Ask HN: Predictions on what will be the most surprising technology in 10 years?

There is an international system of finance, banking, and money. There are rules: If some person, company, or country doesn't play by the rules, then they are not in the system, and that means that they are limited to at most very small things.

We know a lot about this system because it got a lot stronger trying to stop the money flows for terrorism, drugs, and tax evasion.

Well, for the "regulations", one can be that the system will not exchange with crypto and will not work with people who do. There are already, call it reviews, of any relatively large transactions. If something smells like drug money, terrorism, large scale tax evasion, etc., then law enforcement can get involved, crash into a house or office a 3 AM, grab all the papers and computers, grab phone tap data, grab Internet traffic data, etc. and put together a case of violation of crypto laws and regulations.

There's a fundamental point here: Sure, on a small scale, the regulations are tough to enforce, e.g., cost more to enforce than get from the enforcement. BUT the fundamental point is, for any illegal activity to make or spend much money, a LOT of people need to know about it and, then, sure, law enforcement also knows about it and can take action.

"Plastics!"

AR headsets.

There were MP3 players before the iPod, but they weren't taking off quite yet. Then Jobs came, and the iPod changed the music market. And then changed the smartphone market. Google Glass was a good first mass market prototype, Microsoft seems to be going in the right direction with Hololens, but we all know it's not quite there yet. Whoever manages to figure out what the magic combination is for an AR headset that gets massive adoption, will usher in the next UI/portable computing revolution.

China cleans up their air and Shenzhen disrupts Silicon Valley, creating a semi-totalitarian, technocratic city that is somehow more free and libertarian than Silicon Valley has become.

"Internet of things". It's one of the few things that is already here, economically viable, but not organized or "distributed" as Gibson would say. There's simply no reason not to have connectivity in everything if you do it well with electronics and it provides value. Maybe not surprising as such, so you have to figure out the implications which is usually what tends to be the surprising part.