Ask HN: A New Decade. Any Predictions?

I don't have a concrete prediction, but I can see it being a problem that lots of young people use locked down phones rather than an open-ended device (which usually has a keyboard and mouse/touchpad).

Maybe in 10 years laptops will have transformed into tablets, with the same locked down app stores, and a keyboard and mouse will seem like an ancient relic. (I'm not sure if another input device will come along in 10 years, the way touch did with the iPhone).

That seems too negative though. I think there could just as likely be a big new platform that means more young people are creating software than ever.

Here's a concrete prediction: the tech stack may be stratified by age. That is, Gen X-ers will know C, C++, and Python; millenials will know JS, Python, and perhaps Rust; and millenial's children will be creative with something even higher up the stack.

Interesting predictions. I don't think I'll be surprised if I come back to this thread in 10 years ;)

An AI will write the first bestselling piece of fiction. The team behind the project will sell the technology to Disney for more than a billion dollars.

1. Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Google and Microsoft will all be more valuable than they are today, and none will be broken up by government action.

2. Legislation will increasingly come into place in the US and EU forcing tech companies to clean up their act on privacy, anti-competitiveness, and Right to Repair. All of these will further entrench the success of the companies in #1, but they will also open up market opportunities for start-ups focused on each. Some of those will be bought up by the giants.

3. Increased availability and efficiency of specialized compute for inference acceleration will bring about the rise of per-user generated video and rendered content, rather than only personalized text and recommendation feeds.

4. Politicians, advertisers, and scammers will find creative ways to exploit #3. Legislation to counter it will be late and ineffective.

5. Commoditization of machine vision and other sensing technology and AI will result in drastic changes in guerilla warfare and terrorism. Major attacks will occur in the developing and developed worlds before effective counter-measures can be put into place.

6. Head worn AR is still mostly used for productivity and industrial niches, and ubiquitous all-day-wearable headsets are only beginning to be practical as smartphone replacements. VR timespend for gaming exceeds traditional game consoles and gaming PCs and similarly makes headway in productivity. Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo all release VR-primary gaming systems.

7. The trade tensions between China and the US escalate into an economic and cultural cold war with the rest of the world picking sides.

8. 3D printing is increasingly used for specialized industrial and custom decorative design applications, but does not replace traditional fabrication and construction methods for mass production.

9. Bitcoin fails to gain traction as a mainstream transaction medium but is the de facto default currency for grey and black market transactions.

10. Several countries will develop gene-hacking industries, boosting medical tourism for procedures illegal in the US and EU.

Politically:

* Rise of the EU as global superpower with European army taking over all functions of NATO except strategic defense (nuclear/space). All European countries except ex-USSR and England but including Scotland are members of EU.

* Rise of Africa as a big consumer market. Green belt finished, major improvements in agriculture and infrastructure help to combat famine. Ethiopia replaces South Africa as economic leader on the continent.

* Green wave in India: environmental topics in the spotlight of political life, but no significant change yet. Pollution will continue killing millions every year.

* Political stagnation in USA, green new deal won’t happen, but coastal states will drive the progress.

* Environmental standards are mentioned in all trade deals, but not yet enforced with sanctions.

Technology:

* Digital is no longer the field where most of the interesting things will happen. No quantum computing on mass-market, heavy regulation of the Internet everywhere with prohibitive costs for new startups.

* Proteins from plants, bacteria and insects will see same growth as solar and wind in 2010s. Agriculture and diets is the new IT.

* Solar and wind are big but not dominant, hidden costs become visible. There will be no nuclear renaissance. No breakthrough in fusion. Energy becomes hard again, focus shifts from generation and storage to transmission.

* Self-driving cars won’t be on the roads yet, but there will be almost no cars in European and Chinese cities. AI will run public transportation grid.

* Significant progress in recycling and cleaning the oceans from plastic. Europe, USA and China will remove more plastic from water than put there.

* Steady progress in space technology but no sci-fi level achievements. SpaceX will see some competition in reusable rockets. People will return to the Moon.