Ask HN: A New Decade. Any Predictions?

#2 would only happen if entrepreneurial opportunities in tech dried up completely, which is a much more significant (implied) prediction.

* VR will never become mainstream, but will get an addicting online killer app that will pull in "hardcore" gamers (like WoW was in the 2000's)

* Multiple companies will publish consumer AR headsets at around the price of a high end cellphone. None of them will have mainstream success and only be purchased by earlier adopters until Apple releases a headset around the early-middle of the decade. This catches on moderately as an iPad like success, becoming an extra gadget for affluent households, but doesn't come close to displacing phones.

* Ads are going to become more and more embedded into things that we do. Product placement in movies, social media, and TV will replace traditional ads. * We will see the shuttering of Cable news stations much like we saw newspapers in the previous decade, especially geared towards the child / teen demographics. We will see more of that content move to streaming sites.

* Self driving cars still won't be massively deployed on our roads.

* Uber / Lyft will have major restructuring (maybe go bankrupt) after they still can't find a way to make a profit. Prices will hike and consumers will stop using the services shocking an unprepared public transport system. * Some major Katrina level natural disaster on the West Coast (possibly megaquake or super fire).

* More states will pass GDPR like regulation, slowing down the pace of social media giants.

* We will start to see an influx of technology innovation from Chinese tech companies and this will create fear of mass surveillance for the masses.

* There will be a data breach from Facebook or Google leading to a government investigation.

* They AI fad will trickle into non tech circles. Multiple companies will use bullshit AI systems that claim to be good at qualitative tasks like determining employee's performance reviews.

* Still no signs of general AI

* CRISPER treatments start going through clinical trials and we find cures for a few major genetic diseases.

I expect things are going to change less than most people think. The past decade in a number of ways represented less of a change from a technological perspective than the several leading up to it, and I expect that will most likely continue. The alternative would be a massive new technology that changes everything, like AGI, or possibly level 4/5 self driving vehicles, but I don't expect either of those are coming in the next 10 years. Could be something else no one sees coming, but I doubt it. So for now I think we're on the tail end of an S-curve of change that has spanned several decades and numerous individual technologies.

So, specific predictions:

-fully driverless cars will see some limited use, perhaps with remote monitoring, but will not be ubiquitous.

-electric cars though will become very popular, with most new cars being electric.

-solar and wind installations will continue to grow. We'll probably see some innovation around distribution and metering as a result of electric vehicles and/or renewables, like smart home panels that pause charging when load is high or renewable production is low, or even draw from the electric vehicle to provide supplemental power when necessary. I doubt those things will be common in 10 years, but they'll be at least talked about.

-AI will continue to have more niche applications, but will not result in major societal change or job loss.

-no country will meet the current Paris climate agreement thresholds. However, climate change will widely be recognized as a serious problem. Climate change denial will continue the shift from "doesn't exist" to "not caused by humans", and then to, "even if caused by humans, nothing we can do". However the denial side will carry less weight, and most first world governments will have implemented carbon taxes or other schemes to reduce greenhouse gasses. We will be on course for > 2 degrees of warming though.

-There will be presidents from both parties in the White House after Trump.

Generally I expect where there are large changes, they will be political/geopolitical, not technological. I expect some change to be driven by increasing polarization and by the pressures of climate change. Most likely that will be a further entrenchment and isolationism, but there's a small chance that there could also be a significant backlash to that trend with something like the Green New Deal or open borders.

re: 3. For me it's easy to imagine something as simple as a long sustained power outage would result in the deaths of thousands.

This list is hopelessly optimistic but that's part of the fun. If only one of these happen I'll consider this list a success. I remember in 2010 I was sure we'd have full self-driving in all new cars by now since Google had the working prototype, how wrong that was! I also worked on LIGO and knew from the inside there was a good chance of a detection and that it would be mainstream news if it came true, which it did.

Here's my list of things that are theoretically (but barely) reachable by 2020:

- Fully programmable quantum computers. Google finally achieved "quantum supremacy", which isn't useful by itself, but a milestone showing progress. QCs will matter more for simulating quantum dynamics than all the encryption stuff.

- The first human landing on Mars. SpaceX seems to be good at setting aggressive targets, missing them, but then hitting them eventually. At the time of this writing they claim the first manned mission will be in 2024, so likely it will happen ~2028.

- A working prototype of an energy-positive fusion reactor. There was some good progress by the team at MIT by using a new type of superconducting tape that can handle significantly stronger magnetic fields.