I'm gonna make a contrarian prediction: consumer-facing technology won't change much over the next 10-15 years. Self-driving cars, smart clothes, artificial meat/meat substitutes, and AR/VR will all fail to become mainstream, each with less than 5-10% consumer adoption across the general population (partial autonomy in cars may become common, but full L5 autonomy won't). The real changes will be invisible, mainly changes to infrastructure. I predict that the grid will become much smarter and more resilient, with seamless coordination across millions of generators and endpoints (think EVs and rooftop solar). Similarly, at least one widely used decentralized alternative to the web will emerge, possibly passed on blockchain tech. I also predict that at least one widely-used cryptosystem will be broken; the resulting chaos will represent a major political and social headache. Political polarization and fake news will only get worse. Several states which are currently red, such as Texas and Georgia, will become purple due to changing demographics, representing a huge shift in the distribution of political power in the US. There will be at least one major recession. Another of the big European countries (maybe Italy?) will leave the EU, and Scotland will leave the UK. The middle east will remain a mess, but conditions in Africa will improve substantially, leading to several new fortunes being created. There will major progress on HIV and Alzheimer's, but cancer will remain a tough nut.
Ask HN: A New Decade. Any Predictions?
881–890 of 1001 posts
Re: Ask HN: A New Decade. Any Predictions?
#882There is going to be a war between US and China:
1) there are a few likely points of conflict:
- south china sea
- african countries that are between most influenced by china and others.
- taiwan
- north korea
- middle east
- chinese/russian border
3) China will try to use it's network of influencers/agents in universities, big companies and ethnically chinese communities in general.
4) The war will stop the grouth of civillian economy in china, which will raise chances of a revolution. CCP will tighten the grip and all smart/educated/somewhat open minded chinese citizens will be on the path out of the country no matter how hard it will be.
Re: Ask HN: A New Decade. Any Predictions?
#883Expectations for stability of systems software (OS, database, etc) increases. Rust grows in job market share vs C++ (which does not modernize quickly enough).
An ISA other than x86 starts to get traction in x86's current market.
Electric cars become the norm. ICE cars depreciate in value rapidly.
Growing food in isolated environments, clean from pollution and pesticides, will become a big business.
Renewables provide 80% of world energy.
Towards the end of the decade, younger generation comes into political power with very different perspective on the environment, but their new efforts are halfway too late.
Re: Ask HN: A New Decade. Any Predictions?
#8841. Housing will become more affordable in the US
2. There will be a retirement and healthcare crisis in the US
3. A trillion dollars of deficit spending will be authorized for infrastructure spending in the US
4. Many US states will continue to struggle with crippling debt obligations
5. Companies will continue to split their offerings into luxury/premium/upmarket vs. automated/lower quality offerings for the middle class a. Companies that figure out how to enrich and simplify the experience and enable the middle will win
6. China will lead the world in image recognition and surveillance technology a. Some sort of major internal political unrest will occur in China
7. Automated flying vehicles will replace the hype of fully autonomous land vehicles
8. Car buying, leasing, rental and taxi will be dominated by a small number of companies that will become more interdependent
9. Home buying, care and maintenance experiences will significantly improve and be dominated by a small number of companies
10. Food will continue to get cheaper and higher quality
11. Extreme poverty will continue to shrink
12. New space and arms races will emerge as global power rebalances
Re: Ask HN: A New Decade. Any Predictions?
#885AI drives efficiencies in everything we do; transport, manufacturing, mining, "life", etc. Still, humans are in the middle except, they're doing 100 times more than we do now in similar jobs.
Everyone has to level up in tech skills. Everyone is an AI assistant.
Accelerated urbanization overtakes demographics, US gets 3 parties.
Electrification of everything "around the corner".
Fusion reactors coming online.
Massive processes being tested for decarboning (ex. Vesta).
Re: Ask HN: A New Decade. Any Predictions?
#886It's quite difficult for me to predict the future because I live in a small town of a third world country where things move so slowly that any future I could imagine won't materialize.
Re: Ask HN: A New Decade. Any Predictions?
#8871. Electric cars become the norm. All cars are fully autonomous on highways. A driverless highway transport service will go mainstream in some states. (California) 2. China will undergo a major recession, as manufacturing moves to Africa and US maintains its trade war with China across Govts. 3. The best performing stock will be a meat substitute company 4. VR will take off big time. Concerns about VR porn being too…
10 is by far the most implausible. Cargo pants will continue to be awful. But pocket-less pants will take off
Re: Ask HN: A New Decade. Any Predictions?
#888- Automation replaces the need to have a human workforce. North Korea murders 99% of its population and replaces them with robots. Kim still goes around factories pointing at things. - It becomes possible to literally program humans to do whatever you want them to do. Python is the chosen language but a lack of type safety results in an error that wipes out half of humanity. - We colonize mars but by choosing only th…
Several of these would be great satire films. :)
The whole list reminded me of the film Idiocracy. Any/all of these would fit perfectly into that movie.
Re: Ask HN: A New Decade. Any Predictions?
#8891. Peak Google. This one will only appear in retrospect, but I think they hit a peak in the next 10 years and slowly relinquish dominance to a position more like Microsoft. They are no longer viewed through rose-colored glasses. Like Microsoft in the 90s. 2. AI/ML become more entrenched and we start to see "Standard Models" for niche ML tasks that can consistently outperform humans with almost no mistakes. We just ha…
Can you clarify 7?
It will accelerate the death of some declining industries like brick and mortar retail, coal extraction and a lot of logistics work (trucking, etc). They will become less relevant and/or automated. They won't die, but will reach new lows and never fully recover.
Re: Ask HN: A New Decade. Any Predictions?
#890Here are mine: 1. Still no level 4/5 autonomous cars anywhere in sight. The promise of being "just around the corner" fizzles down and people just forget the hype. 2. Same with AI. The panacea hype dies down. No AGI at all. No major job losses due to AI automation. 3. Facebook (the SN) still exists but ages along with it's current user base. i.e it's the "old people's" SN. Facebook (the company) is still going strong…
> 9. Global carbon emissions are not reduced, mostly because of lack of initiative by China and 3rd world countries. Ya let's blame it all on other people.
He said "mostly" because of, not totally due to. Furthermore, look at US emissions...they are flat or declining over time, and will continue to slowly decline. So, we're closer to hitting our future Paris goals than China, whose emissions are going to continue to rise quickly due to increased oil use, LNG, and a LOT of coal use for at least 20 years to come.