connectivity.
- Yet, gasoline still remains the dominant fuel for automotive transportation. EVs are still in the minority.
- Trains come back in vogue as a hipster option for Millennial travel.
- Nuclear still isn't being built out in the US beyond a few scattered projects (eg. Vogtle).
===== Deep Learning / Hardware =====
- While deep learning isn't as big as proponents made it out to be, but we don't face another AI winter. There will be huge applications in media (Hollywood will be a big customer), process optimization, computer vision, and other areas. We'll even see it creep into consumer products.
- Creative tools are greatly enhanced with deep learning and other techniques (computer vision, better models), leading to a creative explosion.
- No self-driving cars. Yet. Weather, inconsistent roads, bad drivers... It's a hard problem.
- Moore's law holds / is beaten. Deep learning is the driver.
- Embedded devices languished for awhile (IOT), but are finally going to be hella cool and novel. Wearables, biometrics. But they remain a huge exploit vector.
===== Cloud =====
- Anger at managed cloud computing lock-in sets in. We might see a swing back to the data center.
- Edge computing is a huge thing. Despite Google Stadia failing, companies vie to run video games in the cloud.
===== Web / Social Media =====
- The web dies and is replaced by more garbage like AMP, walled gardens like Facebook, Slack, and (now) Reddit. Chrome has removed URLs. RSS is dead. Lots of people are very angry at Google.
- Lots of federation / distributed projects to try to fight back. None of them really take hold since they're not backed with the same staffing or scale as the incumbents.
- In what remains of the web, Rust/ASM has replaced Javascript.
- New privacy laws lead to adtech backlash. The masses don't care, but politicians, lawyers, and those in tech do and now have leverage.
- Facebook (the site) is full of older conservatives and has gone the way of MySpace.
- A few new social media sites come out, gain traction, and don't sell out to Zuckerberg.
- Twitter eats itself and loses engagement. It still doesn't have a viable alternative.
- Reddit becomes absolutely awful and starts to look more like Facebook or Digg than the site we used to use. They have succeeded in monstrous growth at the expense of the community. This leads to a very successful IPO. Unfortunately, nothing really replaces it.
===== Tech =====
- Antitrust cases brought against Amazon, Apple, Google, and/or Facebook. None of them are broken up. Only slaps on the wrist.
- Microsoft thrives, Google dives.
- Slack gets disrupted. It's just chat.
- Rust becomes the most popular programming language and sees deployment everywhere: OSes, servers, games, web apps, embedded, ... the ecosystem explodes.
- Tech shifts away from SF. It's too expensive. Look to the southeast: Austin, Atlanta, Charlotte. Also distributed workforce growth by leaps and bounds.
- Death to the open office floor plan.
===== Entertainment =====
- Disney and Netflix get disrupted by a new form of media. They may still be players, but classical filmmaking is old-world thinking. Look at what teens watch these days. They want to be both involved and passive, creative and destructive. Twitch, YouTube, Fortnite are good examples. Tech eats Hollywood.
- More radical/experimental new forms of video games. Games that let you play alongside celebrity streamers. Interesting MMOs and new concepts like battle royale.
- More cool stuff like Twitch Plays Pokemon (did that happen this decade?)
===== Misc =====
- We're going to see really cool (and really scary) applications for drones. People will use them to commit theft and vandalism (spray paint? knocking out windows?), and maybe even kill people.
- Still no answer on P vs NP.
- Still no discovery of life on Mars (or elsewhere).
- Singularity isn't happening.
===== Personal =====
- I'll get to use Rust professionally.
- I'll finally launch a startup.
* React will still be very popular
* Typescript will be 2x as popular as today
* Rust will grow and be regarded as the "right" way to do anything performant but sadly C++ will still hold the majority
* Formal verification will still be mostly a research thing, but maybe a couple prominent tools will be used by a few specific fields
* Programmer wages will be slightly lower than today as the field is flooded with talent, but total payout to all programmers will be larger than today (the field will grow, ~2-10x)
* Scripting will be important to a much larger portion of jobs
* Excel will still be king of data for most businesses
* IoT will not take off, but usage in industrial applications will be much larger
* HCI will be in the same place: touch screens for phones & tablets, keyboards, touchpads & mice for laptops & PCs
* Software will continue to increase in complexity for no real gain, eating any gains in hardware spee. iPhone 11s will run iOS slowly (but still be supported).
* Stadia will be dead after ~5 years and the MSFT equivalent never really launched
* Gaming will basically be in the same place, but high-budget games will forgo high graphics in favor of good gameplay on a wide range of devices (think minecraft & BotW)
* Phones will be basically identical to today, but hopefully at least Apple makes one that is small again and can be used with one hand
* Bluetooth will still exist and stuck, but Apple devices will work well together. Nothing better will exist.
* More electric cars but still not the majority
* Climate change debate will be at basically the same place, a few more countries 100% green, but most not. Death due to climate related issues will increase 2-10x but it won't be enough to persuade most countries to take serious action. Still no carbon accountability between nations, and carbon taxes won't be a thing
* Related to above, immigration and land-value changes due to climate change will be just taking off
* Anti-immigration will win politically and immigration from poorer to richer countries will be 1/2-1/10th the size of today.
* Germany is going to be in a recession, sadly. Due to declining demand for their specialized manufacturing, esp. in auto industry.
* Village bakeries and butchers in EU will be 1/4th of what they are today
* There won't be a major world war, but tensions will be worse than today
* Homelessness will still be a major issue.
* There will be no tech-bubble bursting. Software will continue to eat the world.
* Automation will have led to much more job loss
* Healthcare in the USA will be better but still much worse than most of the developed world
* Political polarization will be the same or worse; still first-past-the-post voting; private money still will win elections; still two parties in USA
* Facebook won't grow as fast as the other tech companies but it'll still be bigger than today
* A lot more people (proportionally) living in vans & RVs
* Capitalism will still be the norm and wealth & income will be even more concentrated
* The average person investing in index funds will be gaining ~4% per year in 2029, even though the "economy" will still be growing, somehow almost all the gains will be captured by the wealthiest
* China will be in a much stronger position than today, with roughly the same level of oppression. A few other countries will have bought China's oppression tech.
* The tensions in the middle east won't be any better, but won't be catastrophically worse
* 0-1 nukes will be detonated in a populated area
* Solar will still be growing rapidly but still far behind fossil fuels
* The Witcher will end after 5 seasons (books content ends midway through 3)
* Internet prices and access in the USA will be only slightly better, same with phone plans
* Some world leader will have been assassinated by a drone carrying a pipe bomb
* Average marital age will be >30 in USA for men and women
* Trump wins 2020, democrats 2024-2032
* At least one other corruption scandal with Trump that goes nowhere
* Disenfranchisement in USA is ~1.5x worse
* "AI" will still be making some progress but no singularity, no fully self driving cars, nothing super revolutionary
* quantum computers won't be having a business impact yet
* bike shares, scooter shares, and car shares won't take off
* No meaningful progress on passenger trains in USA
* Windows update will still suck
* Apple will still have the best experience but won't keep up with MSFT & Google & Amazon in growth
* Big three will be MSFT & Amazon & Google in that order
* Netflix won't be considered a tech company
* DIY will be booming, as well as off-grid living
* Snow sports will be a lot more expensive as climate change robs snowy days and larger population crowds the mountains
* Data leaks will decline but still happen and no significant accountability will happen
* News and journalism will be more or less the same, but there will be a few more good options out there that you can pay money for
* It'll be easier to point to data like actual tax spending in debates with friends instead of just "all the money goes to welfare", "no it all goes to the military", "n-uh", "yu-huh"
Huh, not any hilarious predictions yet? - Artificial life forms and pet becomes mainstream. - First experimental artificial wombs for human babies put to test. - Current HIV becomes curable mainstream but another mutation will take its place. It will come from US or Europe. - War will break out in different parts of the world and first AI use for the purpose of killing people. - On demand AI therapist using a wearabl…
Finally. The year of the Linux desktop has arrived.
Things I believe will stay the same: * Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple will have roughly the same dominant positions. * Bitcoin will play roughly the same role it plays today (store of value, more like gold than money, similar mkt cap) * Machine learning continues to grow in usage and capability, but there will be no "revolution" in AI. * Nobody on Mars * No serious alternatives to advertisements will emerge for indu…
> Tech illiteracy of young people How do you mean? Do you mean as in they're all end-users rather than able to create things?
* Recession will happen that will affect the global economy causing at least a 30% decrease in major world stock indexes.
* China will stumble in a major recession but the Communist Party will maintain power.
* Google, Apple, Facebook, and Microsoft will still be the biggest tech companies by market cap.
* A new company that hasn’t been started yet will be in the top 10 tech companies by market cap.
* The duopoly of cloud computing services will be AWS and Google Cloud. Nearly all Fortune 500 companies will use one or the other.
* Big Tech will not be broken up because of their large value decline during recession, with focus being diverted to prop economy back up.
Bold:
* Breakthrough battery technology will make electric vehicles better for consumers than than their fossil fuel counterparts.
* The breakthrough battery tech will allow a very affordable manned mission to Mars.
* Solar will be the dominant form of energy creation in the United States.
* HIV vaccine available to nearly all healthy adults.
* Netflix will be bought by Disney.
* DeepFake technology will be used to create an entire feature film by a major studio.
* Donald Trump will win the 2020 presidential election despite being unsuccessfully tried during impeachment.
* In the United States, majority of people will eat synthetic meat over animal-based meat.
* San Francisco Bay Area will not be globally in the top 10 areas of funding for new technology startups.
Crazy:
* A state in the United States will successfully secede.
* Glaciation will increase in parts of the world with their albedo effect predicted to offset most of the temperature increase from man-made climate change.
* Major disease epidemic will kill at least 20 million people. Will not be noticed at first but will rapidly kill after long incubation.
* Artificial general intelligence (AGI) will be achieved, accidentally.
* Despite AGI, self-driving cars will not be the majority of vehicles on the road.