Ask HN: A New Decade. Any Predictions?

Hahaha, good point

- Self driving cars will have a subset of roads that they are allowed to take since they can't perform well enough generally yet. They will be 100% allowed on highways, with trucking/bussing without a driver being very common.

- VR/AR becomes common (though still not surpassing cellphones), the killer app begins not for consumer use but for business use. Apple comes out of nowhere to kick this off.

- Most people's personal computers live in the cloud by 2030. Local storage and powerful CPUs become uncommon.

- AI overtaking jobs continues, but not exponentially. It's clear it's a big problem, but it's a slow enough burn that nothing's done about it by the end of 2030.

- The climate change conversation doesn't change. It's less bad than alarmists think and not the biggest problem the world faces yet.

- Genetic engineering moves faster than people think it will. China gains a huge lead and it becomes available commercially to parents there by the end of 2030.

- Someone will gain fame by livestreaming their entire life via AR.

- Digital tech continues to lead but Biotech gets much closer and it is clear that it will overtake digital tech stocks in the following decade.

- The trend of children/people spending less time out of their homes continues. Many businesses start moving into people's homes (i.e. Home workouts instead of gyms. Home medical care instead of doctors offices).

- A bunch of key cancers will be able to be strongly mitigated, like aids is now. Some are still death sentences.

- Cryptocurrency continues to be niche.

- No WWIII.

- Movement into cities continues. Property prices continue to rise.

- Deepfaked actors in movies become a significant percentage of films.

- Serverless wins wholesale. AWS not only continues to succeed but grows in influence.

- Javascript is on the decline by 2030.

- Sports move to streaming, which is the last death blow to cable. It's effectively dead by 2030.

- The retail apocalypse continues, with half the current retail workforce displaced and most storefronts in the country vacant. No one in SV notices.

- Climate change continues to accelerate. No meaningful consensus is reached on a policy response. Climate induced migration leads to regional warfare

- There are 30 countries with nuclear weapons. 5 of them are borderline failed-states.

- The EU splinters. The most stable remaining countries try to form a new agreement

- Income and wealth disparities widen

- Donald Trump is re-elected

- A major hot war erupts in the middle east

- Apple still hasn't introduced an important follow-up to the iPhone. It now costs $1500 (plus $200 per month for data in the US). Apple has $2 trillion in cash

- Amazon passes Google in the advertising space, leveraging all they know about the world's consumer purchases

- Everyone is under surveillance constantly as commerce companies secretly agree to share all data with law enforcement in return for removing all remaining privacy laws.

- Agriculture doubles-down on pesticide use to meet growing food demand, causing severe long-term ecological damage.

I agree with all but 4, 7, and 9. I expect at least another moon landing by someone and I do think Starship will fly, though maybe only to LEO or translunar flyby by 2030. 3nm will be successful but may be the last conventional node. India etc. will get hotter but they will build nuclear reactors and air conditioners, though the poor will suffer more. Overall the poor and failed states will suffer the most from climate change.

Partly recent news, and partly friends who live in New Zealand.