Ask HN: A New Decade. Any Predictions?

The first 'western' autocrat steps forward triggering a chain reaction.

Global warming reaches levels that causes countries most affected to consider war, could lead to them forming an alliance (i.e. threatening war to incentivice others to take this more seriously)

Type theory will grow and will be applied to more domains.

Consumer computer hardware will mostly stay stagnant but alternative or open architectures as well as pinephone-esque devices will trudge on, slowly closing the gap.

Wikipedia will collapse under the weight of special interest groups' propaganda (governments, religions,...). Of course this will happen relatively silently but it will become increasingly apparent.

Some nations will step forward protecting library genesis and scihub. This will be a relatively small part of the US increasingly losing it's 'soft' influence. It will feel pressured to declare war on some 'ally' to reclaim it.

There's going to be a Snowden from some other country.

Free social network finally emerges, has a cryptocurrency primitive that starts to displace nationally minted currencies. It'll be banned in some places and increasingly used as a system of government elsewhere.

A new religion may also start forming from the convergence of people trying to understand how to avoid black mirror. This could be expressed as 'offliners' but I think there is a chance an actual religious narrative/organisation will be used.

Making phones and laptops p2p mesh networks becomes plug'n'play as 'normal' people get increasingly interested in paying money for devices capable of it.

No 6g.

It starts to become more common for friendgroups / families to rent their own server together. This will be from businesses grown out of fediverse.

1. Current wave of AI research is dead within 5 years, AI winter commences as semiconductor density growth slows. AI will be able to solve problems, but not formulate problems (and thus invent solutions). There is only so much to be explored with "we used method x on dataset y and got results" 2. There will not be a huge technological breakthrough, akin to wireless connectivity and cameras in this decade. We will still be using phones and laptops in 10 years. 2. Anti-trust goes mainstream again. Some of big tech gets broken up or regulated. 3. Self driving cars will reach Level 4 slowly. 3. Robots slowly start to grasp "complex" tasks. Folding T-Shirts is a recent development as of 2019. People who are unable to learn fast, keep up and get jobs will begin to more strongly resent the wealthy. Taxes on the wealthy go up, but not enough to curtail the rise of socialism. 4. The USA will stay politically paralyzed. (dems x reps, cities x towns) It will stay attached to its constitution and traditions, just like it was designed to. USA is not the dream country anymore, Europe is looked up on as the dream place for regular people. 5. Low-cost airline tickets will get more expensive, at least there, climate activists will succeeed. 6. Climate change will not be helped by politicians, but by technology. Solar is already cheaper than nuclear/coal/gas and will replace it. Batteries will get cheaper.

- EVTOL will start to grow from the current nothing, but will not be a revolutionary transport mechanism by 2030. People will be investing in it and trying to make it work though, but even the bullish EVTOL investors like Uber will be struggling to make it work as globally as expected.

- I think autonomous cars will be much further along, but only in certain parts of the World - more likely to see them in Monaco than in Mumbai or Manchester, not for economic reasons but because of road and typical weather conditions.

- Most "liberal democracies" will slide to the right for a prolonged period of time. There is no appetite for a move to the left, as much as many of us think it's "obvious" that people will eventually see through right-wing messaging or will die off naturally.

- The USSR will be back in all but name. It arguably already is, but by 2030 we'll know what a post-Putin World might look like, and it will not involve more democracy in Russia. The majority of Russians will be fine with this.

- India in the '20s will be like China in the '10s, but greener.

- China itself will try to go big on green tech, but will struggle to economically justify it until consumers show they're prepared to pay for it (which they never have to date).

- I am quite bearish on the EU post-Brexit. I think France, Germany, Austria, Italy, Greece, Spain and Portugal will all face a rise in anti-EU sentiment amongst voters.

- Meanwhile the UK will be a strange mix of striving for a new Industrial Revolution with a tax and political environment that reminds people of Singapore.

- Most software engineers will spend a bigger proportion of their time taking off the shelf ML/AI tools and plugging them together and facing a business problem. I think a "Ruby on Rails of ML/AI" is quite likely.

- I think the companies that have spent the '10s trading on personal data (Facebook, Google, etc.) will struggle with that business model as the audience becomes more aware and careful with their private data.

- Bitcoin is going to muddle along, but even if most of the problems with it (transaction rate, power usage, etc.), get fixed then most people are now so sceptical of crypto coins, they will all struggle to get public mind share.

- Meat consumption will be way, way down. Maybe below 3/4 what it is today, driven by environmentalism, animal rights awareness and a growing landscape of decent competitors.

- At least one major metro or municipal area will have gone carbon neutral, and at least one country will be on target to be entirely carbon neutral by 2035.

I'll be happy if we're all still here in 2030.

Marriages and having children will become less and less popular, and under-population will start to be a real concern for economies.

Governments to start / increase incentives to get married and have kids.