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Here are mine: 1. Still no level 4/5 autonomous cars anywhere in sight. The promise of being "just around the corner" fizzles down and people just forget the hype. 2. Same with AI. The panacea hype dies down. No AGI at all. No major job losses due to AI automation. 3. Facebook (the SN) still exists but ages along with it's current user base. i.e it's the "old people's" SN. Facebook (the company) is still going strong…
- AI based systems will start to replace humans in the more mechanical parts of the legal system. Judging traffic court cases could be one example. - One country will invade another country using computer/information attacks as the deciding strike, perhaps Russia invading one of the Eastern Bloc countries. People's mobile phones will simply tell them that there is some kind of natural disaster happening and that they…
Non-tech: - Remote work will become normalized. Initially it will be praised as the great revival of rural North America. North American corporates will invest heavily in knowledge-work related education in developing countries and emerging companies there. By the end of the century, most knowledge work on offer by "North American" companies will be fulfilled by people not living there, undercutting the local labour market drastically. Most tech jobs will have lost their sheen entirely.
- Automation, especially around transport, logistics and retail, will decimate the labor market. A person driving a Truck/Bus/Subway/Train/Freight ships or working packing & shipping Amazon/Walmart/etc. boxes, or working at retail stores, will be virtually unheard of. We'll be lucky if they're replaced at a 10:1 ratio with bot operators.
- Due to the above, the rich will get richer than we can even perceive now. The middle class will evaporate.
- China, India, Saudi Arabia and their allies will become more powerful politically, economically, technologically and especially militarily, most especially in both cyber and nuclear warfare.
- The above will lead to an even more dramatic rise in nationalism and the rejection of globalism in the West. The UK will be seen to have come out unscathed by leaving the EU which will cause a crisis for the EU as more states fight federalization, reject directives and propose to leave themselves. The unrest and uncertainty will drive the Euro through the floor.
- Trump will be re-elected. The following government will be headed by a Democrat embracing nationalism and vowing to put American's first by taxing "the rich", implementing UBI, healthcare, creating government jobs, etc.
- There will be at least one massive economic crisis in North America, likely the overvaluation of stocks through indexes held by massive pension funds causing a "re-evaluation" of many stocks we're currently taking for granted. Europe will go through far worse as mentioned above.
- There will be at least 1 major cyber security related incident that will affect a country in a way that will change the nature of national access to the internet forever.
- Jeffrey Epstein still won't have killed himself.
Tech:
- Rejection of petroleum based products in the name of battling climate change will drive up the costs of consumer goods. Stagnating or falling income will cause people to buy less goods. Working longer for less pay will give people less free time. Consumption will therefore instead be turned toward services, especially services that promise to give you back time by automating household chores, providing day-to-day needs such as food and mind-numbing entertainment, especially in VR which I expect to be gamified to be as addictive and escapist as possible.
- I expect there will be little autonomous vehicles everywhere. Peace and quiet in our skies will no longer be a thing. Our sidewalks will have a lane full of autonomous delivery bots.
- Coupled with the above, electric vehicles will become the norm. However, they won't be owned by consumers unless you're very rich. They'll be be predominantly available as fleets used via subscription to access. Initially it'll seem glamorous but as with the airline industry, longer term we will be compelled to share the vehicle with other riders, sat on materials that cannot stain, with targeted ads for other services played throughout the duration of the trip.
- AI will prosper but not general AI, mostly very well crafted advanced automation and mostly developed in the non-West.
- DevOps will move to just Dev as Ops becomes almost entirely automated.
- One cloud provider will prevail, the others will be relegated to being niche afterthoughts or disregarded altogether.
- Med-tech will become normalized and people will end up expected to wear at least one device that is continually monitoring and reporting on their health. That data will of course be packaged and sold to be used against them by advertisers for, again, various services we'll be told we "need".
- Privacy and the expectation of privacy will be gone forever. The governments will launch their full scale attack on encryption under the guise of protecting children or terrorism, others will take advantage of the backdoors created in it, and those seen to be trying to protect their privacy will be seen as people with suspicion and therefore subject to further monitoring.
- Spurred by the above, cryptocurrencies will enjoy a brief revival as some try to move money privately but will ultimately be cracked down on and controlled as a "threat".
Prove me wrong 2020's!
Edit: Just scheduled an email to myself with this link for 01/01/2030. It'll be incredible to read it.
Stripe will become a FAANG, or at least gain significant world relevance. Bio-hacking will become mainstream, causing significant backlash and become a sensitive, polarised topic. Startup equity / VC funding will change significantly, making it more fair & appealing for early employees.
- The trend toward "authenticity" still ramping up in 2020 hits full swing, and commercial entities follow suit. Any announced commercial speech is viewed with distrust, while meme tweets are celebrated as "real." Corporate messaging becomes indistinguishable from random chatter on social networks.
- Advances in ML/text bots automate this process, and the random chatter on social sites like Reddit and Tumblr becomes a wasteland of pretty-good bots trying to steer conversations in a sponsored direction.
- Platforms are created for managing brand campaigns across even larger numbers of ever-smaller influencers. Anyone with more than 1k followers on Insta or Snap can sign up to be micro-compensated for brand mentions both online and in person at parties and such. Smartphones are used to track who is where with who and who is saying what, in order to measure these mentions.
- Influencing becomes an accepted career path, and classes appear in higher education on managing your personal brand, identifying which major brands fit with your personal brand, and building a portfolio of commercial brands that identify you like a unique fingerprint. This is blended with graphic design study to create your personal visual fingerprint/brand identity including logo, color scheme, and accessory items like a particular type of flower. It will be called "Personal Marketing" or something and hundreds of thousands of students will flock to the courses. Every public space, whether park, footpath, flower garden, or grocery store, will be filled with hundreds, possibly thousands of young people simultaneously recording selfie videos for their followers or class projects.
- The line between commercially sponsored speech and original speech becomes almost fully blurred.
- The line between brand preference and personal identity disappears. By 2030 the average consumer's daily life is centered around brand experience.
* Technology: Semiconductor industry renaissance as Moore’s Law fails and more effort goes into alternative devices.
* Politics: Trump will announce a health issue and resign, possibly to save face. Pressure on China fades, causing the Uyghur situation to become Holocaust-level.
* Economics: Housing prices will be flat in the U.S. or decrease, after adjusting for inflation in 2029. There will not be a crash.
* Culture: Zoos where animals are largely in enclosures will be commonly seen as animal abuse
- AI based systems will start to replace humans in the more mechanical parts of the legal system. Judging traffic court cases could be one example. - One country will invade another country using computer/information attacks as the deciding strike, perhaps Russia invading one of the Eastern Bloc countries. People's mobile phones will simply tell them that there is some kind of natural disaster happening and that they…
If AI based sentencing recommendations counts, we're already here--- though it looks fairly dystopian so far.
> - One country will invade another country using computer/information attacks as the deciding strike,
Reportedly during Desert Storm, US forces used a combination of human assets, computer system/network attacks, and physical attacks to disable air defenses.
* Society makes progress on tough issues despite political deadlock. Problems continue to be solved outside of the political process
* Obamacare lurches forward, barely in the US. It likely won’t be repealed, but not much beyond shoring it up will happen even if a Dem is elected in 2020. It’s just too hard for Dems to get to 60 in the senate.
* Amazon continues to grow and possibly triggers antitrust action
* Someone will sadly get seriously hurt or killed due to an Amazon marketplace item of low quality. This may prompt regulation or lawsuits
* Brick and Mortar Retail continues to evolve towards being about physical brand presence for a Web-first business, less about stores selling stuff. This gradual move means there’s no huge commercial real estate crash
* Google loses its way, search market share shrinks, suffers from a serious brain drain, loses ability to develop great products
* Privacy concerns break through even more beyond the Hacker News crowd!
* Lots of unexpected things will happen, totally changing everyone’s predictions!
I likely will disagree with these tomorrow and think of even more important ones! :)
2. Disease outbreaks will become a bigger problem because of denser human populations.
3. SpaceX will take passengers around the moon but not to mars.
4. Electric, self-driving capable cars will be everywhere.