Ask HN: A New Decade. Any Predictions?

Can you enlighten me on the "improve" and "destroy" parts of that strategy? For all I know, Edgium is Chrome with Google services replaced by Microsoft services.

* 2023 Apple re-enters the social media market (leveraging iMessage)

* 2023 FB starts placing ads on external websites, eating into Google's market

* 2024 Amazon's commingling strategy and federated approach to "sellers" & "shippers" turns against it, making room for another major player to enter the market by focusing on quality.

* 2024 Comcast stops trying to push their TV service with Internet packages

* 2024 Y-Combinator adopts a syndicate system (similar to Angel List)

* 2025 A universal flu vaccine is universally available

* 2026 Alexa is now seen as the Hyundai of assistants. Google is Mercedes. Siri is Tata.

* 2026 Online ads revolution - a new format of ads, cleaner, more precise/focused, less intrusive (but more efficient) takes over.

* 2027 FB market cap overtakes Google & Apple

* 2027 Google launches a human-like virtual assistant that can handle everything a human can.

* 2028 China walls off even more of the internet.

* Around 2029 a new category of wearables appears. Not mainstream yet, but very promising, turning current interaction paradigms on their head. Google is a major partner, but not a leader of this.

* 2029 WiFi is largely available for free in all public areas (including on a plane).

I'm confused, are you saying that services don't have value? It feels like an artificial distinction to me, for example watching a movie at a theater vs buying/renting a movie both provide me similar value. Also, in a world of increasing automation and globalization # of people is perhaps not a great metric.

I'm not really sure if the economy is in as good of shape as it seems. At least here in the USA we're hitting an unprecedented period of economic growth; the Keynesian in me believes that policy has prevented at least one recession in the 2010s and led to real growth in the economy, but it's very possible we're just in for a bigger fall in the 2020s because of it.

- One country will invade another country using computer/information attacks as the deciding strike, perhaps Russia invading one of the Eastern Bloc countries. People's mobile phones will simply tell them that there is some kind of natural disaster happening and that they should go home and seek shelter, while the invading country's forces quickly seize all key infrastructure. This will be a wakeup call to the world that if you can control the screens, you can control society.

- No real political progress will be made on solving/mitigating climate change. The worlds political systems will simply not be equipped to make the necessary decisions to reduce carbon emissions by enough to matter. People will become numb to the unfolding disaster and as such it won't lead to clicks/pageviews, so the media will stop covering it. The major disasters (large fires, storms, etc) that happen will receive coverage but be quickly forgotten, much like mass shootings today.

- New York and California will diminish in influence & power in the US. Wealthy people moving to other states will cause a fiscal death spiral as the state governments have to raise taxes to fund widening deficits. Austin will be regarded as a tier 1 city. Other inland states like Colorado & Arizona will also gain population and power.

- Another major hurricane will hit the northeastern US, it will be far worse than Hurricane Sandy.

- Steady improvements will be made in technological mitigations to climate change like carbon capture, and more efficient manufacturing and farming processes. It won't be enough to solve the problem but will provide some hope to eventually stop making the problem worse in the 2030s.

- Extremist political factions on the left and right in the US will continue to gain influence and power.

- Either SpaceX or Blue Origin will conduct a private, manned mission to the moon.