"Plastics!"
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Ask HN: Predictions on what will be the most surprising technology in 10 years?
41–50 of 70 posts
Re: Ask HN: Predictions on what will be the most surprising technology in 10 years?
#42Honestly I think with the mass availability of escapist devices innovation is largely over.
Re: Ask HN: Predictions on what will be the most surprising technology in 10 years?
#43Blockchain, decentralized apps - perhaps based on Ethereum, perhaps not. They have the potential to enhance capitalism in equivalent ways as the current wave of "sharing economy" startups (Uber, Airbnb) has done, or even surpass that.
- it's much easier for more people to become investors, since buying coins/tokens will become increasingly easier and common.
- you won't need to be located at a specific startup hub to launch successful business, because it's so much easier to get investment from around the world.
- it has a great approach for solving the "network effect", where no one can challenge the major players with strong networks, by providing strong incentives for early adopters to join and grow their networks (either by buying very cheap tokens, or producing content that will render them "free money").
- it enables the creation of new business models that might disrupt (ugh, sorry) several existing industries, due to how they solve the trust issue between parties that have no reason to trust each other without a central controller entity. Some are calling this next wave of startups the "Web 3.0".
Sure, it looks like the wild west now, and there are all sorts of problems from scams to scalability issues, but maturity might be only a matter of time.
Re: Ask HN: Predictions on what will be the most surprising technology in 10 years?
#44Automated driving plus Uber style infrastructure plus electric vehicles and improved batteries will start to change the way people use them significantly. Private car ownership will have peaked and begun falling, people will just order one on an app and let it drive off after they've arrived to the next job. Cars will spend much more of the day on the road instead of parked outside houses or offices rather like aeroplanes. Perhaps not a revolutionary or surprising idea in itself but I think the speed of this change will be surprising in hindsight.
Re: Ask HN: Predictions on what will be the most surprising technology in 10 years?
#45Software will eat programming jobs.
Re: Ask HN: Predictions on what will be the most surprising technology in 10 years?
#46China 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.
checks library
Yup, that's how I have it in all my cyberpunk books. :)
Re: Ask HN: Predictions on what will be the most surprising technology in 10 years?
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
I like the way you think. That would be my dream. Time to start investing in property out in the middle of nowhere.
With the way population is growing, owning land anywhere (that's not going to be swallowed by the sea) sounds like a good idea to me. If you have some disposable income and don't mind a possibly long wait (and the taxes too), I'd say go for it.
What do you mean by 'the way population is growing'? The global population growth rate has been slowing significantly over the past century (it's roughly half of what it was in the 60's). The growth rate in developed countries is pretty much universally Yeah, we're going to see continued growth in developing nations, but those rates will slow as well as those nations... develop.
Re: Ask HN: Predictions on what will be the most surprising technology in 10 years?
#48One of my predictions is that the AI pendulum will swing again at the other direction and people will wake up again to the reality that AI is far from achieving the romanticised stuff that the so called experts and book authors want the public to believe. We will see gradual incremental improvement in specialised AIs for things like voice, face and character recognition. We will see an increased usage of AI and AI ba…
Yes and no.
I agree the effects on number of jobs will be smaller than people are predicting. It won't be mass unemployment.
On the other hand, people need to realize how sensitive the job market really is. Typical unemployment in the US is 4-5% in the last 10 years. If 1% of the workforce is put out of work by new technology, something I feel is very likely, that's a 20% increase in unemployment. If it gets much larger, even maybe 8-9%, there could absolutely be mass riots and outrage.
The point is, job markets are like marriage/dating markets. They aren't smooth, they're something almost everyone wants, so even tiny little changes (like NYC's surplus of women) have dramatic, nonlinear effects. I don't think people appreciate what a "butterfly effect" this will have if, say, 10-20% of truckers (the most popular occupation in many states) are put out of work. That's an instant, large-scale political event.
EDIT Source: https://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2015/unemployment-rate-and-u-6-...
Re: Ask HN: Predictions on what will be the most surprising technology in 10 years?
#49Small satellite and generally small spacecraft will drastically change the affordability of space, which will drive a lot of new development in space. It's already creating a lot of demand on market for new, small launchers as well to actually get significant numbers of sats up there, and it will become an accelerating loop between nanosat launch providers and small spacecraft getting more affordable quickly
Re: Ask HN: Predictions on what will be the most surprising technology in 10 years?
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
With the way population is growing, owning land anywhere (that's not going to be swallowed by the sea) sounds like a good idea to me. If you have some disposable income and don't mind a possibly long wait (and the taxes too), I'd say go for it.
What do you mean by 'the way population is growing'? The global population growth rate has been slowing significantly over the past century (it's roughly half of what it was in the 60's). The growth rate in developed countries is pretty much universally Yeah, we're going to see continued growth in developing nations, but those rates will slow as well as those nations... develop.
I was referring to the sheer number of people being born. Even if the growth rate is declining, it's still a lot of ever growing number of people looking for housing.