
Tech Trends 2014 - sygma
http://www.frogdesign.com/techtrends2014/
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reirob
Reinvention of PC as productivity tool

I am hoping it will finally happen in 2014. It is such a pity that the
machines for work and work places are not improving as the rest of the
products - and in my opinion laptops are mostly getting worse: mirrors instead
of displays, wide-screens (instead of high screens), and dumping accessible
design: crappy keyboards, no options for track points and those who have the
best track points remove the mouse buttons. It's nice to have a long battery
life and a light laptop, but it does not help for the primary task, where I
have my hands lying on the keyboard and staring at the screen.

This had just to go off my chest.

~~~
cgh
The TRS-80 Model 100 had possibly the nicest keyboard of any laptop ever.

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jnorthrop
It is amazing to see privacy issues all over these predictions. You have
predictions of consumers owning their own data and services with anonymization
as a value proposition but also the intrinsic value of product data, and the
proliferation of drones, IoT devices and the growth of the quantified self
movement.

Privacy is clearly moving from a struggle to remain anonymous from the powers
that be to a real business opportunity.

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hagbardgroup
I think it's more that various powers that be want protection from other
powers that be, and thar be profit opportunities in providing that protection.

The consumer follows that trend as real material consequences impact
individuals and receive press coverage. The average consumer understands when
they have to switch out their credit cards repeatedly due to theft. Gamers
understand when a kid gets sent to prison for trash-talking someone on
Facebook. When the IRS uses Facebook postings to augment their audits, or
local prosecutors pull your accounts to convict you for something, then the
need for privacy becomes more obvious.

Privacy is the necessary antecedent to security. It's funny that almost every
other poll option points towards increasing totalitarian control and lesser
security for everyone. It looks like tech in general is trying to frogmarch
new developments before they can be properly secured -- cobbling together
networks that are fragile to pillage, like building un-walled cities in
Genghis Khan's grazing grounds.

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dang
This is a dupe of
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7034562](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7034562).

When a post has had significant attention within about a year, we kill reposts
as duplicates. If the repost already has an ongoing discussion, we don't kill
it, just demote it in rank. That way people can keep discussing.

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Zigurd
The combination of augmented humans, the quantified self at the office, and,
sort of on a tangent, the re-invention of the PC items are the most
interesting. There is a lot of potential to create capital equipment for the
knowledge worker, and thereby re-revolutionize productivity among knowledge
workers.

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motyar
Have you missed something? HTTPS? Encryption?

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1rae
I think the article is a few months old already. It came out before all the
drama.

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wildermuthn
Virtual Reality?

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michaelochurch
2014 is shaping up to be a year of backlash.

Technology is important and mostly a force for good, but right now the
industry has (and deservingly so) lost the trust of, well, everyone.

As we realize that technology is _too important_ to be trusted to arrogant,
myopic, sloppy, sexist, and often deeply classist Silicon Valley assholes,
we're going to see only more controversy. With that will come (disliked and
sometimes wrongheaded) regulation, increasing class tension, and perhaps a
widespread loss of faith in the current technological leadership.

The truth is that most tech companies are horrible. They're horrible to their
own employees (mean-spirited stack-ranking policies) and horrible to their
users and the world outside of them. They've turned the Valley into an
Uberized, Snow Crash cesspool.

In about 12 months, we've gone from tech exceptionalism (pundits asking why
Wall Street talent wasn't "doing good for the world" in Silicon Valley) to a
full-on hatred of this industry, and it's deserved. Rank-and-file programmers
who ride Google buses don't deserve to be harassed, but the leadership
deserves far more hate than it has seen so far.

Technology has to make a new choice. Either it changes its leadership
wholesale, or Silicon Valley becomes Public Enemy #1. And, unlike Wall Street,
it doesn't have the collective social skill to still prosper while being
hated.

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namelezz
"arrogant, myopic, sloppy, sexist, and often deeply classist Silicon Valley
assholes", "The truth is that most tech companies are horrible." Wow, I
thought I was the only one feeling that way.

~~~
michaelochurch
No, far from it. My comment is at +7 (6 upvotes, at least).

People, inside and outside of tech, are waking up.

