crystal balls, teleportation and time travel
Ask HN: Predictions on what will be the most surprising technology in 10 years?
51–60 of 70 posts
Re: Ask HN: Predictions on what will be the most surprising technology in 10 years?
#52Sticks and Stones as high tech weapons of war.
Re: Ask HN: Predictions on what will be the most surprising technology in 10 years?
#53Automated 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 aerop…
I think with automated cars we don't even need that much improvement in Batteries. We simply could use self driving battery packs that wait at the street corner and follow you and dock on, if you need extended Battery-Mileage. Also since Electric Energy is very expensive for private Consumers in Germany. Why not order Batteries that can be delivered per self driving car. Garbage disposal is also very expensive and you can not opt out but you can order a smaller Bin and maybe order and self driving car to get rid of the rest cheaper. I actually wonder if this is why the Investor/Trade Agreements (TTIP) where pushed that hard. Because with these, Investors would have to be paid compensation if regulation would outlaw these Businesses.
Re: Ask HN: Predictions on what will be the most surprising technology in 10 years?
#54Well, it's like guessing which number is least likely to be guessed in the same game. If you could predict it right, it's probably not that surprising :)
Sadly this is all too true. By their nature, surprises are unexpected. That said, I would be surprised if we had an operating fusion power plant, a workable age reversing treatment, or a recreational space station. 10 years ago in 2007 I would have been surprised if we had a car that could drive itself, or a way to edit fairly specific genes.
> a workable age reversing treatment
Is that really a thing though? I keep hearing about it, articles saying that the first human to reach 300 years of age is already born etc. But is all this true? Of all things mentioned so far (AI, VR, AR, fusion power..), this is the one I have the hardest time imagining. Going from ~90 to 300 in 10 years is a huge leap compared to even the ~40 to 90 years leap of 200 years ago and today.
Do you have some trustworthy reading material on the subject?
Re: Ask HN: Predictions on what will be the most surprising technology in 10 years?
#55Re the Gates quote: Unless you're Ray Kurzweil, in which case you always overestimate the change that will occur in the next two years and wildly, ludicrously overestimate the change that will occur in the next ten.
I'm old enough to have lived through the Drexlerian nanotechnology mania, and the Kurzweilian exponentialism mania, so I've learned to be extremely skeptical about anyone predicting earth-shattering advances in any field of technology in a mere decade's time. (The Singularity is not just over the horizon. Stop. You're not going to live for a thousand years or upload your mind to a computer. Just stop.)
My prediction is 2027 will be almost indistinguishable from 2017, if we're lucky, i.e., barring nuclear war or some CRISPR-crafted super-virus. However, if I had to choose a technology surprise for ten years from now it would involve being unlucky, i.e., the Loss of Everything Good due to an overwhelming tide of cyberterrorists and cybercriminals. I think few people (including me) fully appreciate how much destruction and chaos could be wrought, and how difficult it could be to protect our vital systems, so in that sense it would catch a lot of people by surprise.
The optimistic technology outlook for 2027 is petabyte thumb drives, 16K televisions, 8G wireless, cheaper solar cells, and marginally better medical scanners. It's a pretty uninspiring list, and none of it is surprising.
That's my hope. Please let there be no surprising technology in 10 years. Because the chances of a good surprise are vastly outweighed by the odds of bad ones.
Re: Ask HN: Predictions on what will be the most surprising technology in 10 years?
#56Re the Gates quote: Unless you're Ray Kurzweil, in which case you always overestimate the change that will occur in the next two years and wildly, ludicrously overestimate the change that will occur in the next ten. I'm old enough to have lived through the Drexlerian nanotechnology mania, and the Kurzweilian exponentialism mania, so I've learned to be extremely skeptical about anyone predicting earth-shattering advan…
Hey, are you gonna drink that half-empty beer or can I have it?
Re: Ask HN: Predictions on what will be the most surprising technology in 10 years?
#57Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sadly this is all too true. By their nature, surprises are unexpected. That said, I would be surprised if we had an operating fusion power plant, a workable age reversing treatment, or a recreational space station. 10 years ago in 2007 I would have been surprised if we had a car that could drive itself, or a way to edit fairly specific genes.
> a workable age reversing treatment Is that really a thing though? I keep hearing about it, articles saying that the first human to reach 300 years of age is already born etc. But is all this true? Of all things mentioned so far (AI, VR, AR, fusion power..), this is the one I have the hardest time imagining. Going from ~90 to 300 in 10 years is a huge leap compared to even the ~40 to 90 years leap of 200 years ago a…
Remember, the theme "unexpected and surprising" :-) I would be surprised if we got there in 10 years.
That said, the reasoning on aging/health goes like this:
* We understand cells at a chemical level.
* We can dump out DNA and RNA
* We understand some of the enzyme reactions involved in cellular biology.
* We understand cells at a chemical and functional level.
* We can change DNA and RNA precisely of our choosing
* We understand all of the enzyme reactions involved in cellular biology.
We cannot do all these things today but we're working on being able to. Just as we cannot maintain a stable fusion reaction with net energy output but we're working on it.
Re: Ask HN: Predictions on what will be the most surprising technology in 10 years?
#58One 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 lar…
Yes I agree that it is sensitive.
The part that annoys me is this backdrop of "machines are going to be doing everything and no one is going to have anything to do".
When in reality it's going to be an assistant next to the existing people, increasing efficiency. Like farming tools for a farmer, or auto-pilot for a pilot, or robo-equipment for a surgeon.
I often hear from non-programmers and non-technical people who somehow seem convinced that AI is some kind of dark magic that is going to kick in at some point and everything is going to be magically solved by it.
Re: Ask HN: Predictions on what will be the most surprising technology in 10 years?
#59One more is the automation of distributed computing. "Big data" will be completely encapsulated and hidden to the end user.
Re: Ask HN: Predictions on what will be the most surprising technology in 10 years?
#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
The sheer number of people being born also has to be compared to the sheer number of people dying. The growth curve is leveling off quickly, and there is still a lot of space left.