Ask HN: A New Decade. Any Predictions?

1. Google and Facebook struggle to keep their power position and will be stripped down for many reasons. Microsoft and Amazon will capture the spoils of war becoming larger than they are today.

2. No AGI yet, but some AI companies will create overnight data-driven monopolies, same as Private Equity did on the '80s. These early companies will start as B2B consulting/services until they have enough data, experience, and models. Then they will stop servicing others and start disrupting every industry and vertical they could. Same as PE, it becomes an arms race that will eliminate any competition. To keep their power position, Data Science becomes an esoteric-obscure knowledge, spawning another "AI Winter".

3. We will see last-mile and self-driving operational for logistics purposes. Driving will become a privilege, only rich people would allow driving their cars (electric or gas). Others would need to use ride-sharing or public transit. Fewer Toyotas, more Bugatti.

4. There will be significant advances in research in many fields, technology leverage scientific output. But academia works (quantum) will not translate on real-world applications.

5. European Union as we know will disappear on the next economic recession, European countries will recover their historical relations while eastern countries will see a raise on nationalisms/violent uprises and never-ending migration crisis.

6. China will suffer their first economic recession, taking down the older elites and spawning a war for political control creating instability and broken the Belt and Road initiative. Russia will face another 1990-moment between powers and factions inside the country.

7. Offline will be the new wave. Online relations were no longer trusted or authentic. Back to the real world, real experiences, moments and friends. Ibiza is the center of the civilized world.

8. Extreme personalization of payments and lending, an era of rent-to-use, pay month-to-month, get an instant credit will go down to basic needs like water or toilet paper. Finance will extract value from all economy layers. Only rich people own things.

9. Global emissions and pollution will be reduced significative in rich countries thanks to advanced technologies (Switzerland, Germany ..etc). On the other side, people from Third-world countries will die because of pollution.

10. Flying Cars for Rich people. No Mars yet, but increased interest in space exploration.

Hello future me! I hope you did it well in this decade.

1. Developer tools become more and more integrated, solutions become mainstream where everything is automated with your whole stack (DNS/domain, CI, Git repos, Scrum board, analytics, app/database etc) created in one click (already happening, I know). AWS buys Gitlab or Atlassian.

2. GCP fails on its goal in becoming as large as AWS/Azure

3. Data Science becomes as commonplace in software development as Agile methods, Git etc with easier to use tools (which require no actual knowledge how the math works)

4. In the developed countries electric vehicles achieve approximately 50% market share

5. Some great advancements in battery technology, which only still result to about 50% better energy density than as of now

6. Some new social media (a la Snapchat) rises, possibly based on VR or AR

7. VR & AR games become more mainstream, AR particularly with couple hit-games (perhaps similar to board games?)

8. No fusion power, and not that much progress in it

And my political predictions:

1. Africa becomes the new "China", a lot of manufacturing is transferred there

2. Africa also sees a steep increase in GDP in some countries which receive these new investments (eg Nigeria, Kenya, Ethiopia perhaps)

3. China rises in political power but falls short on becoming a true superpower, mainly due to lack of soft power (Chinese culture will stay as isolated as it's now). Also while becoming the absolute best in few key industries (electronical devices mainly), won't achieve similar success in other areas (software, cars)

4. The rest of the Balkans join EU (with maybe the exception of Albania), people continue complaining about EU but still nobody else other than Britain leaves the union

5. EU deepens its military co-operation, NATO decreases in importance mostly because of USA's erratic behaviour

6. A major proxy war is fought in Middle-East, yet again. Iran contests Saudi-Arabia's dominance. Saudi-Arabia fails to transition from oil to other industries

7. Global warming will create the strongest and the most devastating hurricane yet to hit US. Deniers will still fail to see any correlation between them

8. Global warming will also create mass starvation and desertification in Africa causing mass-migrations and thus pressure on the neighbouring countries and especially EU, with again populists getting votes with their anti-immigration rhetoric

9. Populists world-wide will gain a stronger foothold, even more having prime ministers in various EU countries (not just in Eastern Europe)

A bit conservative predictions, I know. But it's still only 10 years so any bolder predictions will probably fall short

> post literate

> more then

The future has arrived.

> Being offline is the new "Yoga"

This! But my take is it will be out of sheer necessity.

Killing all my social media presence for the last 3 years or so has been more cathartic than anything else I tried in order to acquire perfect peace. That, plus completely cutting out alcohol. I have near zero anxiety since embarking on this and I highly recommend it.

Some global war. At least 1 public cloud AZ will get blown up in the process and undersea cables will be targeted. This will bring about new network tech, widespread autonomous weapon systems, and major disruption to global economic patterns. Once the dust settles there will be global interest in innovation in political structures, like direct digital democracy (frequent, contextual, paperless voting). Maybe we’ll get a decent canonical ID system with widespread adoption. These all might conspire to upend the dominance of USD. And JavaScript shall litter the planet, reaching 3 billion new devices each year. I hope I’m wrong about most of this.