
Predictions for 2020–2029 - longstaff2009
https://medium.com/swlh/9-predictions-for-2020-2029-555312fc69fc
======
adrianmsmith
Under the section on “reimagining search”:

> We live in a state of anxiety without a path to financial independence. The
> path to creating wealth from last century no longer applies. The path to
> reimagining search begins with helping people to understand their money. The
> first step starts with delivering insights into the stories that data can
> tell.

Not sure what financial independence has to do with search results? I’m not
actually sure those sentences really mean anything at all...

~~~
longstaff2009
You are right that section could be much clearer.

Long term transaction data and browsing history could be used to train a
federated learning algorithm to generate search results.

Getting access to that data to understand what stories it can tell is
difficult ask without offering a lot of value in return.

In the short term I believe providing insights into a persons finances is the
way to provide that value.

E.g. if you have an extra $5k how do your circumstances change if you \- pay
off student debt \- pay extra on your mortgage \- buy solar \- contribute to
your 401k / retirement savings

or showing how changes in spending alters the amount of pretax money you need
to earn to support your lifestyle.

or how does your spending compare to people like you?

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bigdang
This is interesting, but is essentially taking the present and multiplying it
10x. Which is never really how the future turns out, but always how humans
think the future will turn out.

~~~
longstaff2009
I found the thought process of trying to make the predictions quite rewarding
to go through, it will be interesting to look back in 10 years and see how
close or not they are

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dibujaron
The section on Nationalism indicates to me that we're heading towards a period
of major, great-power conflict. I could see it being a lot of smaller,
officially unrelated wars or one big one.

Since WW2 we have enjoyed the longest ever period without direct conflict
between great powers. How much longer can we expect this to last?

~~~
rorykoehler
He's really far off about the EU. The EU will fix its problems and join into
the geopolitical theatre as a unified block. No one wants to follow the UK.

~~~
phenkdo
I concur, in fact Brexit might have the reverse effect of France, Germany led
EU moving towards a closer union.

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n_ary
Interesting. It is fun to look at this and imagine exciting future. Random
things I remember predicted about 2020:

\+ Moon & Mars colonization

\+ Touch-screen TVs

\+ consumer computing moves to Google Glass

\+ VR

\+ Universal currency (BitCoin et al.)

\+ Flying Cars

\+ Cars that can run on Land & Water

\+ Household Garbage to electricity converter

\+ Everything runs on Solar power

\+ Doomsday

\+ AGI

\+ Self driving cars

\+ Holographic displays(like in movies)

\+ No. 5 from the article

\+ Biomed breakthroughs (aka Theranos)

These are from various sources I have read. Interestingly, most rely heavily
on trending topics/techs of the time predictions were being made without
accounting for how tech & field suddenly changes, such as Theranos and
blockchain. :)

[edit: fixing list formatting ]

------
chapium
What benefits does a distributed ledger such as blockchain provide enterprise
scale users?

~~~
longstaff2009
in private consortiums, instead of having data locked up in silos across
organisations, everyone can have a copy of the data and build their own view
on top of it.

you don't have to trust any party as to the authenticity of the data as you
can see every change that has been made.

I wrote about the supply chain use case here
[https://medium.com/twohands/lobsters-on-the-blockchain-
df599...](https://medium.com/twohands/lobsters-on-the-blockchain-df5998ad817e)

and how I approach looking at distributed ledger tech here
[https://medium.com/@ben_longstaff/my-framework-for-how-to-
lo...](https://medium.com/@ben_longstaff/my-framework-for-how-to-look-at-the-
future-of-
blockchain-719f4243491f?source=friends_link&sk=a867889e653507062d357cd4c2581e2a)

:)

~~~
rorykoehler
These problems are already solved with audit logs and apis. Especially at
enterprise level.

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baumgarn
Regarding the section "The World is on Fire": The farmers protests recently in
Berlin were a normal expressions of freedom to demonstrate in Germany. Not
much to worry about, and a sign of a healthy democracy.

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rvz
Seriously, when will the frivolous soothsaying on every decade predictions
ever stop? As soon as I saw (2) and (3) and below I had to stop reading. They
are the same speculative lunatics that attempted to predict the price of
Bitcoin to rise beyond $20k. After looking at these latest predictions, I just
drew a big sigh.

I'm sorry but even my machine learning crystal ball forecasting an incoming
tech crash in this decade is more accurate than the majority of these
nonsensical 'predictions'.

------
bobosha
IMHO the search paradigm of 10 links itself needs to be reimagined. One idea
is of that of a self-assembling, dynamically updating "view" of the underlying
information (without the need to read documents).

I suspect several smart people are working on it and the challenges are many,
but eventually, we will get there.

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insickness
> People are scared and want their leaders to protect their jobs from foreign
> competition.

It's not 'competition' that people are afraid of, it is unfair government
intervention and tariffs. The idea with Trump's trade wars is that if a
country imposes tariff's on US goods, the US will respond in kind until those
tariff's are removed and fair competition is restored. Whether or not this is
actually happening in practice is another story, but to say nationalists are
afraid of competition misses the mark.

~~~
mtberatwork
> It's not 'competition' that people are afraid of, it is unfair government
> intervention and tariffs.

People aren't afraid of that either, they are afraid of the rise in cost of
living compared to the tepid rise of their wages.

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sverige
I predict the vast majority of people will never again understand that new
decades, centuries, and millenia begin on January 1st of years ending in '1'
and not '0' because there never was a Year 0. Everyone knew that 50 years ago,
which is why Kubrick didn't call it '2000: A Space Odyssey.'

~~~
quotha
It's the 20's, deal with it.

~~~
huseyinkeles
It is 20s, but not a new decade :)

See
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decade](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decade)

~~~
Mountain_Skies
You all are correct but no one cares. Numbers ending with 0 is what gets
attention. Going back to the year 1 doesn't add much anyway since we are
pretty sure that the count of years since the birth of Jesus (whoever he was
historically) is off.

~~~
ShamelessC
[https://m.xkcd.com/2249/](https://m.xkcd.com/2249/)

