Earlier quoted context omitted.
Worst case scenario: nothing. The R&D goes away. Look at aerospace for a nightmare scenario. In the early 20th century we got fixed wing flight. In the teens and 20s we got motorized fighters and the first passenger planes. In the 40s we got jets. In the 50s we broke the sound barrier and orbited Sputnik. In the 60s we landed on the Moon. In the 70s we... stopped going to the Moon. In the 80s nothing much happened ex…
This is pretty depressing.
Even a 200% increase in CPU performance won't bring the general public back to desktop PC's they don't really need, because they are satisfied with what they have. We need something truly disruptive and get people interested in something else.
Right now there are a lot of experiments (AR, VR, wearables, transparent screens, lightfield, new batteries, etc) which will, probably when combined into a truly attractive package, change everything. Again.