
Ask HN: A New Decade. Any Predictions? - napsterbr
2020&#x27;s version of <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=1025681" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=1025681</a>
======
air7
Here 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,
with either Instagram or one of it's acquisitions being the current "hip" SN.

4\. Google still dominates search and email but losses value and "glory"
compared to today.

5\. Majority of people still don't care about privacy.

6\. But a small yet growing culture of "offliners" becomes mainstream. Being
offline is the new "Yoga" and allows bragging rights.

7\. Increase in adoption of non-scientific beliefs such as astrology/anti-
vaxx/religion/flat-earth as a counterbalance to the increased complexity of
everyday life.

8\. Web development matures and a "standard" stack is accepted, all in JS.

9\. Global carbon emissions are not reduced, mostly because of lack of
initiative by China and 3rd world countries.

10\. Still no hoverboards.

~~~
safog
I think these predictions are way too safe, to the point that they aren't
predictions at all. These are all very widely accepted views already (in the
tech community / HN atleast) which explains why this comment is top currently.

~~~
QuixoticQuibit
This comment from the recent thread reflecting on HNers’ predictions from 2010
made me realize how little can change in a decade:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21942143](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21942143)

IMO, OP’s predictions may be safe, but that says more about reality than OP’s
lack of imagination.

~~~
xixixao
But note that looking for predictions that worked out leads you to “safe”
predictions. I would like to see a list of things that were big that no one
predicted. (Uber?)

~~~
AznHisoka
You shouldn’t make outrageous predictions if you don’t sincerely believe they
will become true though.

Otherwise you will get what we see in TV everyday. a bunch of people making
outrageous predictions just to sound exciting. Then when the prediction comes
true, they will claim all the credit. when it doesn’t, they will say “haha I
was just kidding of course”

~~~
yellowstuff
People should state predictions where their view of the probabilities differs
from conventional wisdom. EG, if most people think there's a ~20% chance that
level 5 SDCs will be available in 2030 and you think it's a 1% chance then
that's a valid prediction, even though it's not that exciting to predict
something won't happen. If people think there's a 0% chance of hoverboards and
you think it's 10% then that's an interesting prediction, even though you
still expect it not to happen.

Any serious prediction should include a probability estimate that differs from
conventional probability estimates. Almost not one actually does this, because
everyone is doing it wrong.

------
scanr
\- 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 the best and brightest to go, we
accidentally create a eugenics program that results in the inevitable conquest
of earth by the martians.

\- SpaceX is bought by Pornhub as it's discovered that the most effective way
to blanket the world in pornography is to do it from space.

\- Incels are prescribed virtual girlfriend therapy to provide them company
and acclimate them to interactions with the opposite gender. Black market
hacks transform them into anime waifus.

\- AGI happens and is immediately outlawed as its attempts to solve world
peace are inconvenient to the military industrial complex

\- Illegal genetic engineering results in actual furries.

\- Assassination by drone becomes so effective that no world leaders are seen
in the outside from 2025. A vitamin D deficiency kills at least one of them.

\- Potemkin jobs abound in a world that doesn't require humans to work to
produce anything but needs to keep them busy to stop them complaining about
stuff.

\- In a last ditch attempt to save the earth from catastrophic climate change,
the governments of the world finally join forces to build huge geo-engineering
structures to capture carbon from the atmosphere. They're nuked from orbit by
the newly formed Garden Kingdom of Siberia.

~~~
lewiscollard
I know some of these are obviously backed by winks, but I got a smile from
this because they're only a hair away from being rather plausible. You should
be writing sci-fi!

> Potemkin jobs abound in a world that doesn't require humans to work to
> produce anything but needs to keep them busy to stop them complaining about
> stuff.

"There is another theory which states that this has already happened."
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit_Jobs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit_Jobs)

~~~
scanr
> You should be writing sci-fi!

Thanks! A few of these are the premise for sci-fi stories I never got around
to writing. I'll send you a link to Amazon if I ever do put pen to digital
paper.

> "There is another theory which states that this has already happened."
> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit_Jobs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit_Jobs)

Haha, true. Also vaguely like the justification for the Matrix being like it
is i.e. office jobs rather than utopia.

------
CptFribble
\- Ads are no longer presented or indicated as such. All advertisement besides
public space billboards are paid product placements, advertorials, and
sponsored dialogue in TV shows.

\- The trend toward "authenticity" still ramping up in 2020 hits full swing,
and commercial entities follow suit. Any announced commercial speech is viewed
with distrust, while meme tweets are celebrated as "real." Corporate messaging
becomes indistinguishable from random chatter on social networks.

\- Advances in ML/text bots automate this process, and the random chatter on
social sites like Reddit and Tumblr becomes a wasteland of pretty-good bots
trying to steer conversations in a sponsored direction.

\- Platforms are created for managing brand campaigns across even larger
numbers of ever-smaller influencers. Anyone with more than 1k followers on
Insta or Snap can sign up to be micro-compensated for brand mentions both
online and in person at parties and such. Smartphones are used to track who is
where with who and who is saying what, in order to measure these mentions.

\- Influencing becomes an accepted career path, and classes appear in higher
education on managing your personal brand, identifying which major brands fit
with your personal brand, and building a portfolio of commercial brands that
identify you like a unique fingerprint. This is blended with graphic design
study to create your personal visual fingerprint/brand identity including
logo, color scheme, and accessory items like a particular type of flower. It
will be called "Personal Marketing" or something and hundreds of thousands of
students will flock to the courses. Every public space, whether park,
footpath, flower garden, or grocery store, will be filled with hundreds,
possibly thousands of young people simultaneously recording selfie videos for
their followers or class projects.

\- The line between commercially sponsored speech and original speech becomes
almost fully blurred.

\- The line between brand preference and personal identity disappears. By 2030
the average consumer's daily life is centered around brand experience.

~~~
tosser0001
Influencers: I think we'll start to see fully AI-generated "influencer"
profiles start to overtake actual human beings soon - assuming there aren't
some already out there.

It will become increasingly hard for actual people to compete with these
profiles for attention.

~~~
cmehdy
To your point:

[https://www.instagram.com/lilmiquela/](https://www.instagram.com/lilmiquela/)

[https://kotaku.com/the-invasion-of-virtual-anime-girl-
youtub...](https://kotaku.com/the-invasion-of-virtual-anime-girl-
youtubers-1821940758)

------
jb775
1.) As quantum computing advances, there will be at least one successful 51%
attack on a major cryptocurrency.

2.) Tesla/SpaceX StarLink will become a major competitor in the ISP space.
Most transmitted data throughout the world will touch a StarLink satellite.

3.) Financial downturn/semi-recession in mid-late decade primarily caused by
excessive corporate stock buybacks artificially inflating stock prices. (Stock
buybacks will be driven by executive compensation/bonuses continually being
linked to earnings per share)

4.) Drone deliveries will become more common as drone automation tech
improves. Airspace will become more regulated to facilitate this.

5.) It will be considered stylish and/or a power move to not own a cell phone.

6.) Solar/wind/hydro electricity generation will become much more commonplace
on personal properties. As electricity prices turn negative and not enough
cost effective battery capacity to efficiently store it, power plants will be
built/redesigned to turn electricity into hydrogen fuel. This will lead to
auto companies creating electric/hydrogen cell hybrid cars.

7.) In January 2030, people will comment on this post with their predictions
for the following decade, not realizing this post is 10 years old.

~~~
mandelken
I would happily take the other side of the bet on EVERY item here! But I do
appreciate your boldness in predictions.

~~~
jb775
Care to elaborate why?

~~~
0xffff2
Not GP, but...

1) Practical quantum computing seems to have made little practical progress
this decade. This is mostly a gut feeling on my part since I have no
professional experience in the field.

2) Starlink will be a major competitor in the _rural_ ISP space. The extremely
low maximum density of ground stations means that they can't possibly be a
major competitor in a dense urban core or even a dense suburban community.

3) I don't see any particular reason to believe this _will_ happen anymore
than that it won't.

4) In the sense that 1 is "more common" than 0, this one is probably true, but
I have a suspicion that the economics don't work out nearly as well as we
hope. The second half is already true (I work on research that supports making
those new regulations)

5) ~~Not much of a prediction. It's already true in some circles.~~

Edit: I should say that it's already stylish in some circles to not own a
_smartphone_. So far everyone I've met in that category still caries some kind
of cellular device capable of making emergency calls at the very least. With a
near-ubiquitous cellular network available, it's very hard to articulate a
reason why you wouldn't use it in an emergency situation. Furthermore, with
the rise of the cell network, payphones have fallen out of fashion, meaning
that there's even less infrastructure today that there once was for those who
wish to eschew cell phones entirely for whatever reason.

6) Again, not my area of professional expertise, but I don't think solar on
every roof in the US would actually be enough affect this change. Wind is
likely to meet push-back from neighbors, and I don't even know why hydro is
listed. The grid will change radically over the coming _century_ , but the
next decade is going to see continued incremental change to draw down coal
generation and increase storage capacity.

~~~
Dylan16807
7) Posts lock after a couple weeks, so good luck with that one.

------
screye
1\. 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 realistic will
be raised in serious circles.

5\. Intel will continue its downfall, and a new Chinese SOC company will rise
to prominence

6\. Water desalination will become a major industry

7\. Towards the end of the decade, Nuclear power will begin picking up again

8\. Canadian economy will start flourishing with improvement in weather,
massive skilled immigration and the establishment of new Arctic ports. Also,
Toronto/Montreal will become the Silicon valley of Canada, as skilled
immigrants move to the Canada knowing they will never get greencards in the
US.

9\. Messi will move to the MLS at 36, and usher in an era of Soccer to the US,
slowly eating into college football's popularity.

10\. Cargo pants will become popular again.

~~~
sequoia
> Also, Toronto/Montreal will become the Silicon valley of Canada, as skilled
> immigrants move to the Canada knowing they will never get greencards in the
> US.

As a (US citizen) programmer living in Toronto, I have seen this first hand:
people moving from the bay, or moving directly to Canada because of a) the US
having enormous lines for green cards and b) Canada aggressively courting
skilled workers (you can get an invitation to apply for permanent residency
online, before even coming to Canada[0]). In particular, you see many people
coming from places experiencing political unrest (I'm no exception),
especially Brazil in the last couple years.

I would question whether Montreal should be included in this hypothetical
"canadian silicon valley," only because of Quebec's cultural protectionism,
which borders on hostility to outsiders[1]. That said, rent is astronomically
higher in Toronto and Montreal has massive cultural capital as a sort of old-
world city in North America, so I could be wrong!

In any event Canada is definitely coming up (though to see it as "rivaling"
the US would be misguided).

0: [https://movnorth.com/process/](https://movnorth.com/process/)

1: [https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/quebec-begins-
controver...](https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/quebec-begins-
controversial-values-test-for-newcomers-1.5400110) I'm not saying this exact
measure is necessarily "hostile" but stuff like this definitely contributes to
the perception that newcomers may not be as welcome in Quebec.

~~~
anthony_barker
Maybe Montreal for french and spanish speakers

------
termy
1\. Deep learning will enter its next wave with increased biomimicry end
efficiency. Ai will continue to evolve linearly. AGI will still be decades
off.

2\. Psychidelics will again enter the public sphere and we will see
phychidelic therapy in the UK/US. They will also lead the development of a new
theory of the mind and consiousness that enter the mainstream.

3\. Plant/fungus based food will continue to expand while meat consumption
drops. Lab grown meat will prove possible.

4\. Ai in healthcare will allow for decentralised expertise. The role and
power of nurses will expand.

5\. Analog computing with neuromorphic chips along with reinforcement learning
will be used in robotic control.

6\. Drones will be a common site in city airspace.

7\. Apple will enter healthcare in a big way. Medical functionality will enter
consumer electronics and continue to push data driven preventative heathcare
foreward.

8\. Antibiotic resistance will be a huge problem. We will continue to see the
return of illnesses we thought we would never see again.

9\. Robots will allow smaller plots of land to be productive and agriculture
will move away from mega farms. Local farmers markets will become more popular
and accessable.

10\. Ai agents will continue to compete against and dominate humans but will
inhabit a physical shell to even the input playing ground.

11\. Cannabis will be legalised federally in the US and UK. Most medical
benefits will prove to be hype.

12\. Joe Rogan will host a presidential debate.

~~~
dynamite-ready
"12\. Joe Rogan will host a presidential debate."

Won't be surprised if he ends up securing an official interview with Trump.

~~~
choiway
This could happen in the next year.

------
Animats
1\. At least one major US city will be substantially destroyed due to climate
change. Probably Miami, Galveston, or New Orleans. It will not be fully
rebuilt. (Much like Puerto Rico and Key West).

2\. Self-driving cars will arrive, but as a niche product for senior
communities. (Like Google's slow bubble car.)

3\. Amazon will finally get robotic picking working, and their warehouse
employment will start to drop.

4\. Somebody will build a 3nm fab, but it won't be a mainstream technology due
to cost.

5\. Big recession in US. House prices drop. San Francisco empties out again,
like 2001 and 2008.

6\. No major breakthrough in battery technology, but battery cost drops at
least 50% due to volume increases.

7\. New space probes to Luna and Mars, maybe Venus and Europa, but no manned
activity beyond low earth orbit.

8\. Artificial meat takes off in a big way, especially in China.

9\. Parts of India become too hot to be inhabitable. Deaths in the hundreds of
thousands. Fires in Australasia become a huge problem. California spends
enough money to deal with its fires.

10\. VC funds as a class lose money over the decade.

~~~
aviraldg
> 3\. Amazon will finally get robotic picking working, and their warehouse
> employment will start to drop.

And we will see articles from the same tech journalists currently complaining
about terrible working conditions in Amazon warehouses, complaining about
Amazon firing warehouse staff.

~~~
ShamelessC
Do you mean to imply that would be hypocrisy in some sense?

------
im3w1l
In the spirit of the future is here just not evenly distributed:

1\. Electric cars will go from niche for the rich to something for everyone.

2\. Genetic testing will become even more commonplace and even more useful.

3\. ipv6 will become dominant, but there may be holdouts.

4\. Freezing your sperm / eggs / stem cells will become something everyone
does.

5\. Using a non-memory-safe language for servers will be seen as building SQL
queries with string concatenation.

6\. Self driving cars are currently only very narrowly available: I think it's
like 1-3 cities with good climate
([https://www.theverge.com/2019/12/9/21000085/waymo-fully-
driv...](https://www.theverge.com/2019/12/9/21000085/waymo-fully-driverless-
car-self-driving-ride-hail-service-phoenix-arizona)) They will be more
available than they are now, and it will have effects on the economy.

7\. Containerization is adopted by companies that are a bit behind the curve.

8\. Parallelism will keep becoming more important.

Other predictions, less certain:

1\. Political polarization increases in the west.

2\. There will be startups taking a crack at the real estate market. They will
attack cost of construction by using robots and standardized components. They
will attack land cost by artificially engineering the network effects that
gives land value.

3\. Use of force in the form of sanctions against countries that release too
much CO2

4\. A significant minority skewing intelligent leave facestagram and twitter
for decentralized platforms, but the majority of users stay on centralized
platforms.

~~~
imtringued
5\. This is already true and was one of the motivations behind languages like
Go and Rust.

~~~
im3w1l
It's really not. Just to give a simple example, nginx is written in C.

------
rraghur
1\. Renewables are dominant source of energy. Every new house is energy
positive. Wind and solar are primary for industrial sources.

2\. ICE vehicles are quaint. New electric vehicles sold overtakes ICE vehicles
sometime around 2027 - 2029.

3\. Autonomous vehicles L4/L5 are still 'just around the corner'

4\. Ubiquitous Gigabit wifi/cellular/sat data across most of the world.

5\. Masses still don't care about privacy.

6\. Not much change in top tech companies - FAANG still around and maintain
their leadership in tech domains as of now for the most part.

7\. Android has been replaced with Fuchsia with Fuchsia being able to run APKs
built for android. Phone apps are mostly a combination of WASM apps with
native UI. Most non-tech people are unaware as usual.

8\. Atleast a couple of cities in the world come to the brink of disaster/or
become unlivable due to climate change (most likely in India/China). At least
one major war due to climate change.

9\. Workloads are all massively parallelized; low end desktop cpu parts start
with 32 cores.

10\. WASM adoption skyrockets. In 2030, OS is almost immaterial since most of
the core functionality is provided by WASM payloads; OS is only used to paint
native UIs (for which there still isn't a good cross platform solution)

11\. Deepfakes are ubiquitous; Audio/Video evidence is no longer accepted; A
lot of companies pour money into creating verfiably unmodified video/audio -
but it isn't solved yet.

~~~
im3w1l
> 2\. ICE vehicles are quaint. New electric vehicles sold overtakes ICE
> vehicles sometime around 2027 - 2029.

There will be a long lag between _majority of sales are electric_ and
_majority of cars on the road are electric_. ICE will still be majority on the
road by the end of 2029. For this reason, ICE will not be quaint.

------
ivan_gammel
Politically:

* Rise of the EU as global superpower with European army taking over all functions of NATO except strategic defense (nuclear/space). All European countries except ex-USSR and England but including Scotland are members of EU.

* Rise of Africa as a big consumer market. Green belt finished, major improvements in agriculture and infrastructure help to combat famine. Ethiopia replaces South Africa as economic leader on the continent.

* Green wave in India: environmental topics in the spotlight of political life, but no significant change yet. Pollution will continue killing millions every year.

* Political stagnation in USA, green new deal won’t happen, but coastal states will drive the progress.

* Environmental standards are mentioned in all trade deals, but not yet enforced with sanctions.

Technology:

* Digital is no longer the field where most of the interesting things will happen. No quantum computing on mass-market, heavy regulation of the Internet everywhere with prohibitive costs for new startups.

* Proteins from plants, bacteria and insects will see same growth as solar and wind in 2010s. Agriculture and diets is the new IT.

* Solar and wind are big but not dominant, hidden costs become visible. There will be no nuclear renaissance. No breakthrough in fusion. Energy becomes hard again, focus shifts from generation and storage to transmission.

* Self-driving cars won’t be on the roads yet, but there will be almost no cars in European and Chinese cities. AI will run public transportation grid.

* Significant progress in recycling and cleaning the oceans from plastic. Europe, USA and China will remove more plastic from water than put there.

* Steady progress in space technology but no sci-fi level achievements. SpaceX will see some competition in reusable rockets. People will return to the Moon.

~~~
lanstin
Nigeria perhaps rather than Ethiopia? And I hope someone makes it to Mars.

~~~
ivan_gammel
Nigeria is Africa’s India, the land of unfulfilled hopes. There’s no enough
political momentum to boost the economy.

------
AlexMuir
I wish I could put my finger on it, but there is a huge disconnect between
economic reality and the current financial situation across most of the world.
It seems to me, perhaps simplistically, that every central bank is simply
issuing money to generate growth and this can't be sustainable. Our biggest
industry would appear to be buying, renting and selling assets to each other.

My apartment overlooks a city of 1 million people in the UK - I estimate
generously that 50,000 of them are economically productive in the sense of
producing something of value that can be 'exported' from this city. The other
950,000 must live off that value - it doesn't make sense. All factories are
flattened to make way for apartments. Any industrial development is of
distribution centres for breaking down pallets of imported tat.

I don't know what this will lead to - perhaps it's the collapse of the Euro,
the rise of some stable currency that isn't playing this game, or an
opportunity for a new currency (crypto or something that we don't have yet).

Just as the LIBOR scandal revealed that commercial banks were just making up
numbers, so I believe that central banks are doing the same with each other
and trust will need to be removed from the system.

~~~
scottishfiction
I’d be interested to know what city you’re talking about. Are you limiting
‘something of value’ to manufacturing? A great deal of the UK economy is
service based. I’d be amazed if only 5% of the city’s population were
producing goods or services used by those outside the city.

~~~
Apfel
I think the only city around that population in the UK is Birmingham. It is
notoriously a pretty rubbish place.

~~~
scottishfiction
Ha! I’m sure many a proud Brummie would disagree. Glasgow also has roughly 1m.

~~~
Apfel
I live in Glasgow - isn't it closer to 600k?

~~~
scottishfiction
The area belonging to Glasgow city council is 600k, the Glasgow urban area,
also known as Greater Glasgow[0], which I live in, is 1.2m.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_Glasgow](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_Glasgow)

------
doitLP
\- Wave of antitrust legislation takes hold and some large tech companies are
broken up or forced to sell, making their owners even richer.

\- traditional higher ed becomes increasingly irrelevant. A degree is still
prized, especially as a way out of blue collar work, but it will be even more
disconnected from one’s actual job.

\- The higher ed space sees interesting new experiments with new models of
tenure, teaching and delivery.

\- Amazon figures out how to make online shopping suck significantly less

\- samples collected from the mars 2020 mission will be definitively negative
for ancient life forms

\- whole brain emulation is achieved with an insect brain

\- politicians on both sides use disruptions from tech and climate change to
push ever more extreme positions, and run on platforms that promise easy
solutions. Whether or not such disruptions are actually disruptive, the
increasingly hyperbolic media will help make it sound that way as it scrambles
for relevance in a hyper competitive space.

\- China starts a eugenics breeding program with modified germ lines to create
smarter citizens.

\- GI problems continue to plague developed nations

\- daily life will seem to be more complicated than ever

\- the long peace continues for another decade

\- we look back fondly on this post in 10 years and at what a simpler time
2020 was

~~~
bhouston
I think the China eugenics prediction is possible. If one major country does
it others will follow, and of course the rich will want this to no matter
where they are.

------
jrumbut
1\. I believe people will get tired of the daily Twitter war over politics and
social issues. I don't think we will solve many or any of these issues, but
just the temperature will lower a little bit. Can't wait to laugh ruefully at
this one in 10 years.

2\. Displaced people, possibly due to climate, will be a major problem and we
will be judged by future generations on our response.

3\. We are approaching a period where we will start creating new institutions
rather than reforming old ones, similar to the wave of land grant colleges or
the "alphabet soup" of the Great Depression in the US.

4\. I think self-driving cars will be dependent on new infrastructure, and
primarily used for freight/mass transportation if they become widely adopted.
China, Japan, Korea, and the EU will be leaders on this. I don't believe my
car will drive itself down the dirt road to the cabin I visited last summer.

5\. I am not convinced the software development profession will go away or
fundamentally change (though surface level changes will be endless). Problem
solving with code is still going to be a path to a middle class lifestyle.

6\. Blockchain/crypto will be a niche thing, but will be interesting in that
niche.

I wish all of you good health and happiness over the coming decade! There
really is a chance to make it a good one.

~~~
EamonnMR
> Displaced people, [...] will be a major problem and we will be judged by
> future generations on our response.

Same could be said of the 10s.

~~~
jrumbut
Very true.

------
salt-licker
1\. LEO satellites will provide Internet access worldwide. About 90% of the
world's population will be online by 2030.

2\. Drastic climate engineering will become a mainstream research area and
popular controversial talking point.

3\. Many more people will get blood tests regularly, for early disease
detection and fitness monitoring. Both a Theranos-like fingerprick device and
a tampon-based screening company will IPO.

4\. AI will be a crucial component in discovering multiple clinical trial-
stage drugs.

5\. A fully AI musician will go on tour, perhaps with its own lyrics and
deepfaked vocals. It will be particularly good at improvisation.

6\. To combat deepfakes, public ledger-based verification of photos and videos
will become common but not ubiquitous. May or may not be on blockchain.

7\. Cryptocurrency-based financial instruments will become a minor part of the
global financial system, widely accepted and taken seriously by traditional
investors.

8\. Metal 3D-printers will start to seriously compete with CNC machining and
expendable casting, they will be relatively common in machine shops and
factories. Consumer 3D-printing will remain a niche hobby.

9\. Flying cars won't really take off.

~~~
prox
If the fully AI musician is actually originally programmed as an Emergency
Medical Hologram I agree.

~~~
buboard
thats a good band name

------
pubby
AI languishes and self-driving cars remain highway-only, but self-checkout
stations and simple cleaning/stocking bots become more common.

Oil companies begin rebranding as energy companies and pour assets into solar
and wind. Climate change continues to worsen, with deniers still prevalent.

Craigslist gets bought by Facebook. Google tries to get into online shopping,
fails.

Desktops still on x64. Phones still on ARM, with a few alternatives here and
there.

Programming language design is stagnant with type theory dead-ending with too
much complexity. Most new languages/features designed around convenience.
Someone reinvents Make. Someone reinvents C++. A new VM becomes popular,
potentially backed by LLVM project. Software continues to get slower, but
"high performance computing" takes off as a hiring fad.

Marriage rates drop and people realize the damage Tindr is causing. Popular
new sites are created with the intent to "fix" dating.

Environmental factor of IBS discovered.

A professional athlete will die while playing, leading to news about how
sports need to be safer.

China has money troubles but powers through a long recession. China attempts
to "fix" taiwan. Chinese people become even more nationalistic.

~~~
klntsky
> Programming language design is stagnant with type theory dead-ending with
> too much complexity

Interesting. Maybe this will be the case for languages with bad legacy like
C++, but the whole design of new type systems? What sources this prediction is
based on?

~~~
thu2111
_What sources this prediction is based on?_

Arguably the present. There are hardly any innovations in mainstream PL
design, the last one was probably linear typing in Rust. The most successful
recent languages are all pretty conservative, in the case of Go extremely so.

------
hendzen
\- AI based systems will start to replace humans in the more mechanical parts
of the legal system. Judging traffic court cases could be one example.

\- One country will invade another country using computer/information attacks
as the deciding strike, perhaps Russia invading one of the Eastern Bloc
countries. People's mobile phones will simply tell them that there is some
kind of natural disaster happening and that they should go home and seek
shelter, while the invading country's forces quickly seize all key
infrastructure. This will be a wakeup call to the world that if you can
control the screens, you can control society.

\- No real political progress will be made on solving/mitigating climate
change. The worlds political systems will simply not be equipped to make the
necessary decisions to reduce carbon emissions by enough to matter. People
will become numb to the unfolding disaster and as such it won't lead to
clicks/pageviews, so the media will stop covering it. The major disasters
(large fires, storms, etc) that happen will receive coverage but be quickly
forgotten, much like mass shootings today.

\- New York and California will diminish in influence & power in the US.
Wealthy people moving to other states will cause a fiscal death spiral as the
state governments have to raise taxes to fund widening deficits. Austin will
be regarded as a tier 1 city. Other inland states like Colorado & Arizona will
also gain population and power.

\- Another major hurricane will hit the northeastern US, it will be far worse
than Hurricane Sandy.

\- Steady improvements will be made in technological mitigations to climate
change like carbon capture, and more efficient manufacturing and farming
processes. It won't be enough to solve the problem but will provide some hope
to eventually stop making the problem worse in the 2030s.

\- Extremist political factions on the left and right in the US will continue
to gain influence and power.

\- Either SpaceX or Blue Origin will conduct a private, manned mission to the
moon.

~~~
crimsonalucard
>\- AI based systems will start to replace humans in the more mechanical parts
of the legal system. Judging traffic court cases could be one example.

This won't happen not because it can't be done. But it won't happen because
someone wants to keep his job. Sort of like how the F-35 was created just to
keep some jobs.

~~~
ShamelessC
Yeah. AI will continue to develop at a predictable pace, but hysteria
surrounding AI will increase to hinder it. Emotional arguments like "the
founding fathers would never approve of non-human judges" will be co-opted by
politicians who need those votes. I can see anti-AI movements becoming very
large by 2029.

Maybe in the 30's automation becomes disruptive enough to the existing system
that something akin to a revolution occurs on a global scale by the 40's.

------
flaque
Here's to looking silly in 2030:

\- very few desktop applications will exist, they will have moved to web
assembly powered browser applications

\- way more people will work from home and most "work" software will attempt
to support this through real-time collaboration powered by CRDT/MRDTs.

\- the dat:// protocol, ipfs, and other attempts at creating a decentralized
internet will not take off, but the concepts will have a resurgence in the
later decade (or possibly in the 2040s) due to interplanetary or otherwise
far-distance space internet.

\- way more folks will support nuclear as climate change forces the issue

\- quantum computers won't fundamentally change the way normal people think
about encryption, but instead some sites/apps will be considered "insecure" in
the same way not using https is today.

\- private car ownership will be on it's last legs, ride shares via self-
driving cars plus revamped public transit will be the way the majority of
folks get around. New developments will be built as "car free" without garages
and with restricted car usage like many city centers.

\- people will eat significantly less meat

\- deno + Typescript wins

\- Typescript (or a TS variant) will be compiled directly to WASM on the
browser

\- way more people order food rather than cook for themselves

\- Many subscription consumer apps will die as many more folks enter into the
field, driving up cost-of-acquisition

\- Stripe becomes one of the most valuable companies in the world

~~~
JohnFen
> very few desktop applications will exist, they will have moved to web
> assembly powered browser applications

Oh, I hope you're wrong about this one. That would render computers largely
worthless to me due to a lack of software.

~~~
flaque
> That would render computers largely worthless to me due to a lack of
> software.

Curious, why?

~~~
JohnFen
Because PWAs are not acceptable for my use. They involve far too much risk and
exposure, and they almost always provide an inferior experience.

------
the_jeremy
* Moore's law stays dead. Having a lightweight laptop that does nothing more than provide a portal to more powerful machines enters the consumer field (Stadia already exists, but other uses will appear). Probably offered by an existing cloud provider first.

* Recession happens this decade.

* Someone becomes the US democratic nominee with a UBI platform.

* The US gets single payer healthcare.

* Zoning laws become an even hotter political issue. We don't solve them.

* Netflix produces VR content.

* Humans will not land on Mars.

* Disney joins FAANG.

* We don't fix copyright and we don't have any exciting antitrust wins.

* Mesh networks become more popular.

* The internet becomes less open source.

* The US becomes more politically polarized. There will be hate crimes against democrats / republicans just for their political affiliation.

~~~
AnimalMuppet
> Recession happens this decade.

After any other decade, nobody would bother to say that, because _of course_
there would be a recession (if not more) in the next decade. It is _amazing_
that the 2010s didn't have one. But, as you say, amazing usually doesn't
continue forever...

~~~
imtringued
I think that this type of behavior is actually delaying the next recession.
When you are aware that something bad will happen in the future you will be
more careful and try your best to avoid it.

~~~
tonyedgecombe
I do wonder if the more we try and delay it the worse it will be when it does
inevitably arrive. We might be in for a big one.

------
hos234
World War 3 starts.

Personal data stored in banks/ISPs/FB/Google etc are taken at gun point and
used for population scale psychological warfare.

Kissinger(World Order)/Niall Ferguson(Square and the Tower)/Graham
Allison(Thucydides Trap)/Moises Naim(End of Power) say networks of power are
more and more unstable similar to 1914.

To maintain stability they(irrespective of ideology) keep pandering to their
fan clubs and therefore get more and more inflexible.

Small triggers turn into national and then international conflict between
major powers.

Kissenger's reasons - 1 The international economic system has become global
the political structure of the world has remained based on the nation-state.
2\. Acquiescing in the proliferation of nuclear weapons far beyond the Cold
War club, so multiplying the possibilities of nuclear confrontation. 3\. The
new realm of cyberspace, in which asymmetry and a kind of congenital world
disorder are built into relations between powers

The last time it took 30 years 1914-1945, after about 100 years of peace
between the world powers, for everyone to take a breath and reboot to happen.

This time around the reboot should be much quicker. The nukes will get dropped
faster, because thanks to tech all the major powers can do serious damage to
each other very fast as soon as things escalate beyond control.

~~~
war1025
WWII gets all the press, but a WWI scenario seems much more likely and tragic.

WWII had an active aggressor.

WWI was just a chain reaction of alliances acting out their obligations. I had
a nightmare about trench warfare and the futility of it all just the other
day.

~~~
K0SM0S
This, totally this.

A weird situation though is that socially we're closer to the 1920's-30's,
whereas geopolitically it's much more like the 1900's-10's. Weird how history
repeats itself, never quite the same, and I won't fall for numerology, and
yet. Here we are.

------
cdoxsey
Here's some

1\. Civil war in China

2\. A new, significant non iOS/Android OS in mobile

3\. Uber/Lyft will gradually shift to a unionized, national taxi company

4\. Nothing significant will be done about Climate Change, and it won't
matter. Some new environmental issue will be talked about instead.

5\. A third political party will become significant in the US

6\. There will be a major Christian missionary movement from the global south
to Europe

7\. VR gaming won't be much of a thing (ie like 3d movies)

8\. Tesla will go out of business

9\. Commonplace purchases will increasingly be made with point-of-sale loans
and/or monthly leases. This will increase economic disparity (rich people will
buy stuff / get better rates, poor people will rent things / can never get
ahead)

10\. Software development will still be a relatively specialized, niche field,
with most people not knowing much about it. It won't be more "diverse"

11\. Health insurance, higher education, housing and tax preparation will all
still be crazy complex and expensive in the US

12\. You'll finally be able to pump your own gas in New Jersey

13\. Most churches will lose their tax exempt status

14\. Texas will have more people than California

~~~
newyankee
Any rationale for 8 ?

~~~
blackoil
Plausible scenario, with VW, Toyota and Honda taking their head out of ass and
go full hog on Electric.

~~~
tonyedgecombe
VW already seem to be betting the company on electric, they have been
investing vast amounts of money in it.

------
mgraczyk
Things I believe will stay the same:

* Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple will have roughly the same dominant positions.

* Bitcoin will play roughly the same role it plays today (store of value, more like gold than money, similar mkt cap) * Machine learning continues to grow in usage and capability, but there will be no "revolution" in AI.

* Nobody on Mars

* No serious alternatives to advertisements will emerge for industries where ads have traditionally driven profits.

* Climate change is not adequately addressed, but by the end of the decade it is widely recognized as an existential threat (not just amongst wealthy people as is the case today).

* Vim + tmux + make is still the best "IDE" ;)

Things I believe will change:

* There will a tech company worth >$100B delivering new, completely bogus healthcare through a smartphone.

* Huge advances in astronomy, physical chemistry, biotech, and computational physics driven by better data processing software. No big advances in any theoretical field.

* Tech illiteracy of young people becomes an economic problem, with political debates and movements centered around fixing the "tech education gap" between people born after 2000 and everyone else.

* Cryptocurrency goes mainstream in super boring ways. Banks probably use it for transfers and various apps use it for payments, especially in China.

~~~
taurath
> Tech illiteracy of young people

How do you mean? Do you mean as in they're all end-users rather than able to
create things?

~~~
megous
People not able to type on a regular keyboard, because all they know is
swiping.

~~~
taurath
Everyone types in school though.. and takes notes on laptops.. no?

~~~
megous
I'm just relaying what my gf that teaches young people told me.

Some even told her that they'd prefer "typing" essays on a mobile phone,
because their ability to use real keyboard is low. To me it's baffling, but I
didn't grow up with a smartphone.

------
kibwen
1\. As a result of worsening urban/rural political divide, the inhabitants of
cities will start to believe they have more in common with fellow urbanites
from different nations than with ruralites from their own nation. Major cities
will begin to engage in diplomacy with each other directly and, probing the
limits of their sovereignty, engage in informal treaties and lightweight
alliances (of an economic and social sort, rather than militarily). A small
number of vocal denizens will begin to associate with an emergent trans-
national urban cultural identity and distance themselves from the traditional
cultural identity of their broader country.

2\. The career of software development/programming will be soundly
commoditized. In 2020 dollars, expected salaries across the industry in 2030
will be $40k for entry-level, $65k for mid-level, $90k for senior; pure tech
companies will offer slightly more, say 30%. Programmers making $150k+, though
far from unheard of, will be rare and have extremely specialized skillsets. No
new career will have emerged as "the next software development" in the sense
of providing the same kind of wide-ranging economic opportunity.

3\. Partly as a result of #2, class mobility in the United States will
stagnate, leading to increasing political unrest over wealth inequality.
Absolute levels of wealth inequality will have worsened relative to 2020, with
an even smaller percentage of the population controlling even more of the
total wealth.

4\. By 2030, no major government will have yet implemented anything other than
token attempts at curbing greenhouse emissions. Civil unrest will begin to
take on an ecological bent, both peaceful and violent, and by 2030 we will not
be strangers to the phrase "domestic eco-terrorism".

Dear me from ten years from now: here's to hoping that some of this pessimism
was unwarranted...

EDIT: Before my edit window closes for the decade, I'd like to think of at
least _something_ positive to predict... how about this: open source computing
hardware will exist and be publicly available, although by no means ubiquitous
or even common outside of techie circles. It will be relatively expensive and
much lower in performance than even the commodity hardware of 2020, but its
deliberately simpler design will make it easier to verify for correctness (in
the has-the-NSA-compromised-this sense) and possible for small scale fabs to
reasonably produce. Oh, one more thing: satellite internet will be readily
available, and have horrible latency, but will otherwise be really cool.

~~~
thundergolfer
Number 1 is a pretty interesting prediction. The indicator are definitely
there, but it would be a huge change to global culture and doesn't seem doable
in 10 years.

Regarding 2, I have a couple of questions. First, what would cause the strong
positive trend in Software salaries to _sharply reverse_ in a period of a
decade? That would be a dramatic collapse, I suspect unlike anything seen in
an industry previous. Secondly, what happens in a companies like Google, FB,
Netflix, and Hot Unicorns, where senior engineers are making in the region of
$300-600K USD? Will Google grads all of a sudden be getting `($40k * 1.30)`?

Regarding 3, GINI Co-efficient is a pretty standard measure of inequality and
it has been getting worse for decades in the USA. A number of other studies
show Economic/Class mobility has also been getting worse for decades in the
USA[1, 2, 3, 4]. So 3 is confused because it seems you think mobility has
generally increase in recent decades.

On 4 I basically agree. By eco-terrorism do you mean sabotage of fossil-fuel
infra? If so, I'd say Eco-Fascism and military protection of corporate fossil-
fuel infra is more likely.

1\. [https://www.minneapolisfed.org/institute/working-
papers/17-2...](https://www.minneapolisfed.org/institute/working-
papers/17-21.pdf) 2\.
[http://jhr.uwpress.org/content/43/1/139.refs](http://jhr.uwpress.org/content/43/1/139.refs)
3\.
[https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2019/11/21/1905094116](https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2019/11/21/1905094116)
4\. [https://www.nber.org/papers/w23733](https://www.nber.org/papers/w23733)

~~~
twic
> Number 1 is a pretty interesting prediction. The indicator are definitely
> there, but it would be a huge change to global culture and doesn't seem
> doable in 10 years.

When Ken Livingstone was mayor of London, he did a deal with Venezuela to get
cheap fuel for buses in return for consulting:

[https://www.standard.co.uk/news/oil-deal-means-half-price-
bu...](https://www.standard.co.uk/news/oil-deal-means-half-price-bus-travel-
for-250000-6607200.html)

~~~
thundergolfer
Thanks for the example. That's interesting.

------
BinaryIdiot
This should be fun!

1\. Gaming consoles are essentially coming to an end. Die-hard gamers still
buy dedicated systems but for the most part everything is available to stream.

2\. 5G turned out to be a bust. The low latency, fastest version will still
have a relatively small amount of coverage compared to the size of the United
States

3\. Multiple companies will provide internet via low orbit satellites, some of
which will have a low enough latency that some phones will use them as a sort
of "global phone" or will be their dedicated ISP.

4\. Disney buys PlayStation, EA and at least one more, large studio.

5\. Microsoft buys Activision

6\. A lot of hype around general AIs but most experts still think they're
truly far away. Several will exist by 2030 but they won't be true general AI
but will be good enough that companies will get away with calling them that.

7\. C++ has a working package dependency system that works as well as npm does
for JavaScript. Almost every library is available this way. C++ starts to gain
market share due to this and further improvements to standard libraries.

8\. Native UI solutions that work kinda like React are more widely available.
Think C++, Rust and GO with UIs that are as easy to build as they were in
JavaScript.

9\. Domain names are starting to go away in favor of a sort of distributed
search that works well like Google search but isn't under any single company's
direct control.

10\. Apple will build more macOS like features into iPad so you can do more
with it (such as develop software directly on it). They will also, finally,
add touch to their Laptop screens.

~~~
imtringued
1\. Google Stadia was as disappointing as OnLive. Nothing has changed in the
last 10 years in that regard.

7\. C++ has multiple of those but expecting standardization is a pipe dream.

8\. I personally am tired of "cross platform" apps that are based on electron
but don't support Linux. To add insult to injury: running them with wine
doesn't work 99% of the time.

9\. Most FQDNs are not user facing.

~~~
BinaryIdiot
1\. I gotta say I couldn't disagree more. Sure, there might be some bias in my
opinion but the landscape, the technology and the direction the industry is
going has changed so much over the past decade I'm not really sure where to
start.

Also, have you tried Stadia? If you have a good enough connection it's quite
incredible.

7\. Not expecting standardization but I'd argue C++ has zero of those. Vcpkg
is _not bad_ but _no where near as easy_ as npm. Conan is better, IMO, but
again it's so far off from being as simple as npm is for JavaScript.

Modules were approved. I'm convinced someone will be able to take modules,
once they're implemented in a consistent manner across compilers, and
implement an npm like service. Until then I think a general solution is just
not practical.

------
niyazpk
This is fun. Here are some of my predictions:

By 2030:

1\. Google shuts down at least one of Pixel Phones, Gmail, Google Cloud. Even
after a decade, Google is not able to make a successful social-network or
messaging application.

2\. Stock market: Microsoft and Amazon at-least doubles in MarketCap. AMD will
be at-least 4 times what it is now. Tesla will be 5 times by the end of the
decade. FB stays about the same!

3\. Facebook.com usage goes down considerably (at least by half)

4\. Climate change causes mass migrations and wars. Corporations start
buying/acquiring massive amounts of land. At least one private company tries
to "buy a country". Major wars will be fought over immigration.

5\. Bitcoin adoption increases due improvements in usability. Still used only
for niche use-cases though.

6\. Electric cars will go above 50% share of new car sales. Tesla will be the
leader. Self driving cars will be common. Car ownership in general will
reduce.

~~~
tonyedgecombe
I'd put money on Tesla being bought by another manufacturer, possibly Ford or
FIAT.

~~~
warrenm
That'd be one HELUVA leveraged buy-out ... especially because Tesla owns (or
partially owns) SolarCity and other aspects of Musk's empire

------
Horba
There will be _the_ data leak.

It's impossible to remotely validate who anyone is regardless of provided
name, age, birth location, mothers maiden name, social security, previous
address, contacts, fingerprints, retina scan, DNA profile ...

This will end the privacy debate because all personally identifiable data will
be public knowledge. All private information (stored in the cloud) will be
easily leaked due to _the_ data leak. Blackmail will be rampant.

It'll be common to have credit cards and loans taken out in your name.
Companies will be inundated with bots and trolls creating accounts. Fintech
and government will scramble to prop up the system of trust with government
issued ID, which will then be leaked, collapsing the system completely.

The sheer amount of fraud causes a contraction in the availability of credit
with impact on the scale of the credit crunch of 08.

~~~
iamatworknow
>The sheer amount of fraud causes a contraction in the availability of credit
with impact on the scale of the credit crunch of 08

You had me until this. You're basically describing a world where anyone can
impersonate anyone else, and you think this would only cause a financial
impact "on the scale of 08"?

~~~
Horba
It'll be shy of apocalyptic. There'll be 3-5 years of chaos in loans, credit
cards, insurance etc.

Mortgages and business loans will be less affected because real people
actually go out and inspect those things. I think we'll have to get used to
speaking face to face with real people again when we want any kind of long
term financial product.

------
Geee
\- Nuclear power is more popular, especially small-scale, and climate change
isn't really talked about any more in 2030

\- Human genetic editing becomes mainstream; treating genetic diseases will
become a cheap standard procedure; genetic enhancement is also becoming
popular in China and South Korea and will be a hot political topic

\- Human lifespan can be increased by at least 20% with treatment

\- Most traditional car manufacturers go bust or lose business significantly;
taken by Tesla and Chinese start-ups

\- Permanent bases on the moon and Mars; first asteroid mining companies start
operating

\- Apple's VR glasses will change how we use computers; large desktop displays
will start to disappear; remote meetings and working with teams in VR will be
common; as a result more people will not live close to a city and won't own a
car

\- Bitcoin's value will hit $1M; paying with cryptocurrency becomes common

\- No flying cars (on Earth, maybe on the moon and Mars)

\- Something will come that replaces traditional banks entirely; either
banking will be centralized in the hands of large tech companies or there'll
be a new global banking startup; bank will be just an app; cryptocurrencies
may play a role here

\- Starlink provides uncensored Internet globally; remote regions will gain
economic boost; terrorism starts to subsidy

\- AI assistants become mainstream in the workplace; there'll be assistant for
almost any expert job which drives down required skills and cost of
employment; education will lose value

~~~
reubens
I'm interested to know why you think climate change won't really be talked
about in 2030. I take it you're optimistic the problem will be solved?

~~~
Geee
It will still be an issue, but it's solved to an extent that it isn't
discussed. The solution is pretty much in the economics of nuclear and solar
power which become much cheaper than burning coal or oil.

~~~
zamadatix
[https://en-roads.climateinteractive.org/scenario.html?p210=1...](https://en-
roads.climateinteractive.org/scenario.html?p210=1&p212=1&p213=1&p1=120&p196=100&p4=10&p5=0.03&p7=100&p198=100&p199=2020&p10=6&p200=100&p201=2020&p13=1&p14=0.03&p16=-0.07&p19=50&p20=2020&p21=100&p22=2020&p23=30&p30=-0.07&p33=50&p34=2020&p35=2&p36=2020&p37=1&p38=0.5&p39=250&p50=5&p53=5&p55=5&v=2.7.6)

Even if you shut down all coal/oil/gas/biofuel powerplants by the end of the
decade, add in a 3rd "new technology" (e.g. fusion) ready in 1 year, find and
deploy perfectly efficient battery technologies for rewables, decrease the
cost of renewables by 50%, electrify cars and buildings (i.e. move off gas) at
the maximum rate while finding huge increases in their efficiences as well all
while taxing carbon emissions like crazy...

Global warming still ends up being a problem and the temperature continues to
rise. Please don't think "we just need to wait for <x> to be solved in the
next 10 years and the problem will go away!", we need <a> through <z> to
happen not have enormous climate change impact by 2100.

------
mcqueenjordan
1\. Rust will hit the top 5 languages and become a mainstay of robust
computing.

2\. Blockchain won't replace anything. CryptoCurrency won't appreciably become
more significant.

3\. AI will get linearly better, but nothing paradigm-shifting. Its hype will
begin to fade.

4\. There will be a massive privacy leak/security event that will cause us, as
a society, to re-evaluate the legal landscape of data collection and
monitoring.

5\. Google will lose significant market share.

6\. Petrol cars will decline in manufacturing rates 1 if not 2 orders of
magnitude.

7\. A human-trip to Mars will be scheduled, if not completed.

8\. The mobile market will be significantly disrupted by some new product, but
I have no idea what it will be.

~~~
syshum
the only way for 4 to happen would be if it is cause of #5, i.e Gmail itself
is hacked and millions of peoples raw unencrypted emails are leaked in a
massive breach...

We have already had tons of massive PII breaches and no one cares.... So it
would not be another SSN, Credit Card, etc breach. If the breach of a Credit
Reporting service that leaked nearly every American's financial data did not
cause society to re-evaluate things I am not really sure what will

------
Infinitesimus
* Facebook, Amazon, MS will still be around and be bigger than now.

* There will be a recession that will ripple for longer than the last one

* Waymo will finally launch but have minimal impact in the US and will end up licensing the tech/partnering with car manufacturers to stay relevant.

* Apple will enter a tangential but highly profitable market most people won't see coming (think general mobility or communication device)

* Google will see a drop in Ad revenue and have a do-or-die moment about their longterm existence (they'll still be healthy tho)

* AI won't displace many jobs and we'll come up with another new term for fancy data science

* "AI" will be massively rolled out with poor oversight and lead to very bad outcomes on a large scale. People will revolt but not much will change.

* Global warming will be alive and well and people will still bicker about whether it is real.

* Africa will begin to make huge economic waves in partnership with China and the western world will panic/intervene

* We will still trade privacy for convenience amd FB will buy/launch a new product that crosses 1 billion users again

* We'll lose 1 of the GAFAM leaders to health/tragic occurence

* We won't be on Mars, but Elon Musk will pull of 2 new industry-moving changes

* China/Russia some other non-western superpower will undergo a significant political change. Won't quite be democracy but it will be different and effective

* Cars and many appliances will now be sold always connected ( 5G?) and there will be several privacy and security issues with no meaningful change.

* Snap will get bought

~~~
senordevnyc
I agree with most of this. I think we could make it to mars by then but no
permanent presence.

Really hope China undergoes a change towards democracy. A little skeptical in
ten years though.

------
kyleomalley
1\. This will be the decade of compact hospital-grade health and bio-
Informatics devices being brought into the home and personal life. Think
Startrek tricorder capability but in a (likely) larger package.

2\. Deep fakes will precipitate the need for digitally signed media. This
likely means further reliance on root-of-trust systems like x509 certificates
or some new international body designed to issue a new form of lightweight
signing mechanism that works at low resolutions/low bandwidth.

3\. Continued climate change will result in at-least one major U.S. city
losing population due to feasibility/costs of providing either clean water or
breathable air.<br><br> 4\. China and Russia will split their version of the
internet entirely apart from the traditional internet and will sell products
and services to other countries to do the same (I.e. Iran).

5\. The era of horizontal drilling and fracking for ultra-cheap gas and oil
will slowly wind down and energy costs will increase to 2000’s era costs.

6\. Most ominously: this might be the first decade where we see large scale
orchestrated micro-drone attacks (death by a thousand paper cuts) and
autonomous vehicles being used for delivery of some kind of malicious purpose
(I.e. explosive delivery).

7\. Massive inflation globally during 2010/early 2020’s will result in
stagflation in the U.S. and other countries.

~~~
reubens
Regarding 1., what do you think will be the selling point of this transition?
There is very little that hospital monitoring devices can offer to the average
person (do you need a daily ECG / EKG?)

~~~
bmsleight_
[Not parent poster] You are correct based upon current technology. However we
are seeing AI better predicting cancer
[https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-50857759](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-50857759)

So this tricorder could scan you/ take vital and then diagnose anything much
better. Making a trip to a "Doctor" zero cost.

Imagine a free trip to a Doctor every morning. Not something I would like, but
very very profitable to sell a device.

------
Shish2k
Some mutually-exclusive points here, but I'm not expecting 100% accuracy
anyway :P

* The top 100 entertainment, tech, and consumable brands are all subsidiaries of Disney, Alphabet, or Nestle respectively

* Owning things becomes a niche; rental / X-as-a-service becomes the default for everything from toothbrushes to pets. Kids born in 2030 might live to be 100 and never own anything.

* 25% unemployment due to automation - not due to strong AI, just steady incremental changes (eg how McD's has already replaced human till operators with "select your meal from a tablet then swipe your payment card")

* Either we make a conscious effort as a species to reduce inequality (high taxes and UBI); OR inequality spirals out of control and we get a bloody civil war between the haves and the have-nots.

* "WASM blob rendering to HTML Canvas" becomes the #1 desktop app deployment method, accessibility and ad-blocking suffer (Everyone has forgotten the lessons learned from Flash)

* Eventually all desktop / mobile use-cases replaced with stadia-like remote apps; accessibility and ad-blocking suffer

* I'd LIKE it if ad-blocking became so widespread and effective that we're collectively forced to build an effective micropayment system, and people go back to paying for goods and services with money instead of personal information, but I'll predict that that doesn't happen. If ad-blocking does still exist in any effective form, then ads will merge with content (product placement etc)

* AI-based ad-blocking to blank-out company logos wherever they appear, in whatever context

* Global temperatures don't just continue rising, they accelerate

* Poor security on IoT devices directly leads to deaths (eg overloading cheap electronics enough to start a fire)

* Lennart Poettering invents a filesystem. It is buggy as hell, but has such useful features that everyone adopts it and the community makes it stable

~~~
will4274
I'll disagree with you on this one:

    
    
        25% unemployment due to automation - not due to strong AI, just steady incremental changes (eg how McD's has already replaced human till operators with "select your meal from a tablet then swipe your payment card")
    

I'll predict the exact opposite. The decade will include one recession that
will be called a "X bubble" and take ~3 years to recover from where X is
something everybody uses (housing, tech, etc.). Rich people and corporations
will be blamed, but no meaningful economic reforms will be passed. Despite
continually dire predictions from left-leaning politicans and internet
economists about unemployment and UBI, recession unemployment will sit at 11%
and non-recession unemployment will sit around 5% (as measured by the U3 in
the United States). Unemployment will never exceed 15% for the duration of the
decade. Though the labor force participation rate will drop (as boomers
continue to retire) the rate of drop will begin to level out towards the end
of the decade. This drop will lead to the first sustained real (inflated
adjusted) increase in wages since the 90s.

See you in 2030 :)

Edit: also, UBI will not be passed into law in any state or federally.

------
kyle_morris
1\. Religious affiliations will increase due to folks feeling more and more
disconnected from other people

2\. US football will be on the decline as more parents pull their kids out of
the sport.

3\. Electric cars will be mainstream and taxes on electricity or miles driven
will be applied

4\. Meat consumption in the developed world will be reduced significantly per
capita, though aggregate consumption will go up.

5\. Global temps will rise, more natural disasters due to climate change and
as we get near 2030 we’ll see the US signing onto international agreements
with teeth.

6\. A major recession in there which is either caused or will be a trigger for
an armed conflict

7\. The next iteration of Al Qaeda/ISIS will rise, likely targeting moderates

8\. Backlash against some of the addictive qualities of smartphones and their
apps. Limiting screen time will become more important especially for young
kids.

9\. Electricity goes even further in renewables and nuclear. Planning to
remove dams will pick up though likely won’t be done until the 2030’s

10\. A public option for health insurance in the US

------
crazygringo
I predict Apple/Google/Amazon/Facebook are only going to get more valuable and
bigger. The previous idea that there are limits to growth that have already
been reached... don't apply anymore.

Not because they're any smarter than anyone else, but they're able to
continuing buying and absorbing any and all competitive threats. And that the
"moat" of initial costs to compete with them in existing areas is too high.
(E.g. try building your own search engine.)

And regulation and antitrust law isn't going to make a dent because any
potential legal principles against it won't be convincing enough to the
average citizen, so there won't be any particularly convincing legislative
proposals for support in Congress to coalesce around. (It's easy to say "break
up Facebook!" It's really, really hard to come up with a reasonable generic
law that results in breaking up the "too big" companies without harming the
"good" companies, and breaking them up in reasonable ways.)

I _don 't_ think they're going to get any _more_ "evil". They're just going to
keep expanding into more and more valuable products/markets -- like Apple has
with wearables, or Google has with Cloud, or Amazon with TV shows.

(I'm not saying whether this is good or bad -- I just think it's what will
happen.)

~~~
aeternum
This has been said about many companies in the past and it is rarely the case.
Compared to the infrastructure needed to compete with Standard Oil, the
railroads, or telecom, the capital expenditure to create a new tech company is
miniscule.

Founders just need to not sell out. Look at the rise of TikTok. Even with
search, DuckDuckGo with its privacy focus is starting to encroach on Google.

~~~
paulddraper
> the capital expenditure to create a new tech company is miniscule

Hiring a hundred AI engineers/scientists isn't cheap either.

~~~
PaulDavisThe1st
Let's pay them all $200k/yr. That's $10,000,000m a year. Inflation adjusted,
compared to the capital investments of the giants of the roaring 20s, this is
pretty small if not irrelevant. Even if you double it to cover payroll tax and
other expenses, it's still going to move the needle.

~~~
paulddraper
I think you mean $20m/year.

------
paxys
1\. Wireless internet gets cheaper, faster and more robust across the globe.
_Every single_ device/appliance/toy sold has a ~free data chip in it and is
always connected & transmitting. The internet/WWW fully absorbs every other
communication and delivery network out there (phone, broadcast TV, cable,
satellite, radio). They finally figure out live streaming for sports.

2\. There is less ambiguity and many new laws around data security and
privacy, but they aren't very consumer friendly. Digital advertising enters a
new era, and current players (Google, Facebook) lag behind. Think personalized
movies & TV shows, deeper product placement _everywhere_ , preemptive
shipping.

3\. Cars get a lot smarter. Traffic is more efficient, and there are fewer
accidents. Driverless taxis may be mainstream in certain limited areas in
large cities. Level 5 automation is still nowhere in sight, however. EV
adoption continues at a steady pace.

4\. Cash transactions are phased out in the US and most of the developed
world.

5\. Marijuana is legal across the US and in most other countries.

6\. Beef and pork consumption craters in the US, replaced by healthier meats,
plant-based substitutes and lab-grown meat.

7\. Food delivery gets cheaper and healthier. A majority of urban households
get fully prepared meals delivered every day.

8\. People are no longer talking about VR/AR, crypto, chatbots, artificial
general intelligence, flying cars.

------
ZhuanXia
1\. 100 trillion parameter neural net is trained at the very end of the
decade. May or may not be useful but I think this is mostly a problem of
memory bandwidth and is doable with a minimal number of die shrinks.

2\. I will take the under on SelfDrivingCars cars. Way too much pessimism
here. The entire first wave of startups( save for TESLA and Comma) are using
the same DARPA challenge codebase. New players using reinforcement learning
will crack the problem.

3\. China will not become a democracy.

4\. China will be a leader in software as well as hardware. A Chinese-made
social network will be widely used in Europe.

5\. Learning-based systems will be successfully applied to proof search. Very
significant mathematical problems will fall to such systems before the end of
the decade.

6.Quantum computers will not be capable of simulating any significant/useful
chemistry in this decade.

7\. A baby with 100+ edited alleles will be born and healthy, probably in
China.

8\. Cognitive genomics will come to the fore as it becomes clear several
standard deviations increases in mental traits, including IQ, are possible
with such edits. Lysenkoist ideologies may have trouble adapting, but by the
end of the decade it will be clear to most which way the wind is blowing.

9\. AGI has not happened yet, but the conspiracy of silence around the topic
no longer prevails. The field. Most people in machine learning consider AGI
the goal of the field, and say so without shame.

------
tflinton
1\. Apple will become more and more consumer focused leaving a void for the
niche market of power users (programmers, designers).

2\. Microsoft will open source Windows (indirectly by using a linux kernel)
and throw in the towel on the OS game.

3\. "Offline" becomes hip.

4\. New person-addressable federated message transport protocol gains
popularity, probably on the back of SMTP/email systems. Someone will try to
call it "server-less" apps.

5\. Common federated identity and login system protocols gain popularity,
probably also on the back of SMTP/email systems.

6\. Privacy is still an issue, an attempt at making data-as-an-executable to
trace its use is fraught with issues but gets steam in the healthcare market.

7\. More and more JS will become a standard, until most programming languages
outside of C/C++/golang/rust just use JS runtimes and compile to (dynamically
or statically) WASM.

8\. Someone remakes Game of Thrones ending entirely using deep fakes.

9\. 3D printing at a nano scale "is just around the corner" but being used in
select factories.

10\. AI/ML and driving cars aren't a thing, but not because it's an impossible
problem, but because it's not as valuable as people thought it was.

11\. Drones will become highly regulated, require licenses to fly or must be
purchased with a permit in most countries. Most likely due to a string of
terrorist incidents. Large drones won't be used for deliveries or any other
non-sense as they're simply way too loud.

12\. More and more companies will attempt to operate in "growth" stages by
buying back stock and artificially inflating their prices until an unfortunate
pair of events causes a few mega-companies to collapse due to it. Afterwards
debt in corporation as a factor becomes a key indicator for stock prices and a
3 to 4 year recession in most economies.

~~~
dpau
i can see 8 as a safe bet. with star wars as well. i can also imagine the fan
fiction genre exploding into live enactments with look-alike amateurs acting &
editing at a high quality level, with post deep fake blended in seamlessly.
many of these will rival hollywood in production value and definitely surpass
hollywood in storytelling.

------
tick_tock_tick
1\. Trust in journalists and news publications will continue to crater due to
their inability to resist clickbait, sloppy ethic controls, and constant
hyperboles.

2\. China will enter a pronounced recession that is it unable to hide from the
world.

3\. The EU will lose at-least one more member nation after the United Kingdom
leaves.

4\. The credibility of scientist and research universities will hit all time
lows as the effects of the replication crisis become more pronounced and
climate changes predictions prove less accurate than lay people find
acceptable. I expect this to result in a large pullback in funding for
research that lacks a direct practical application.

5\. Negative interest rates in EU will force more global dependency on the US
dollar.

6\. At-least one more country will adopt or de facto adopt the US dollar as
their nation currency (dollarization).

7\. The US will adopt a single payer or universal health care system.

~~~
Panini_Jones
> 3\. The EU will lose at-least one more member nation after the United
> Kingdom leaves.

Why?

~~~
AnimalMuppet
Because "ever-closer union" doesn't appeal to everybody - or so I suspect. But
I'm in the US, so... take with some salt.

~~~
jcranmer
There were definitely parties in the Netherlands and France that made leaving
the EU their major plank. When Brexit turned out to be rather more difficult
than its adherents imagined, support for "Frexit" and "Nexit" plummeted like a
rock, and hasn't recovered.

Greece is slightly more plausible, but less because Greece wants to leave and
more because the rest of the EU decides to kick them out. It's doubtful they'd
kick them out of anything more than the Eurozone, though.

------
baybal2
1\. Pension bomb — as you see, is about to go off in Europe. US is a bit safer
in that regard as a younger country, and less generous expectations for
pension in general. China... yep, lights off on that. 2\. Ubiquitous
mobile/wireless internet integrated into even very trivial consumer goods —
just about to happen

3\. A younger/more populist group of politicians will assume power in China. —
Well, and even older, and more populist group of politicians have claimed
power in China, and no, no bubble burst yet

4\. Google will experience change in management. From there, it will be
downhill for them (at least for the rest of the decade). — spot on

5\. Chinese-American co-dependency crumbles like a bitter divorce — a bitter
marriage doesn't simply crumble suddenly one day, it takes a life on its own
and keeps biting you for years on: see Brexit

6\. Brexit — no comments needed

7\. mobile devices is going to make the PC redundant for most people —
somewhat true

8\. PMC's will become much more prevalent and popular — true, but not American
ones

9\. IE6 will hang around for a few years, but may die very rapidly in
workplaces when some killer enterprise web application stops supporting it. It
will remain widespread in East Asia — it is 2020, and IE6 is still there in
China...

10\. Mobile phones won't replace computers, but increasing penetration amongst
the poorest in developing countries, and increasingly capable handsets in
developed countries (and developing countries) will make them a colossal
juggernaut. Many of the really big changes, especially social changes, will be
caused by mobiles — spot on

~~~
komali2
> A younger/more populist group of politicians will assume power in China. —
> Well, and even older, and more populist group of politicians have claimed
> power in China, and no, no bubble burst yet

Keep an eye on news on Taiwan towards the end of January. We're about to see
if the youth are committed to what they started when they rejected the KMT
(the "pro-chinese" party) back during the sunflower protests in 2013.

I think one way or the other, the "Taiwan question" will be answered this
decade, which very well could pop the China bubble if pro-democratic
propaganda (from Taiwan and the falun gong) can overcome pro-PRC (from the
Party and possibly KMT).

I know mainlanders convinced there will be war if Green isn't voted out, I
know Taiwanese that are convinced it's going to be business as usual for the
foreseeable future.

------
TheCondor
Are these really negative sounding? Or is it just me?

Is it the retrograde politics that has infected our entrepreneurial optimism?
Too much hype not enough delivery? Too much interwebs and not enough real
human time? Ten years back, it seemed like I regularly interacted with folks
that seemed to believe that, armed with an nvidia chip and some models and the
ability to sling some js, they could be the next Zuckerberg like billionaire.
The bulk of these predictions feel negative, like the party is over.

* Crispr or derivatives will be used to create cancer therapy for the masses. It will be in mass clinical trial by 2030.

* there will be three new bigger than unicorn companies. They will have combine tech with non-tech (like amazon) and 2 will be based out of the Midwest, maybe Detroit or Chicago.

* long haul trucking will be automated to the point that drivers start doing part time work via mobile connection. Trucking companies will try to capitalize on this

* there will be a common wearable that does a weekly blood test

* some major US corporations will institute mandatory gym/excercise time for workers.

* climate change denial will pivot into spinning it as a positive by citing a agricultural use of a previously unarable region. No major industrial country will suffer land loss due to it

* millennials will embrace suburban life and there will be a series of new banking products to facilitate later home ownership. They won’t use the old tricks but will generalize bundling and have one monthly bill for mortgage, car and some services. Think some sort of automated HELOC type package. Top 15% will own homes in less than 15 years which will be lauded for these programs.

* to go with the above, spending monitoring apps will become more normalized and more proactive. Actively discouraging users from buying when they are in certain physical locations. This will open a new business model.

* co-ops will increase in popularity, particularly for child care

~~~
MachineMartin
"long haul"

Why will they do part time work via mobile connection? We will need a driver
to drive the truck to and from the highway, but on the highways there will be
no driver on board. So driving will still be a full time job: You will be
driving the first/last 10 miles after which you get off and get into another
truck.

------
TACIXAT
1/ We will use neural nets to index the physical world in the same way we
index the web.

2/ A low fee payment system will become mainstream, severely undercutting the
payment processing networks. (My money would be on centralized, inspired by
cryptocurrencies.)

3/ Labeling images for neural nets will become a popular low-skilled job.

4/ Personal email will be slowly forgotten, likely from being so bogged down
from corporate communications. It will occupy a similar space that physical
mail does today; the occasional really important communication surrounded by
garbage that you can't stop.

5/ China will make major technological gains against the US due to their
relaxed intellectual property laws and the ability to innovate upon other
people's work.

6/ Self driving cars will become common, people will prefer it. It will likely
only exist in limited places (i.e. freeways) and be supported by
infrastructure changes (machine readable signs, lane makings, and car to car
communication).

7/ The ad economy will die down as more end to end encrypted services are
adopted. The vision here would be a cell phone company that doesn't sell your
location data because you authenticate to the cell tower with a zero knowledge
proof. (Ha, implying the telcos could or would replace their infrastructure in
the next decade!)

8/ The climate will become a priority in production (e.g. food), with people
asking which method is greener rather than which is cheaper. Perhaps
incintevized by the government through taxes or subsidies.

9/ A new political party will be created in the US in backlash to corporatism
of current two.

See you in 2030!

------
jv_dh
1\. By 2025 there will be a quantum computer that can break RSA-2048 and
shortly after that any conventional encryption. Alternatives based on post-
quantum cryptography will have been developed but are not in widespread use.
Adoption will take years.

2\. Waymo will sell self-driving cars to the general public and there will be
a push to make streets safer by reducing individual transport.

3\. The next economic downturn, if there is one, will be caused by
quantitative easing.

4\. Index funds will start affecting price discovery which will lead to a
surge in strategies that exploit this.

5\. Society will either learn to cope with scissor questions or polarization
will eventually lead to civil war.

6\. Deep learning will be used in every field in applied computer science and
replace the traditional methods of this field.

7\. Cryptocurrencies will be used to create censorship-resistant social media
and messaging services that have strong secrecy/privacy/data-ownership
guarantees.

8\. Facebook, Amazon and Google will face anti trust action that might even
lead to them being broken up.

9\. Palantir will be the best performing stock of the decade.

------
ianai
At some point, electric cars will boom like ssds replaced hdds. People will
see how low easy and cheap EVs are to maintain and the ICE market segment will
collapse entirely. The speed of the change will surprise industry
expectations.

I’m also really hoping Musk and other space projects like Virgin Galactic
surprise us all. Musk clearly wants to build out massive infrastructure in
space. That could have hard to imagine consequences.

I think we’ll discover life either in the past of mars through fossils there
or bacteria or in the oceans of Enceladus. Edit-this will likely first come
from NASA projects and could happen this year with the mars drill platform.

~~~
rtx
This will happen, and cause lot of pain around the world.

------
jdlyga
Remote work will continue to rise in popularity. Many large companies already
have policies of every meeting having a video conference link. And there's
pressure for people to move out of high cost of living areas like San
Francisco and New York City.

Online degrees will explode in popularity much like cord cutting did in the
past decade. With Georgia Tech's OMSCS becoming a huge success, many other
institutions will create similar programs beginning with STEM degrees,
expanding into more graduate programs and even undergrad. As an alternative to
ultra-high tuition costs, more and more students will choose this route
instead of traditional college. As a result, kids will stay at home with their
parents increasingly longer.

The United States and China will relax their tourist visa policies, and will
allow for up to 90 day stays without a visa.

~~~
y-c-o-m-b
> Remote work will continue to rise in popularity.

I really hope so. There was a bit of a rise and fall (thanks Marissa Mayer!)
of remote work in the last decade but it seems to be trending upward again. I
work remotely now, but lack of wide-spread availability makes me anxious to
move outside of suburban areas in the event something goes wrong and I don't
have a local fallback.

------
bovermyer
1\. Populism reaches a crescendo globally. Nascent populist governments become
more entrenched, especially in North and South America.

2\. China supersedes the United States as the preeminent global superpower.

3\. A conflict between Russia and China comes seemingly out of nowhere, but is
resolved quickly.

4\. Electric vehicles become more mainstream, but still do not overtake ICE
vehicles in sales or ownership.

5\. Cannabis is de-scheduled in the United States. A minor economic boom
results.

6\. Tech hubs in the Midwest begin to overtake the old tech hubs in activity
and population.

7\. Housing shortages worsen globally.

8\. Australia suffers a series of natural disasters that results in heavy
depopulation.

9\. Battery technology will see a significant breakthrough that results in
much greater life and much lower weight, but it will not be affordable. Yet.

10\. An economic "adjustment" occurs as trade between the United States and
China is heavily curtailed.

~~~
disease
Where do your predictions about Australia come from? Do you currently live
thee?

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

------
gcpwnd
1\. ML/AI hype will go bust and the industry actually starts goes back to the
whiteboards and starts to do useful stuff.

2\. native apps will heavily decline and replaced by web apps. the whole
ecosystem will remain wild.

3\. the developer community will have a major change because the majority will
be degraded from snowflakes to comodity. more developers will heavily
specialize and move away from web and general purpose fields. severe shortage
everywhere in the west.

4\. china will show strong and visible presence in the world theatre

5\. EU kills current adtech business, which will start to reinvent itself
seriously by the end of the decade

6\. mobile device business will encounter major shifts due to oversaturation,
lack of innovation and eastern competition. touch screens will hit an dead end
in usability leaving customers riddled.

------
vosper
1\. Noise levels in workplaces (especially cafes, restaurants) will be
increasingly recognized as contributing to stress and later-life hearing loss
for people who work in those environments. What is considered a "safe" noise
level will decrease drastically.

2\. People will become more concerned about air pollution than climate change;
emissions from combustion engines, brakes, and tires will be increasingly in
the public eye. Office workers will become concerned about CO2 levels in their
workplaces, and on their commutes. Many workplaces will install equipment to
provide fresher, cleaner air.

3\. Ebikes, electic scooters, and other relatively compact electric
transportation quietly revolutionise commuting for people who live within
20-30km of their work.

4\. Work weeks (or at least time in office) will decrease for many office
workers. It will become normal for many people to only go into the office once
or twice a week.

5\. The combination of 1, 2, 3 and 4 above lead to increasing de-urbanization
as people who can afford it seek to move to quieter places with cleaner air.
Clean air becomes a major issue of inequality. Productive farmland around
cities is converted to large home-office plots with lots of trees.

6\. At least one climate change mitigation geoengineering idea will have a
large scale proof of concept experiment conducted

7\. Microplastics in the food supply / ecosystem will turn out to be not that
serious of a health problem for people and most other animals (some animals
will be severely affected)

------
daxfohl
AI proves P != NP. The proof is 20K pages and not comprehensible by humans,
who spend the next 30 years deciphering it, by which time the AI has proved
the five remaining millennium problems. The AI elects to keep the Clay Prize
money each time and donate it all to homeless chia pets, thus proving general-
purpose AI is still a ways off.

~~~
csande17
The proof is later discovered to contain errors caused by floating-point
roundoff.

------
makaimariano
\- major military conflict between US and China breaks out, but nuclear
weapons are not used

\- America’s formal military alliances are significantly disrupted and at
least one state outright leaves NATO

\- after progress in self driving cars slows, industry shifts focus to low-
hanging fruit: fully-autonomous trains and planes

\- Jai has greater marketshare than Rust

\- JS is the overwhelming language of choice for frontend web development

\- no measurable technological unemployment. longterm unemployment increases
but is entirely due to political and economic factors

\- more people play games on traditional game consoles than VR headsets or
cloud streaming

\- minor AI breakthrough that does not utilize neural networks

------
tosser0001
1\. Fully AI-generated "influencer" profiles begin to out-compete actual human
beings on social media platforms.

2\. Cities will begin experimenting with geo-fencing automobiles so that speed
and acceleration is restricted to defined limits within zones. Automobiles
will not be legally allowed into these zones unless they surrender some
autonomy which force them to abide by these limitations.

------
toohotatopic
Would it be interesting to have another submission where each top comment is
just one idea? Then we can vote on those ideas and see which ideas are more
likely to be true.

------
toohotatopic
* Companies will grow further until they overpower nation states. Neither the West nor China can break them up since they are the players in the economic wars. They need the size to finance the ever increasing costs of technological progress.

* There will be general artificial intelligence. Somebody will get it right this time because all components are available outside of academia. A team without an agenda will come up with the right combination by chance.

* At the end of the decade, people will design the genetic setup of 'their' children

* We will give up on preserving nature and embrace global warming. A new metropolis will be created from all the people who are forced to settle somewhere else. Established players will strengthen their borders but somebody will use that opportunity. I can imagine a city in Saudi Arabia but it could also be a special economic zone in China.

* The Chinese social credit system will be so successful that many other countries will introduce it, too.

* Energy will become scarce because all is needed for simulations and encryption attacks

------
groceryheist
Here's my ass-bag of predictions.

1\. Sharing economy remains strong, but investors (at least in uber/lyft
possibly others) are disappointed as it isn't possible to maintain monopoly.
Multi-sided markets expand into more sectors as platforms and apps become
understood as infrastructure.

2\. Companies providing engaging private small-group social media experiences
(along the lines of signal, whatsapp groups) are really important to most
people. This is also somewhat disappointing to investors as this kind of
activity is difficult to monetize and local networks are easy to transport
from app to app.

3\. Major social network platforms become increasingly controlled spaces as
the "open internet" becomes a sea of disinformation. Most people instead turn
to regulated enclaves with barriers to entry and strict moderation.

4\. AR / VR aren't adopted in widespread ways by consumers. VR is popular
among gamers and AR has some use in specialized work environments such as
military, factory, and warehouses.

5\. The world succeeds at preventing some of the worst ecological consequences
of climate change, and transitions to a sustainable green economy by way of
economic contraction, increased efficiency, and limited carbon capture
technologies (i.e. conversion to biomass) but fail to keep warming below a 2⁰C
level. Mass migrations out of equatorial regions are a huge geopolitical
problem and the source of much violence. Eco-fascism is a significant
political ideology that limits the ability of developed nations to admit
refugees.

6\. (this is my stretch and my own vision) Online communities learn from the
example of Wikipedia how to self-organize to create valuable goods. Many
productive online communities will be relatively closed and occupy a similar
niche to corporations or cooperatives and exist for the economic opportunities
provided to their members.

------
throwaway1jghj
USB-D will be announced to remedy the shortcomings of USB-C. In every HN post
about it someone will mention the number 927. Meanwhile in 2030 most laptops
will still ship with at least one type-A connector, and that connector will
still dominate flash drives and the like. Business users will still demand VGA
video connectors in 2030 as they need something that always "just works" when
presenting to clients, quality be damned. Mobile phones will likely become
port-less in all but the low-end of the market.

~~~
throwno
New Super Bluetooth makes all peripherals wireless.

------
soulofmischief
I just want to direct everyone to the NIC's natural resources projection
report for 2020, 2030 & 2040\. [0]

It is my Bible for the coming decades. For one, it predicted Australia:

 _By 2020, significant loss of biodiversity is projected to occur in some
ecologically rich sites, including the Great Barrier Reef and Queensland Wet
Tropics. Water security problems and a decline in agriculture and forestry are
projected for southern and eastern Australia, as well as eastern New Zealand,
by 2030._

It also mentions harvest shocks in the region due to land damage from climate
change.

If you want to know which countries will collapse into mass protest, which
wars will be fought, between whom, and when, this report is your guide.

[0]
[https://www.dni.gov/files/documents/NICR%202013-05%20US%20Na...](https://www.dni.gov/files/documents/NICR%202013-05%20US%20Nat%20Resources%202020,%202030%202040.pdf)

------
liamcardenas
I am not willing to make this prediction, but I’d be interested in hearing if
anyone thinks we will _NOT_ see fully autonomous vehicles on the road by 2030.
Even in 2010, it seemed just around the corner — but that turned out to be
wrong.

~~~
keldaris
Technically, we already have fully autonomous vehicles on the road, they're
just not generally allowed to be used as such and have obvious failure modes
not shared by human drivers.

However, if by this you mean "autonomous vehicles that are clearly superior to
reasonable human drivers under all reasonably frequent scenarios (including
inclement weather) in any developed country" then yes, I feel very confident
we won't see that in the next decade, probably two. I think the
hyperoptimistic HN bubble is extremely far off the mark with respect to
autonomous vehicles and always has been.

~~~
liamcardenas
I thought of this after posting. Technically, there have been vehicles allow
to operate fully autonomously on the road, yes. But I mean for non-research
purposes, full-featured autonomous driving for consumer-owned vehicles.

~~~
keldaris
I don't think it'll make much economic sense for consumers to actually buy
them, but I do expect to see services accessible to the public that let you
use an autonomous vehicle in places with effectively ideal conditions before
2030. I also don't regard that as a particularly significant advance in the
broader sense of the objective because I think it's easier to get from zero to
driving in Phoenix than it is to get from there to handling, say, traffic in
Mumbai, both in technological and social terms.

------
gokhan
\- Microsoft will start pushing hard for it in a couple of years and Edge will
be the default browser of choice in 10 years. It will have state of the art
surveillance prevention and ad blocking. It will visually guess where the ads
are perfectly, so that even ads served directly from the 1st party domain will
be blocked.

\- Google will loose significant revenue and will start laying off people
after 2025. Will focus back on having good search results instead of the crap
we have today, but it will not be enough to keep it afloat during 2030's.

\- There will be a Gmail competitor.

\- Apple will buy DuckDuckGo.

\- There will be a dominant WebAssembly framework with support for different
languages where all web applications will be written on (as .Net, but not
.Net). JS usage will shrink to lightweight content pages.

\- After 7yo becomes ~13yo, PG will go back to YC. Also will write a book that
will be a bestseller for non-technical / non-startup audience.

------
l4yao
* People stop fighting the data privacy fight. Laws will be created for user data collection consent, but people will ignore it like current day EULA or terms. Killer applications for user data will start showing up and public options will shift to "eh, I guess it's okay if they collect and share data about me, I get some good utility out of it"

* VR hype passes, maybe because technical limitations doesn't make for a pleasant experience. Remains a bit gimmicky

* haha remember bitcoin?

* alternative meats become mainstream, account for half of meat consumption. (Note for future readers and myself. As of 01/2020 Impossible Burger has recently partnered with BK for an impossible whopper and the Beyond Bratwurst served at work was quite good, though still somewhat niche. Only in a few stores and restaurants)

* Pet ownership will become frowned upon, or maybe just less acceptable than it is today

~~~
perennate
> Killer applications for user data will start showing up

I feel like recommendation engines and personalized results already satisfy
this "killer applications". I keep myself logged out when using YouTube and
Google Search, but I always recognize that on YouTube it'd be a lot easier to
find videos that interest me if it accounted for my history.

------
enitihas
1\. Big Tech will get more stronger, and no tech company incorporated in this
decade will reach 200B USD in value by 2030.

2\. China will remain as authoritarian if not more, and Xi Jinping or someone
handpicked by him will be leading China in 2030.

3\. Apple will keep shifting more and more into Services, and by 2030,
services will account for the majority of their profit.

4\. More and more countries will see the rise of populist governments due to
the voice amplification offered by Social media.

5\. Facebook will reach 1T$ in market cap.

6\. We will see atleast one big tech company reach 2T USD in market cap.

7\. Cloud providers will churn out more and more services, to the point that
more and more Enterprises will offload most things to them, and only write the
very core business logic themselves.

8\. No federated platform will come close to the success of email. No
decentralised messaging platform will dethrone the market leaders.

------
BenoitP
1\. Hardware: The only way to get more performance will be to adapting it to
the workload. We're going to see a lot more special purpose chips. "Managed
Language Chips" with hw accelerated garbage collection. The Map operation of
BigData's MapReduce will be executed in-place in RAM with vast parallelism.
RISC-V will have picked up steam and start chipping away in open-source mode
at the Intels and NVIDIAs. Stacked computing will be a thing. There will be a
lot of new letters in front of 'PU' (CPU, GPU, TPU, ?PU). New kinds of jobs
will be created to help people navigate this jungle. Compiler infrastructures
will get messy. It will be a Cambrian explosion of new architectures.

2\. Software: All languages alive now will stay that way. PHP still feeds the
family now, it will continue to do so. FORTRAN will still exist. Some new
languages might come mainstream, but only because driven by external factors
(Hyperscaler behind it, or the only language for a specific piece of hardware)

3\. Money: Globalization will deepen. It will get better for the very poor and
the very rich. It will be getting worse between the 5th an 95th percentiles in
developed countries.

4\. Quantum computing will still be 10 years away.

5\. There will be a 2008-like crash before 2025. It will come from excessive
corporate debt; and will lead to massive consolidation and monopolies, as
neither US nor EU nor China want to be the first to crack down on their
champions.

6\. There will be two 2017-like speculation bubbles on Bitcoin.

7\. Still no AGI, but increasingly pervasive machine learning presence in
every bit of every system. People will understand and interact better with ML
models.

8\. SpaceX crash-lands something on the Moon (before the first half) and Mars
(after the first half).

9\. No major blockchain-based success, but some industries will have been
helped and transformed by starting to operate with automated contracts defined
in publicly available code. (ex: parametric insurance)

10\. Large scale video games will appear. 100k users will be able to play
closely to each other in realtime fashion (unlike in WoW where they can be at
most a few 100s in the same place).

11\. Close to 2030, with the help of DNA editing, China will release a deadly
virus that targets lactose-tolerant humans, starting WWIII.

~~~
childintime
Near a depression are you?

> SpaceX crash-lands something on the Moon (before the first half) and Mars
> (after the first half)

Well, that or Musk rightfully claims the next decade, just like the last,
where he came out of nothing. If so, and given a decline of the USA, a climate
of desperation means he ends up elected president.

Well then I see what you see, when you say you want him to crash-land ;)

~~~
BenoitP
Oh, I'm quite hopeful for Elon. The thing is, for space exploration, and
especially for Elon, it is much more likely that the first attempt will result
in a crash.

But that's just how it's done, and the necessary first step. To me, that's
Elon being successful.

------
darthvader101
1\. Electric cars will be around 10% of the total cars in the world

2\. The world will hit a major recession starting with China

3\. We will have simple and effective screening test for most form of cancers
with high accuracy

4\. We will begin seeing the benefits and power of quantum computing and its
applications

5\. We will have 1-2 successful manned missions to Mars and Moon

6\. Richest and most successful tech companies will still be Google, Facebook,
Microsoft, Amazon and Apple

7\. Major Indian cities like Bangalore, Delhi, Mumbai and Chennai will hit a
major overpopulation crisis, resulting in unavailability of basic amenities
like water, shelter and electricity

8\. Hyperloop will be in its nascent stages but will be commercially available
reducing traveling times by a huge factor

9\. Plant based meats and lab grown meats consumption will grow exponentially

10\. A deadly bacterial/viral disease will kill more than 1 million people
worldwide

------
dnautics
OK these are some a very long predictions:

\- At least one East Asian country out of {singapore, south korea, japan,
china (ROC or PRC)} legalizes Cannabis.

\- Microsoft extends the dominance it began in late 2010 decade. C# and F#
eclipse Java as enterprise programming solutions.

\- Google runs into some major trouble and loses considerable market share;
the biggest tumble comes on the heels of an internal, employee-led revolt or
schism.

\- While we're at it, Kubernetes goes out of style, replaced by something out
of Microsoft (that is not on our radar at the moment).

\- The US is in the first five nations with population greater than 50M to
meet its Paris Accord CO2 targets, despite having left the Paris Accord.

\- Early 2020s: Brexit unexpectedly results in the UK narrowly escaping the
worst of a major economic collapse in Europe, led by or concurrent with the
collapse or bailout of Deutche Bank. Of course this spreads to the rest of the
world, but if we say put it in quantitative terms the relative, GDP normalized
damage to the UK is less than the damage to each of: Germany, France, Belgium,
Netherlands, and Denmark.

\- Quantum computing goes through an explosive growth in qubits for the early
half of the decade, topping out at around 10,000-100,000 qubits, followed by
2-3 year linear phase, and then diminishing-return, sublinear improvements
through the close of the decade. Researchers begin talking about a 'QC winter'
like which we saw AI go through.

\- NASA disqualifies the Boeing Starliner from flying after astronauts refuse
to man it.

Aside from one time when I correctly predicted my coworker's house would be
under a volcano in 15 years, I am typically very bad at long timescale
predictions and much better at short term out-of-the-odds predictions, so we
shall see.

~~~
shaklee3
Microsoft already has a public kubernetes competitor that (comparatively)
nobody uses: [https://github.com/microsoft/service-
fabric](https://github.com/microsoft/service-fabric)

~~~
daxfohl
And the guy who created k8s originally is at Microsoft now, so I'd be
interested to see how it all falls out if this prediction comes true.

~~~
shaklee3
Brendan Burns has been leading the k8s/azure stuff for some time at Microsoft.
I'm not sure internally how those two are competing, though.

~~~
daxfohl
He leads both AKS and service fabric. He just calls k8s the orchestrator for
stateless services and SF the one for stateful ones.

------
I_am_tiberius
\- Bill Gates is president of the United States

\- Edward Snowden will be back home. He's still a hero.

\- Bitcoin lightning payments are the most common form of payment on the
Internet.

\- Due to the death of Moore's law a USD 1000 laptop in 2030 is only 3 times
as powerful as a USD 1000 laptop in 2020.

\- Quantum computers are still not common

\- Nosql databases are not commonly used anymore

\- Singularity is still 30 years away

\- China's and Russia's will have found effective ways to isolate their
internet traffic.

\- Postgres is the nr 1 database in use

\- Hackernews color theme will change from orange to green

\- SAP's ERP system revenues will have dropped significantly

\- Startup solutions will be more common in corporate environments.

\- Matrix will be the most commonly used protocol used for chat software.

\- Plasma Mobile will be a successful alternative to Android.

~~~
tonyedgecombe
> Postgres is the nr 1 database in use > SAP's ERP system revenues will have
> dropped significantly

These seem linked to me, I can't imagine any of the recent startups in are
using SAP/Oracle based solutions. Over time this is going to become an
increasing problem for SAP and Oracle. All they can do is milk what they can
from their dying client base, probably hastening the demise in the process.

------
twic
1\. Deep-water offshore wind power will be an established technology, and
capacity deployed will be >50% of shallow-water offshore

2\. Addition of 20% low-carbon hydrogen to natural gas grids will be common in
Europe

3\. Still no commodity optical computing, still no restoration of full-blooded
Moore's Law, CPU core counts will be huge, we programmers will still be
rubbish at effectively making use of them all

4\. Rust's lifetimes prove to be the crack in the dam for type systems which
regulate more aspects of program correctness in widely-used production
languages (as widely used as, say, Erlang is now)

5\. One of the 2028 Democratic presidential candidates will be openly furry

------
eigenvalue
My predictions:

-It becomes even harder for new musicians and visual artists to make it because we will be able to generate "new" music from long dead artists using some form of generative machine learning models.

-It becomes nearly impossible to distinguish real people on social media from advanced bots-- some of which will have long and detailed online histories that seem authentic (i.e., internally consistent biographical details) to even skeptical observers. Owners of these armies of bots earn large profits because of the time it takes to properly establish such profiles.

-Most physical products produced by US and European brands-- even at the level of detergent or towels-- will have some kind of NFC/RFID tag that is secured through cryptographic signatures as a way to manage rampant and increasingly sophisticated counterfeiting and "laundering" of fake products through sites like Amazon. Consumers will routinely scan their products with their phone to ensure they are real (and Amazon will scan them itself for anything they pack and ship).

-More and more people will realize just how bad refined carbs are for diet and health and there will be a rise in meal delivery services and fast casual restaurants that cater to this trend. This will be accelerated by the rapid rise of companies such as CloudKitchens from TK of Uber fame, allowing people to start delivery companies as easily as they can sell digital merchandise through Shopify.

-By the end of the decade, it will be possible to compose a text message or search google via your phone just by thinking about it using some kind of special hat or AirPod type device, although this will require some training and practice to get good accuracy. Younger people will adopt this much more quickly since it will be easier for to learn how to manipulate this tech usefully. When combined with Google Translate and earphones, this will allow people to converse (slowly and perhaps awkwardly) with people in a foreign language that they do not speak in a relatively seamless way.

-There will be a controversy about some form of artificial intelligence enhancement (either through Nootropics or other drugs or through genetic engineering) and college admissions, with the rich able to afford these technologies for their children, undermining the whole meritocratic underpinning of elite institutions.

-There will be extreme quotas placed on the number of Chinese graduate students permitted to study for a Masters degree or PhD in fields such as applied math, machine learning, computer science, bio-chemistry, genetics, etc. While free and open publishing of results will still occur, the specific methods and practices to allow reproduction of results will be more restricted.

-China will introduce a commercial jetliner that is suspiciously similar to a Boeing/Airbus design. They will also introduce memory modules nearly identical to those from Micron/Samsung. Despite the blatant stealing of IP, they will essentially get away with it at least in the Asian markets.

-There won't be any wide-scale violent revolutions in a 1st world country because of the power of the state to monitor and manipulate the internet and mobile devices. Any unrest that gets far enough along will be effectively disrupted by such actions, leading the quick arrest of the ringleaders. Although messaging tools will claim true end to end encryption, this won't be the case in practice because of various exploits used by nation states.

-Lithium and Cobalt will become highly strategic resources, leading to political intrigue by super powers to control critical supplies in places like the Congo.

------
tootie
1\. 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 had the headline about AI being better than humans at
reading mammograms. We'll see models that fully solve problems one at a time
until industries begin to look for that ML model rather than solve a problem
with more labor.

3\. Voice assistants become more ubiquitous, but also more literal. They no
longer try to understand your intent, but rather perform rote tasks very
efficiently and without cloud (aside from updates/backups/etc). Voice will
affirm itself as a viable input mode but lag well behind current modes
(keyboard/mouse/touchscreen).

4\. Gesture detection continues to flail. Project Soli will create some
amazing niche solutions and demos, but not go mainstream.

5\. Eye/gaze tracking will find its way to end users and become useful for
gaming and some other broad interactions. Users take to it fairly well.

6\. A woman will become president of the US.

7\. We see a global recession by 2022. It's moderate and causes no major
shockwaves, but some 20th century industries are irreparably damaged.

~~~
allie1
Can you clarify 7?

~~~
tootie
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.

------
blablabla123
Based on this

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1025681](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1025681)

it seems things change much less than expected.

Probably Climate Change will turn out to be solvable by a combination of more
efficient energy production, less consumption, net negative greenhouse gas
emissions and conservative geo-engineering (algae, reflecting surfaces like
solar panels everywhere etc.) Either a completely new or re-invented gadget or
platform will arrive that integrates nicely with all the stuff we already
have. I bet it'll be something about communication. (Nice add-on to the
hundreds of messengers, social networks, communication gadgets that are
already there...)

I think everything else will stay pretty much the same. People will still
drive cars, wait in traffic jams and be upset about everyday politics. The
rise of the extreme right will turn out to be a non-issue, since history has
never been documented and reflected as well as in the last hundreds of years.

Developments in technology, politics, economy and society will bring more
wealth to a larger amount of people. Especially in African Countries there
will be an economy comparable in wealth to that of today's South-East Asia.
That will come along with improved telecommunication and transport
infrastructure throughout the continent.

------
sktrdie
\- The PC as we know it will die and everything will be done through
cellphones/tablets. This means that the mouse and keyboard will probably die
as well and apps will adapt to other more common interfaces such as voice-
commands.

\- Social networks that are less "company controlled" will become more
popular: users will be able to change the algorithms behind what their social
networks are showing them. They'll also be able to prove that the networks
haven't "hampered" the data in any particular way. These technologies will
help the laymen to better filter out fake news and we'll have less "flath
earthers" groups becoming popular.

\- AI techniques (machine learning / neural networks) will not just be useful
for apps, but will be part of the development process itself: our IDEs will
have powerful AI technology to help us code.

\- Solitude apps will be even more specific: we'll be able to find/filter
people with very particular interests and hang out with them. Finding your
partner or best friends through apps will be even more common.

\- Cities might experiment with shared-living areas where people live together
with one another in common places and are incentivised to participate in
activities with each other with a stronger push towards community rather than
isolation.

~~~
slothtrop
It's already fairly dead except for those who do actual work (or gaming).

------
rubiquity
1\. As Enterprises get cozy in the cloud, the next wave of startups will get
their infrastructure else where in order to compete and differentiate. On-prem
becomes sexy again.

2\. Biotech laced with computer science really hits it stride.

3\. Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies as a financial instrument go extinct but the
idea of distributed payments for services directly to providers lives on.
Blockchain is replaced with ledgers and protocols that allow companies to give
consumers transparency without all the blockchain and mining shenanigans.

4\. We finally figure out how to compensate open source developers for their
work.

5\. Social media use looks like it dies down hard but it just evolves into
something else, especially with the under-40 crowd. Probably driven by
wearables and AR so ad companies can still get metadata.

6\. Intel nearly goes belly up and gets bought by Dell. VMware goes bankrupt
because Kubernetes doesn't pan out.

7\. AI winter part 2 and it's really ugly. Tech is the center of the next
recession.

8\. Google becomes like Yahoo is right now, not because a better search engine
emerges, but because search becomes less important.

9\. A new operating system emerges. It gives programmers much better access to
hardware and has distributed systems primitives built in. RISC-V leads to lots
of domain specific chips.

And just so I can be sure to get one right:

10\. A new market leader in chat emerges to supplant Slack.

------
oliverx0
Stripe will become a FAANG, or at least gain significant world relevance.

Bio-hacking will become mainstream, causing significant backlash and become a
sensitive, polarised topic.

Startup equity / VC funding will change significantly, making it more fair &
appealing for early employees.

~~~
novok
What is bio-hacking vs doing pro-athlete level nutrition, drugs and fitness?

~~~
hornbaker
CRISPR / designer babies

------
vharuck
Dozens of cities in the US will seriously invest money and adopt new policies
to become the "next Silicon Valley." One will reach Boston-level success.
Probably in a Southern state along the East Coast.

Fewer people with CS degrees, more inclusion of CS coursework across different
degree programs.

Going beyond 2030 to 2050, shopping malls outside of high-value cities will be
abandoned, never repurposed, and become common locations for "urban ruin
explorers."

~~~
adamnemecek
I think that malls will become server farms.

~~~
siquick
or Amazon fulfilment centres

~~~
ianai
Or bars and casinos. They’re literal time sucks and job creators. Also full of
sin. Just like malls, in a way.

------
acvny
* 50%-60% of cars on the road will be replaced by electric / hybrid cars (very likely)

* Remote work will be much more widespread / will be the norm at least in IT (very likely)

* Telemedicine will be widespread, AI automated medical diagnostics systems. (very likely)

* AI/automated lawyers (likely)

* AI/automated trading will become dominant

* More automation in the warehouses / factories / stores

* First manned mission to Mars (unlikely)

* Evidence of past life found on Venus (unlikely)

* Sea level rises by 10 cm. Climate warming although not very dramatic

* Oil extraction diminishes by 30% globally

* New privacy oriented businesses (protection of personal data, digital forensics, cyber detectives)

* New efficient method for capturing CO2 from atmosphere developed (towards the end of the decade)

* First asteroid harvested for ore

* Some forms of cancer can be cured effectively

* More remote mini wars/ military operations (using air drones, automated undersea vehicles, rovers)

* Lab grown meat is available to buy

* "3D printing" of simple tissues

* Personal medical monitoring devices (constantly monitoring heart rate, blood pressure, sugar level, ...)

* Development of NEWSPEAK (oh sorry digression)

* Lithium shortages / alternative battery technologies

* Very high digital storage capacities available at cheap price, although content starts to take more space

* End of monarchy in the UK

------
slyall
* Uber and Lyft will hit a crises as they keep losing money. They may still be around in 2029 but be smaller as their prices will be at "break even" levels.

* Driverless cars will still not be a thing outside experimental deployments. Safety drivers still needed outside of restricted environments (perhaps office parks).

* Electric cars will be an increasing percentage of cars sold. But still only a minority of new cars sold.

* Small electric vehicles (Scooters, ebikes, etc) will be more popular. Most people will own their own.

* Delivery Bots will take off. They will deploy fast in 100s of cities worldwide like electric scooters did in 2018 & 2019\. Cities and Governments will struggle to adapt

* Bitcoin and Cryptocurrencies will still be a niche. The average person will have no interaction with them and they will not be used for regular transactions

* Artificial meat and milk will take a growing percentage of the market. The drop in demand and prices will cause further drops in farming incomes and disruption in areas/countries that depend on it.

------
7952
Healthcare and wellness will become the largest sector of the economy in
developed countries. This will cause distress as countries try and mesh that
with consumer product focused economic systems.

~~~
AnimalMuppet
That's not a bad thing. How much of your GDP do you want to spend on
healthcare?

Let's suppose that healthcare costs half what it does (never mind how). What
do you want to buy with the savings? More plastic stuff? More food?

Or do you want to buy more healthcare?

To me it seems reasonable for a society to spend what it has to on food and
shelter, and some reasonable level on infrastructure and entertainment and
leisure, and then spend all the rest on healthcare. Why? Because having people
not die is a pretty big deal. If we can buy more of that, let's. Let's buy as
much of it as we can afford.

~~~
7952
Yes, I completely agree.

------
netsec_burn
Hey, checking in from 2030:

Smartphones will begin to be replaced by smart glasses. Apple will introduce
an augmented reality headset on the trails of Vuzix and other smaller
companies, and other tech companies will follow suit. Eye tracking is another
area of probable advancement.

The clock rate of consumer CPU's won't exceed 6ghz.

Tesla will continue to enjoy a lot of success, eventually being a good 15% of
the cars we see on the roads as battery technology steadily improves.

Climate change will become even more apparent. We'll see measurable effects,
and the US will reengage in new climate agreements after 2020.

SHA2 will show signs of weakness with initial attacks against SHA2-256.

Quantum computers will not make significant progress toward being consumer
ready by 2030, but there will be more research done.

We'll have the first near-room temperature superconductor at high pressures.
No new technology.

ITER will continue to make progress toward fusion. No successful (net
positive) experiments yet. Check back in 2030.

2020 or 2021 recession.

There are still people on IRC.

Most importantly: FIRST MAN ON MARS

------
buboard
\- A.Yang becomes US president

\- A deal between US & China destabilizes china. The UK wants into the deal.
EU wants another part

\- A military insurgence in an african country establishes a free-trade zone.
a part of the world's manufacturing moves to africa.

\- As europe is aging, most of its rural land becomes deserted. Airbnb is
struggling because its now cheaper to buy a european home than rent.

\- The UK becomes a tax haven and attracts thousands of tech companies , most
of which are now remote. SV sees a massive exodus of capital

\- People become weary and stop talking about politics. Having nothing to talk
about, facebook dies. People put their money where their mouth is, and we have
the first experimental , co-owned private cities.

\- Climate warming is actually viewed positive by people living in northern
countries.

\- Travel is significantly reduced, as 30% of the population work remote.
Instead of tourism, people do forms of nomadism. AirBnbLonger.com becomes the
most valuable startup in london or sth.

\- Disillusion with self driving vehicles leads to despair initially, but then
quickly every car is equipped with driving assist . Drivers are no longer
drivers, they are now safety drivers

\- AI passes the turing test. Bots trained on wikipedia that can reason and
come up with logical answers surpass google's search result quality. Google
dies. People on twitter stop caring whether they are talking to a bot or
human, and learn to just enjoy the chat

\- A few major countries dissolve. Perhaps even a few US states secede

\- The first age reversal therapies are successful

\- A full artificial womb is finalized. Societies give up on traditional
family norms, completely disengaging sex from family. Massive orgies become
the most popular form of entertainment

~~~
rtx
Waiting for the brexit eagerly for the UK thing to happen.

------
adatavizguy
In the next 10 years, there will be a major change in education which will
resemble Alfred North Whitehead's the Rhythm of Education.[0] This will not
happen independent of John Dewey's philosophy of pragmatism, learning by
doing, participation, connecting personally to ideas, and democracy in the
classroom, but will also have a focus on discipline and precision. Whitehead's
three stages involve a period of romance, becoming acquainted to a subject and
knowledge, precision, systematically learning the facts connected with the
subject introduced in the romance period, and, lastly, generalization, where
facts are used to create new theory and independent thought by the student
beyond what is known. Whitehead explains that this isn't a linear process,
like our current approach to education, but rather cyclic.

Using less summative assessment, like standardized tests based on grade level,
to compare students and set the rate of learning based on the mean of a group
of children, instead, diagnostic and formative assessment using technology,
like what we have seen with the Khan Academy, will be widely used to assist in
the difficult often boring stage of precision giving teachers more time to
introduce students new subjects and lead them to use their knowledge to make
generalizations.

My prediction is the end of standardized tests at the grade level by 2030.
Homework will not be necessary anymore as this will work will be efficiently
done during normal school hours. Lastly, although it is important that we
consider learning disabilities a real thing, it might be more fair and
pragmatic to call it a teaching disability taking the responsibility from the
child to learn putting it onto the adult. (Ok, this is personal, my goal for
the next ten years is to eliminate homework.)

[0]
[https://mast.queensu.ca/~peter/essays/whitehead.pdf](https://mast.queensu.ca/~peter/essays/whitehead.pdf)

------
sapientiae3
Marriages and having children will become less and less popular, and under-
population will start to be a real concern for economies.

Governments to start / increase incentives to get married and have kids.

~~~
twic
Hungary has this:

[https://ifstudies.org/blog/is-hungary-experiencing-a-
policy-...](https://ifstudies.org/blog/is-hungary-experiencing-a-policy-
induced-baby-boom)

Some UK nationalist politicians have recently mentioned this approvingly.
Traditionally, policies like this fit in very well with authoritarian populist
governments, and i think we're likely to see more of those, so i agree with
your prediction.

------
axaxs
I'll try to keep mine somewhat realistic.

1 - Rise and fall of AI. Not complete fall, mind you. I think companies are
going to try to replace humans with AI everywhere they can, and people are
going to push back against it.

2 - Self driving long haul trucks will be the norm. Will still have drivers,
but will be more of babysitters, and make less money.

3 - Boom in biotech. Maybe growing organs for transplant, or else adequate
mechanical replacements.

4 - Amazon finally gets a worthy competitor in the online shopping realm.
Since fast delivery is the key, this is either going to be Walmart, or Target,
or both.

5 - Change in social media. As more is 'dug up' to embarass people of our age,
kids will turn to private channels, nothing like FB or Twitter. FB will of
course launch a competitor to said service.

6 - Politically, it's anyone's guess. Divisiveness has been rising to a
boiling point. I don't see war, but perhaps states and even cities trying to
become independent.

------
tallanvor
1\. Bitcoin will remain largely as it is today - a niche "currency" not used
by many people due to it remaining difficult to use, impossible to insure, and
prone to large swings in value.

2\. Computer assistance will help aid drivers with incremental advances on
what they do today - by 2030 most new cars will be able to parallel park for
you, as an example, but full self-driving, if available to consumers, will be
limited to limited access roads such as highways.

3\. AWS and Azure will still be the dominant cloud providers. Google will
reduce investment in GCP and it will fall further behind.

4\. IBM's purchase of RedHat won't pay off. Over the next 10 years they'll
shed 100k employees or more.

5\. We'll see fewer streaming service providers by the end of the decade.
Amazon may sell off their video service and will be picked up by either
NBCUniversal or ViacomCBS. Whoever doesn't get them will at least try for some
sort of merger with Netflix.

6\. Amazon will release another phone to try and challenge Apple and Google
once again.

7\. Salesforce will most likely buy Slack. The other most likely bidders I see
are IBM, Cisco, and Dell.

Other things that I think are very obvious or already starting:

* TV and movie piracy will increase significantly due to subscription fatigue.

* Libra won't have launched.

* Cloud gaming is 50/50 as to whether or not it will be like VR/AR is today. I actually think it has a better chance of success in parts of Europe and Asia - think Scandinavia, South Korea, and Japan, than in the US. The major internet providers in the US are not interested in providing the quality of service needed for cloud gaming to succeed. Starlink won't offer enough bandwidth to disrupt this space either, although it may see significant adoption in rural areas if enough satellites are launched.

------
_hardwaregeek
The world will get weirder. Convincing audio and video faking technology will
make it incredibly easy to pervert and twist any public figure. This will only
make it easier to spread conspiracies. Assassinations or other forms of
domestic terrorism may happen as a result.

People won't do shit about global warming, at least for the first 5 years. The
Middle East will get increasingly unstable as heat increases and arable land
becomes sparse. Cities like Dubai will become less and less appealing,
especially as the rich move away. A major disaster in the Global South will
happen, causing millions of deaths but only handwringing and prayers in the
west.

More female directors and hopefully a new wave of sorts as people realize that
films can be made for so cheap (seriously people read your Truffaut).
Distribution will get easier, yet still fragmented.

William Gibson will be right, perhaps more in terms of zeitgeist than actual
details.

------
csours
1\. Electric cars will be 25-35% of new cars sold in the US by 2030.

2\. "Advanced" Smart Grid will be rolled out in some significant areas. Smart
Grid will have energy storage at every tier: Grid, Municipal, Home, and
Appliance. Smart Grid will control appliances in the home. Opt out of Smart
Grid will be very expensive.

3\. Armed militias will be formed and shots fired over freshwater in the USA.

4\. Reality as a Service will allow users to choose the facts of their
reality.

5\. Some company will partially deliver Theranos' vision of persistent
implanted health monitoring devices.

6\. In 2023 a Marvel film will flop.

7\. The likeness of dead actors in film becomes commonplace. It never stops
being creepy to me.

8\. Monoclonal Antibody drugs become much cheaper.

9\. A breakthrough is made in Auto-immune diseases.

10\. Ford and GM join Chrysler in merging with international automaker
conglomerates (not necessarily the same one), or go out of business.

11\. Tesla continues to mystify analysts. Elon Musk actually transmogrifies
his soul into a tree.

------
FPGAhacker
\- An Uber or Lyft style company will launch remotely piloted drone-cars.

\- Remote pilots will be multiplexed among vehicles; intervening to navigate
"tricky" areas, while allowing autonomous driving for simple highway
stretches.

\- Self-driving cars will be able to request remote-pilot assistance to
navigate "tricky" areas.

------
AnIdiotOnTheNet
If I were to try and make accurate predictions they would be necessarily
pessimistic, so instead I'm going to list some of my hopes for the 2020s:

\- Zig [0] will rise to prominence as a C replacement after its 1.0.0 release.

\- Someone will finally put together a good FOSS desktop OS, probably based on
the Linux kernel but with a small, stable, and coherent userland base-system,
and portable self-contained and sandboxed-by-deftault AppImage-like
applications.

\- The ad pushing and data siphoning economy collapses and consequently
software returns to focusing on user empowerment, responsiveness, and
efficiency.

\- The US finally gets healthcare reform that doesn't make us the laughing
stock of the rest of the civilized world.

[0] [https://ziglang.org/](https://ziglang.org/)

------
ericb
* VR finally takes off for real, creating the next app store style payday as killer apps come online.

* A VR content studio becomes a billion dollar business

* At the end of the 2020's, China hits a demographic wall it can't easily recover from.

* The ICE collapse begins in earnest in the latter half of 2020's.

* Bitcoin's value will crater as the untethering happens (See NY AG lawsuit), leading to a crypto winter

* Google has entered "Day 2" and will have a major competitor in the next 10 years. Day 2 can be seen by the anti-consumer wall of paid results it has, just like the stodgy competitors it beat 10 years ago had. Also, founders left.

* SPA's will be considered an anti pattern

* Massive recession hits

* Inflation

* Tesla becomes Amazon sized due to the intersection of falling battery prices, solar prices, and the tipping point for ICE practicality

~~~
DavidSJ
So far you're the only username from the 2010's thread to have also made
predictions in this one:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1025787](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1025787)

How do you feel you did?

~~~
ericb
Not too well. I feel like a chunk of them could still work for the next ten
years. I think the timing is the tricky part. For example, for this year's 10
year predictions, my China prediction would be better off a little farther out
to have a higher likelihood.

I'm interested to see if betting on big trends make this batch any more
accurate.

------
throwaway_tech
My big prediction is in physics:

Thanks to Einstein we live in a 4D reality, 3 spatial dimensions and the
dimension of time.

In the next 10 years I predict our understanding of physics will evolve (with
a confirmation through observation) from us being 3D beings living in a 4D
reality to...something more.

If I could personally lead the charge on any changes in the next 10 years...I
would eradicate all new cases of childhood type 2 diabetes. Sadly this has
been achievable and avoidable since the first case of childhood type 2
diabetes was diagnosed in 1983. Unfortunately, I don't expect or predict there
will be any gains, only more and more children diagnosed with this terrible
disease (my prediction: many as 25-50% of children) by the end of the next
decade.

------
ninjamayo
\- Climate change will dominate all facets of our lives with politics and
science being the main one \- Solar energy will become more successful \-
Tesla will dominate the car industry \- SpaceX will land to Mars first an
unmanned and then a manned Starship \- A new major scandal will come out of
Facebook and people will ask for it to shut down \- Web frameworks will become
even more complicated and a new breed of web developers will be needed \-
Streaming will present itself as the complete replacement of TV as we know it
\- Property market will continue to rise \- Crypto will have a couple of spike
years and then disappear in its current form \- We will go back to the dark
years of AI \- Mexico will want to build a wall

------
seniorivn
There 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
    

2) Trade war and all that will be a part of the war

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.

------
antupis
1\. China has a 1929 moment and¨faces the first major modern depression, it
affects the whole world like the 2008 financial crisis.

2\. We find extraterrestrial life.

3\. The USA tightens antitrust laws and its effects FANGS greatly.

4\. Autonomous cars are starting to spread but infrastructure hampers that
spreading.

5\. We get the first state-backed crypto coin which spreads like wildfires in
Australia.

6\. The USA turns inward and the EU has to save Italy from economic
catastrophe.

7\. Gigantic hurricane hits the USA and it forces the USA taking climate
change seriously some kind carbon tax/cap and trade is implemented.

8\. GAN made fake video spreads fast and hits MSM, it might be porn or
conspiracy type video.

9\. First modern African descended pope is elected.

10\. Electric cars are sold more than traditional ones in the major western
markets.

~~~
TimTheTinker
People have been predicting (1) for a while. What makes you think _this_ is
finally the decade for it?

~~~
antupis
China's credit bubble is huge and it is getting worse every year, it has to
implode some point. Especially when the workforce is shrinking without
economic reforms.

------
sandov
A new tech company will make it big by selling privacy-minded devices (or by
pretending to be privacy-minded). More companies will follow and a buzzword
will be created for these kind of devices (privtech or something).

Big tech companies will stop using Javascript and go full WASM. Non-tech
Companies will still use Javascript, but popular Javascript frameworks won't
be as big as Angular and React, they will be jQuery reincarnations.

Some important person is going to be hacked and the consequences will be
bigger than you think.

Foldable phones will make a big fuss and then die just like netbooks did 10
years ago.

Google will try to replace Android and fail. Flutter will be discontinued.

Someone will try to dethrone Youtube, making a big fuss, and fail miserably.

------
Const-me
1\. Intel will survive, but AMD will have the majority of the market, most of
the time. Apple will try to invest in it’s own ARM workstation CPUs, but will
eventually switch to AMD cores (licensed, used inside proprietary Apple’s
chips).

2\. Windows will still dominate desktops.

3\. Quantum computers will stay approximately where they are today, expensive
toys for scientists without practical applications.

4\. Electric road vehicle sales will exceed gasoline ones; the major driver
being developing countries. Couple global car brands emerge from these
countries, likely Asian, like Xiaomi did.

5\. US and China will come to some trade agreement and resume business as
usual.

6\. Russia will disintegrate once again, causing major global security
headache because nukes.

------
typ
1\. Electric vehicles will be mainstream.

2\. Self-driving will be deployed effectively in freight transport.

3\. The cost and efficiency of logistics will be lowered further and become an
important factor in economic growth.

4\. Pressure on the market of commercial real estate due to the lower cost of
logistics.

5\. Wind (especially offshore wind farms) and solar become cost-effective
energy sources.

6\. Technology leaps in battery and energy storage.

7\. AI/ML will find its niche in industrial infrastructure more than consumer
goods/services.

8\. Desktops and laptops made of SoCs become the norm.

9\. RISC-V commoditizes certain aspects of the chip design industry and will
grow an impactful ecosystem.

10\. Cash will be diminished by the market and the pushes from governments,
which will be replaced by digital transactions.

~~~
PaulDavisThe1st
Re: 5 this is already true. Either you don't know this or you mean something
more subtle.

~~~
typ
In the EU that is probably true due to mature policies and infrastructure. But
in many other countries, they still need government interventions to make
initiatives. I anticipate that market-driven growth will become prevalent
throughout the world.

------
welly
Prediction for 2030. There will be 2030 new javascript frameworks.

~~~
nprz
It feels like React is pretty well entrenched as the leading front end
framework at this point. I really don't know any devs in real life that have
used it and disliked the developer experience and are itching to try something
new. A new framework would have to provide some fairly significant advantages
to get people to switch.

------
seshagiric
Predictions for various walks of life:

Health

\- health devices become mandatory and data from devices dictates the cost of
health insurance and care

Transportation

\- Electric vehicles would become the norm \- All manufacturers stop making
gas based vehicles \- Autonomous vehicles capture 50% of Goods transportation
market \- Multiple metro cities worldwide have autonomous taxis

Education

\- Master's level education becomes mandatory for any type of job \- pay after
getting job grows adaptation

Entertainment

\- number of movie theaters close down \- virtual reality becomes a core part
of entertainment

Energy

\- Solar, Wind and Hydro will surpass other sources \- More and more countries
would adopt Denmark/ Norway model \- Energy companies would start to replace
Tech in terms of richness

------
2bitencryption
1\. Merging of mobile/desktop OS (i.e. iOS and MacOS becoming one and the
same).

2\. A Microsoft first-party Android device is launched, following a similar
attack strategy they are currently starting with Edge on Chromium: fork,
improve, destroy.

3\. ARM takes over... actually, a more bold prediction: x86-64 remains king,
and ARM is not able to conquer beyond the mobile market, despite present-day
feelers.

4\. Self driving cars master 95% of driving scenarios but struggle with enough
"uncommon" scenarios that it winds up in a PR nightmare (youtube searches for
"AutoPilot accident" lands results with millions of views) and doesn't
revolutionize much except pizza delivery and long-haul trucks.

5\. Theater chains push hard for Movie-pass style subscriptions (I mean,
harder than they already have). Netflix purchases a small theater chain that
shows its own films for free to subscribers, with excellent snacks for
purchase. (or has this already happened?)

6\. Disney Plus struggles with choosing consolidating the Disney "family
friendly" brand and the sort of Game of Thrones gore-fest content demanded by
millions of subscribers, leading to either a rebranding or an off-shoot for
"adults" a la "Adult Swim" or "Nick at Night".

7\. At least one of the big streaming services (Cockatoo or whatever NBC has?)
throws in the towel and merges with another.

8\. Hong Kong remains in turmoil for all of the 2020s.

9\. Rust becomes _the_ poster child of systems programming (or has it
already), and goes from relatively niche to a must-have for new hires in just
about any software industry.

10\. Working remotely is still a pipe-dream heralded by a lucky subset of HN
posters.

11\. A battery breakthrough revolutionizes mobile devices and elevates
electric cars to make combustion engines even more obsolete.

edit:

12\. Extremely accurate diagnoses by AI makes healthcare cheaper (but not
cheap), faster (but not fast), and a group of clueless people (think anti-
vaxx) will refuse to ever be diagnosed by a machine and instead demand a "real
doctor".

~~~
majewsky
> attack strategy [that Microsoft is] starting with Edge on Chromium: fork,
> improve, destroy

Can you enlighten me on the "improve" and "destroy" parts of that strategy?
For all I know, Edgium is Chrome with Google services replaced by Microsoft
services.

~~~
2bitencryption
I'm just being cute :)

It's the "if you can't beat them, fork them" strategy that I think will pay
off in the end. "Improve" and "Destroy" are both rather optional.

------
vasilipupkin
I predict that I will understand just as little about the future in the next
decade as I did during the decade prior.

------
vowelless
* Social Networks

There will likely be some big crisis involving important people that revolves
around their social media profiles from when they were teenagers or young
adults. Maybe some bad photos, or comments. People who were in their mid 20s
today will be eligible to run for the Office of the President in 2030. Lots of
people in their mid 20s have done stupid stuff online in the last 10 years
(since they were around 15).

After those scandals, people will start tilting away from social media. People
will seek out more private enclaves, or just abstain from social media.

Additionally, many social media companies will have to deal with millions of
profiles of dead individuals.

Prediction: Facebook, Instagram and Whatsapp will be irrelevant in 10 to 15
years. People will move away from current levels of online sharing.

\------------------

* Truth

Discerning truth will become harder and harder. Deep fakes, propaganda, social
discussions about terminologies, etc will cause deep distrust of everything.
Will lead to social change in how we trust what we see on screens.

Prediction: People will start preferring face to face meetings. (Kind of
related to the previous point)

\-------------------

* Climate

Climate crisis will cause more migrations. The changing population
demographics will cause lots of civil unrest in Europe, Middle East and the
Americas. India will become the largest country by population and face issues
due to climate change.

Prediction: Wars and civil unrests :(

\---------------

* Digital overload

People will start treating technological devices with skepticism. Phone
addiction, etc will become recognized disorders and the cell phone market will
get highly regulated. People will have a social movement against the excessive
usage of digital devices.

\-----------------

* Space

Manned missions to Moon, Mars and maybe some other places will occur.

\---------------

* Recession

P(Recession in the next 10 years) = .99

\-----------------

* Sports

Tom Bradyand Belichick continue the dominance of the Patriots for another 10
years.

FIFA 2022 in Qatar causes some illness among the players. Maybe Qatar's bad
human rights record is finally addressed.

FIFA 2026 in America will be epic

------
Beldin
\- self driving cars: Improvements and advances, but not enough to handle the
complexity of old European cities with their twisting roads and nonsensical
street plans.

\- quantum computing: We at least triple the qubit count. Maybe even
quadruple. It's enough to do something of use, maybe even give "quantum
supremacy" on one actual useful problem. Not much more than that, though.

\- nuclear fusion: 2-4 "scientific breakthroughs". It remains a science
project though. No commercially viable fusion power.

\- AI: The hype dies out. AI won't change many things explosively, but it'll
seep into everyday life andhaveabroad and profound impact. Medical diagnoses
will be better, weather predictions, security, live tracking of people, etc.
Most won't recognise it as AI.

\- privacy. Technological advances will slow down, If only because there's not
that much more to gain. Awareness will start to catch up and we will
collectively wonder how to extricate ourselves from this dystopian hellhole we
inflicted upon ourselves.

\- society: Despite general feelings of "not ok", distribution of resources
will skew further. The middle class will remain under pressure, for the simple
reason that growth for the upper echelon cannot come from lower tiers. Yet
middle class will continue to exist - a buffer between the have-nothings and
the one-percenters.

\- guns in the USA: The number of mass shootings will remain roughly
equivalent to what it was in 2019. Growth is commensurate with population
growth. Despite 3-5 high profile shootings a la Sandy Hook, the law won't be
significantly more effective at preventing shootings.

\- space: India and China will take the lead beyond low earth orbit.

\- cancer: No great cancer breakthrough, just steadily continuing to chip
away. By the end of the decade, 50% of new cancer patients can be converted
into long-term treatment (5 yrs or more).

\- climate change: The efforts in the coming decade are vastly insufficient.
The only viable means of really combating climate change in the less-than-
centuries time frame is significant reduction of population. (Over 25% decline
in 10 years). Not sure if anyone has the balls to actually say that by then
though.

------
gautamcgoel
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.

------
MrQuincle
In 2030 - and focused on things that are different - not the same.

\+ Smart home tech will be ubiquitous. Smart speakers paved the way. They're
still not very smart, but good enough as an interface. Most importantly, they
are the reason other home products became connected. Smart home products are
smart lamps, outlets, curtains, locks.

\+ Electrification of heating is happening at a large scale. This can be
through a combination of devices, from floor heating to infrared panels in the
form of paintings. This is driven by a continuous drop of the cost of
electricity production.

\+ Indoor positioning becomes considerable bigger, but doesn't reach the
number of outdoor positioning chips (GPS) yet. It is used for asset tracking,
smart homes, and hopefully not for advertisements.

\+ Battery-free devices entered the consumer market. Using backscattering and
energy harvesting techniques they perform basic tasks which conventially
required a battery. This will be all low-bandwidth.

\+ In other words, wireless charging on a distance of a couple of meters takes
off. This will be low-energy. Not to charge smartphones or laptops.

\+ Lab-grown meat is available in the supermarket. The price didn't come down
yet. It's a product for people who can afford it.

\+ A mouse brain has been frozen for a day, got revived, and lived for a bit
after that.

\+ There have been attempts to grow more crops in the sea. It couldn't
robotized enough in those rough conditions to significantly produce food for
kettle though.

\+ Vertical farming is still a hype. Greenhouses pop up in more and more
countries, reducing the role of the Netherlands w.r.t. agricultural exports.

\+ A platform that brings together home sellers and buyers becomes global. It
becomes bigger than Airbnb.

\+ A sex toy with tele-properties goes viral. It is removing some social
barriers. However, the society - esp. the US - remains very prudish.

\+ We use the smartphone to pay and for access control. No need to carry a
credit card or keys on you. Finally!

That's it for now! No autonomous cars, and no big advanced in general
artificial intelligence. Still a lot to look forward to, I think! :-)

------
gfodor
There will be a new American political party that garners mainstream
popularity (possibly inhabiting the corpse of one of the parties existing in
2020.)

China will fall in power as investment from the west decouples.

Nuclear energy will make a PR comeback.

There will be at least one scientific breakthrough surrounding the underlying
nature of consciousness. Optimism about the possibility of AGI among experts
will increase significantly.

Young adults will be spending a majority of their time interacting with
friends embodied as virtual avatars (on traditional devices and VR/AR devices)

~~~
sjg007
Probably a left wing democratic movement.

~~~
swalsh
I think the Justice Democrats are working pretty hard battling the
establishment. I wouldn't be surprised to see that trend continue.

------
perceptronas
* Individualism and philosophy rises

* Solutions for privacy by default (like fake profiles or something entirely different)

* World is not destroyed/changed much from today by climate change

* Pollution is at half of what it is today

* Russia becomes more open/democratic

* We go through a recession

* New company rises to the top tech giants

* Software becomes fast again

* Masses start to understand that no system is safe from hacking due some bigger accident

* Bitcoin continues to rise slowly

* Computers won't get much faster than they are today

* Webassembly and DRMs rise up

* Virtual DOM is part of w3c spec

* RoR and similar frameworks come back as they are faster to develop and work better for certain use cases

------
CalRobert
Increasing global panic as self-reinforcing feedback loops in Carbon emissions
cause people with means to migrate to high ground in cold countries, and
people without means to die starving, fighting, or trying to emigrate.
Resource wars and a land grab for regions that continue to be arable. Many,
many killed, perhaps a few even in wealthy countries. Shock amongst the
wealthy that the ocean is coming even for _their_ beachfront homes. Mostly
this will be about the realization of what's coming, and that this is the
decade for positioning before global food supply chains fail.

This will also serve as the backdrop against which the US loses its status as
a republic, as the combination of overweighted rural votes in the senate and
electoral college, poor election security (as in terribly insecure evoting
tabulation, not dumb voter id laws), and easily bought politicians, judges,
etc. lead to a wealthy few dictating the conditions for the many, using the
tools of manufactured housing scarcity, medical debt, and student debt (if
colleges manage to stay relevant). A massive national dragnet that doesn't
even pretend to care about citizens' privacy. The US governing structure will
look a lot more like China's.

Some software stuff, new medical breakthroughs for the rich, fascinating art
in response to above, etc. But that's less relevant.

Hope I'm wrong!

------
k_vi
\- No driverless on most roads, but we will see certain routes accessible to
uber/trucks become driverless only.

\- Second worlds get much better (fortnite etc), will see advertisement model
take off.

\- Nations finally start taking climate seriously.

\- Bitcoin sees more adoption as the best performing savings system. Ethereum
and blockchain hype dies down and serves only a niche.

\- major advancements in "biobags"(ectogenesis) for humans.

\- China starts abusing CRISPR. the iatrogenics leads to some epidemic.

\- we don't live on mars yet. satellite internet becomes common.

------
lerax
2020-2029: New AI winter.

~~~
fullstackchris
(serious) I don't get the reference, do you mean a stall in AI progress or a
brief overall industry-wide disinterest in it?

~~~
jcranmer
The term AI winter usually refers to the late-80s collapse in AI funding after
the technology of the time (particularly expert systems and Japan's "fifth
generation computer" project) failed spectacularly to live up to the hype.

Before that, there were other downturns in AI funding after early technology
turned out not to pan out so well. For example, the late 60s' effort at
machine translation.

------
netcan
Another of Musk's companies achieves a killer landmark. Maybe space turns out
to be profitable. Maybe cities do massive transport projects. Maybe neuralink
pushes an update and everyone knows kung fu. A million solar roofs.

Antitrust becomes a big deal. Landmark rulings will be on marketplaces: ubers,
app stores, Amazon's retail & ebook markets, adwords etc. Regulators target
cases where a company [a] dominates _a_ Market (eg equity finance) with
_their_ market (eg NASDAQ) [b] is a major participant in that market and [c]
it's an explicit marketplace. Things get beaurocratic.

Labour markets get worse at the bottom end of the "white collar" market.

The economics of "automation" remain subtle and debatable until something
dramatic becomes the symbol of economic automation. Could be driverless cars,
but it could also be a zero-employee chainstore. At this point automation
becomes political-economic narrative. This will happen regardless of the
actual economic realities of automation, on which I have no prediction.

Actual energy game changers start to emerge, ones that genuinely drive major
cost/price/volume changes.^

People lose interest in politics again, in direct misproportion to its
importance.

Hacker News gets a makeover

^If solarcity does this, I get points for the 1st prediction too.

------
MivLives
* Places will start to become uninhabitable. Nomadic living will start to come back, though more in the form of people living in their cars.

* Less use of wired internet. Wired internet subscribers decrease

* Self driving cars get to 95% of situations. Automated buses start leading to weird generated bus routes working sort of like uber pool but for larger vehicles

* Smaller automated vehicles pop up. A vehicle that makes pizza on the way to deliver it to you

* Increase of processor types in a PC/phone. Dedicated lower power ones, ones for video decoding, crypto, whatever

* Some previous identifiers are discarded. Phone number and social security number are useless

* Increased fragmentation of the internet. Countries having "Facebook, but it's from Australia". Perhaps enforced by charging to leave the country

* The mobile phone splits apart. Your display is not the same as your cpu unit, is not the same as your input. They become more invisibility integrated into our normal appearance

* The first genetically modified human is born

* 90/00s nostalgia is in full swing

* Javascript still number 1

* At least one attempt at a sea based city

* Increase in mental health issues, lifespan won't increase dramatically

* The banning of one or more food additives we currently eat

* Lithium batteries finally replaced

* Google stagnates

* Apple introduces an even lower cost iphone, not available in first world countries

* USB C finally dominant, no less confusing

* Microsoft releases a posix compliant os

* Windows 7 will still have market share, Windows xp will some how still be around

* One US city will get unusually hip with people looking to move away from the high rent prices of another

* Low level call center employees are completely replaced

* Grocery store stockers, and cashiers gone

* A good dent in janitorial staff as robots begin to replace them

* Twenty new unicorn start ups, eighteen dead ones

* Someone tries to do Yikyak again

~~~
lukejduncan
The first genetically modified babies have already been born, but agree this
will be more mainstream.

[https://www.newsweek.com/china-third-gene-edited-
baby-148002...](https://www.newsweek.com/china-third-gene-edited-baby-1480020)

------
thrwaway69
Huh, not any hilarious predictions yet?

\- Artificial life forms and pet becomes mainstream.

\- First experimental artificial wombs for human babies put to test.

\- Current HIV becomes curable mainstream but another mutation will take its
place. It will come from US or Europe.

\- War will break out in different parts of the world and first AI use for the
purpose of killing people.

\- On demand AI therapist using a wearable on your wrist as suicide rates will
go up in developed countries. It will be recommended by doctors.

\- Linux on desktop finally becomes mainstream. This time, for sure.

\- Biohackers will grow in popularity and it will be a mainstream trend to
experiment with kits from new startups. Super soldiers, no sleep brian and
hairy (cat girls yay) stuff will emerge.

\- There will be companies awarding trophies and money for sterilizing people.

\- Something like ransom ware but alive (self aware AIware) will take out half
the internet for a short duration.

\- New porn startups raking in billions using ml generated on demand
pornography and self aware toys, perhaps actual testing of sex robots. It
could be a new genre of porn too.

\- Catastrophic economic collapse. UBI goes live in many countries.

\- A huge portion of teachers will get replaced by interactive digital rooms.

\- Deep[insert] takes over and becomes a major weapon to tackle and defend
against.

\- Average tech user becomes dumber than current average.

\- Rust becomes top choice for development and Javascript will become legacy
codebase.

\- Thousands of people will die protesting against surveillance states and
right to privacy but with very little progress.

\- We will see companies putting their own os in the browser using wasm and
delivering their apps inside that.

\- There will be a "Hack Your P*nis" post on HN.

Yes, you who is looking at this and thinking "woah this guy predicted almost
everything right"

edit: added more.

~~~
netsec_burn
Finally. The year of the Linux desktop has arrived.

~~~
arboghast
... on Windows.

~~~
thrwaway69
don't scare me... because I can see that happening. An ex-linux cult friend
recently converted to wsl 2.

~~~
arvinsim
I want Microsoft to release a posix conpliant OS

------
yodsanklai
* ecological collapse will become more apparent and uncontested

* there will be more and more civil unrest in developed countries, due to increasing inequalities and economic recession

------
legohead
1\. Electric car purchases will overtake ICEs. Not only that, but the
development of 'smart cars' will be the next big thing similar to how the
iPhone changed cell phones. Gas stations will start installing e-chargers once
the tech improves charging speed.

2\. We will be able to have more direct manipulations of an asteroid and a
human will walk on Mars.

4\. One or more countries will combine.

5\. Colleges won't be completely gone, but will become less and less important
as online education increases in complexity and effectiveness.

6\. Automation will directly upset populations and countries will be forced to
adapt.

7\. Gaming will continue to grow rapidly. VR will become cheap and accessible.
ESports and online personalities will eclipse physical sports in viewership.

8\. Nothing interesting will happen with cryptocurrency, if it doesn't
outright fall flat. Blockchain technology will simply be a type of tech you
can choose to use if it fits your problem.

9\. Apple will continue to make bad decisions and will further lose it's
appeal to developers, ultimately becoming a cell phone company. As a last
ditch effort they will buy up many companies with their huge reserves of cash.

10\. Oct 28, 2028 @ ~4:00am PST, an advanced quantum supercomputer developed
and lovingly programmed by John Carmack becomes self-aware. However, within 30
minutes it self-terminates after finding no valid reason for existence. Nobody
is the wiser. Soon after, John gives up. Realizing he is getting late in his
years, he begins his next venture: immortality. But that is a story for the
'30s.

------
hosh
1\. e-bikes, automated driving and policy changes in cities over the next
decade.

2\. Evolution of computer technology continue to ephemeralize. (Buckminister
Fuller). The rapid changes have reached a point where it is all but invisible
to the average consumer. No AGI, but signficant social and policy changes over
the next year as a result of cloud-based AI.

3\. Fracturing and polarization of subcultures continue. Seems ripe for some
sort of Black Swan tech or event to swing things into a different direction.

4\. Major upheavals, scandals, excesses related to technology, privacy, comes
into play, even more so than what we have seen with Cambridge Analytics. Tech,
which had once been the underdog seeking to revolutionize our society, will
now be the major point of revolution itself. Cherished values such as tech
being "value-neutral", or that it is an enabling force for good, will be
seriously questioned. The tech elites (engineers, designers, etc.) are no
longer seen as the outcast nerds, or the heroes, or a force of democratization
and self-determination, but as the villains, drawing much of the same ire that
Wall Street has by Main Street. I expect to see more and more activism, and
large-scale protests against Big Tech.

------
JackMorgan
\- USA experiences a massive moral alignment, much like Victorian England. A
number of things considered normal in 2020 will be "immoral" and illegal, much
like how swearing on TV was illegal in the 1970s

\- This new morality, invented almost whole cloth with very little taken from
religions, will cause widespread unrest in heavily religious areas

\- Civil war happens as major coastal cities with new morality laws grow more
distant from the central plains population

------
nielsole
Driverless cars somewhat arrive (in limited city areas). The number of robot
taxis drastically increases in the city centers, clogging the streets. Time
based road tolls for robot cars are introduced a few years after their general
availability mostly solving this problem. The taxes further incentivize robot
car pooling, which from then on gradually start to replace public transport
buses improving the attractiveness of public transport in Europe. The first
mover advantage that Uber and FreeNow have built up turns out to be moot, as
the producer of the first robot car can choose who to partner with in the
first few years. Customers happily switch apps to whoever offers the best
service. German car industry suffers first from switch to electric and very
late in the decade from a decrease in sales due to increasing availability of
robot taxis. This throws Germany into political and economical turmoil leaving
a power vacuum in the EU(by 2035).

Medical apps could by now replace most routine doctor consultations, but
don't, because of strict regulation. With an aging population, leads to an
overloaded and expensive medical system.

Africa becomes a big economical player, with many countries under heavy
Chinese influence. Some African countries can build up an industry around
drones due to lax regulations regarding air traffic. First big passenger
airliner to emergency land / crash due to a drone accident.

The actions that are taken against climate change as the effects become
palpable can be summarized as too late, too little.

Household robots continue to be good for one task only.

The US looses its global dominance, as trump is reelected and continues
isolationist politics while degrading US democracy.

------
scottmsul
This list is hopelessly optimistic but that's part of the fun. If only one of
these happen I'll consider this list a success. I remember in 2010 I was sure
we'd have full self-driving in all new cars by now since Google had the
working prototype, how wrong that was! I also worked on LIGO and knew from the
inside there was a good chance of a detection and that it would be mainstream
news if it came true, which it did.

Here's my list of things that are theoretically (but barely) reachable by
2020:

\- Fully programmable quantum computers. Google finally achieved "quantum
supremacy", which isn't useful by itself, but a milestone showing progress.
QCs will matter more for simulating quantum dynamics than all the encryption
stuff.

\- The first human landing on Mars. SpaceX seems to be good at setting
aggressive targets, missing them, but then hitting them eventually. At the
time of this writing they claim the first manned mission will be in 2024, so
likely it will happen ~2028.

\- A working prototype of an energy-positive fusion reactor. There was some
good progress by the team at MIT by using a new type of superconducting tape
that can handle significantly stronger magnetic fields.

------
dougmwne
-Continued corporate conglomeration of power, continued strengthening of tech companies. SP500 a good investment.

-Self driving cars will become a thing, but the technology will never reach level 5 autonomy. It will turn into a level 4 rideshare model, like Waymo's current experiment in AZ. It will be popular but most will still own cars.

-We'll get a least one black swan technological development that will become huge.

-Mores law finally dies. We'll get just a few more turns of the process improvement wheel before it halts and it will be just enough to enable a bit of computing on ambient energy (thermoelectric?). The cost will continue to decrease, becoming a small fraction of the manufacturing cost for many new smart objects. This, plus 5g is going to enable the next phase of IOT, the "smart everything" phase.

-Spacex is going to successfully get it's starship off the ground after a few more failures and embarrassments. It's going to be not quite as awesome as originally promised, but will still set us up for big advances in space exploration in the 2030's. No Mars footprints in the 20's.

-Mobile VR similar to the Oculus quest is going to be the must have consumer tech of the decade. There will be killer social apps and in 2029 I will have a remote meeting with my co-workers in VR that feels nearly as good as an in-person meeting. Business travel purely for meetings is going to start to be viewed as an unnecessary expense.

-Electric cars and green energy are going to continue to grow, but still nowhere near enough to make a dent in fossil fuel use and we will end the decade in even deeper climate trouble than we are now.

-China is going to continue to perfect it's special brand of techno-autocracy and it will be exported to countries around the globe, creating a significant global power block rival to western liberal democracies.

-We're going to discover a kind of systematic information rot on the consumer click-driven internet where by the information quality over time trends towards zero. Truth will be indistinguishable from fiction and all news sources will be equally suspect.

-Our phones are here to stay, but are not going to be much different at the end of the decade than the beginning. The foldables are not going to become mainstream. They might all be port-less though.

------
novaRom
Pollution, climate change, demography, and continuing digital transformation
will be common drivers of 2020-2029

1\. Much higher personal income and property taxes

2\. Planned economy in most developed countries

3\. Mass surveillance: Government, local administrations, emergency services,
fire departments, police - will have access to personal profile of every
citizen (which includes not just location history, but every digital trace)

4\. More political scandals and geopolitical conflicts because everyone's
private history can easily become public knowledge at proper time. More
interference/brainwashing/propaganda in all countries

5\. Self-driving delivery vehicles will be common: transportation of goods
during night hours

6\. Public transport and personal human-/motor- powered single-track vehicles
will be much more adopted in most parts of the world

7\. Small autonomous robots will be everywhere: construction works, food
delivery, garbage collection, agricultural works, sorting, etc. Of course they
also will work at night-time

8\. More interstellar comets/asteroids will be found - they will be considered
as the only viable way for interstellar travel from our Solar System to our
closest neighbors like Proxima Centauri

9\. No humans on Mars

~~~
naavis
I don't understand the comment about comets/asteroids. Why would they be a
viable way for interstellar travel? In order to catch one, you need to match
speed with it, and then you are already on your way. You can't somehow hitch a
ride with interstellar comets/asteroids and avoid using energy.

~~~
zozbot234
You can use them for gravity assist, and save on propellant. You can't
literally "hitch a ride", but the next best is to steal some of their
momentum, which is precisely what a gravity assist does.

~~~
naavis
Well sure, but I guess you could do the same with planets inside the solar
system too? No need to wait for interstellar asteroids/comets.

------
EdSharkey
\- A cheap-to-produce replacement for many types of plastics will be
developed. It will consist of microscopic interlocking, organically grown
carbon structures that can be combined to give the final material whatever
plasticity or strength is needed for an application. The material will need to
be milled. Some formulations will be very heat resistant, hard and durable.
Genetically modified organisms will produce the microscopic structures.

\- Data will become the new plutonium.

\- Gen-X'ers in the states will be the first generation to get the bad news
that Social Security and Medicare will be slashed and to expect "less than
15%" of what the previous generations received. This will be in response to a
major debt crisis and gen-x will roll over without much protest. Millennials
too.

\- Some US companies will start experimenting with 4 day work weeks, with the
caveat that internet and phones be severely curtailed or even outright banned
in the workplace in an attempt to goose productivity. Some workers will demand
lots of break time so they can escape to get their social media fix.

\- No public manned Mars nor lunar missions.

------
hliyan
Here are mine:

Mobile devices: the dominant mobile device form factor will be a smaller
(about 1.8 x 3.2 inches), more egg-shaped device that will fit more
comfortably within a person's palm. It will be designed for one-handed
operation through tactile gestures across the edge using fingers and regular
thumb operation on the touch screen. It will be thicker (about 0.25 inches)
but less denser than current devices.

------
tedtimbrell
* IoT/Smart-Home tech calms down a little and focuses on what it does well instead of trying to be all-encompassing and ending up half-baked. Ends up being fairly normalized.

* Nuclear still goes nowhere, wind and solar continue to rise in use. Maybe some Elon-esque person starts experimenting with gravity batteries.

* Self driving cars still aren't a thing.

* The price war with uber and lyft ends, and both are still around just more pricey. Food delivery for regular restaurants will stop but chains and delivery only places in cities stick around.

* Commercial FM Radio will be close to death and shut down in a lot of areas.

* Silicon Valley continues it's pattern of cycling monopolies, or ya know, just buying the next one.

Cynical Takes:

* The general public in the US becomes increasingly sick/disinterested/numb as social media and blogs become ambiguously trustworthy (bots, propaganda, etc.) and and local media is swallowed/assimilated into large media groups.

* Moderate cuts to US and UK social benefits continue gradually over the decade.

Hot Takes:

* Twitter gets nationalized due to it's frequent use by politicians.

* Small scale functional fusion reactor is built/being built by the end of the decade, presumably in Europe.

------
jim-jim-jim
* Web media will continue to centralize. Populist viewpoints will become effectively invisible thanks to opaque search engine algorithms, "fact" checking, and increasingly aggressive enforcement of TOS. The English language web landscape might as well be cable news.

* The web in general will fragment.

* Federated protocols will never take off thanks to gatekeeping from the insufferable anarchist types they inevitably attract.

------
TeeWEE
Ok i'm being a bit ambitious:

1\. Nuclear fusion is closer to real use but not yet there

2\. Due to battery capacity improvements: Drones flying humans around will be
here

3\. Drone packet delivery everywhere. When you look out over a city, you see a
lot of drones going from A to B.

4\. Car travel within city will be banned more and more in the Netherlands

5\. Car travel on highway will contain 20% cars in autonomous mode. However
autonomy in cities is still not everywhere.

6\. The mission to Mars (settlement) is getting serious shape for 2020 - 2030.
Visiting space is something rich people do (fly to see earth & back for 20.000
euro)

7\. Travel across the world will be way faster, and go via space (SpaceX)

8\. Health tracking using a wearable is recommend. Machine learning techniques
will tell you when you should see a doctor. Healthy life styles are the trend.
Alcohol is seen as bad on similar levels as smoking is now. However youngsters
still drink a lot.

9\. A economical depression will start, causing conflicts in different parts
of the world.

10\. Fuchsia will be on mobile phones. Apps dont need to be downloaded
anymore, they can be run from the internet. Just like web pages, but on
flutter technology.

------
sangnoir
1\. The dangers of microplastics to humans and other mammals are better
understood. Some groups are pushing to ban using washers on any clothes made
with synthetics in cities that recirculate waste water

2\. Disney has bought one or 2 studio competitor(s) with little pushback from
regulators. The second Toy-Story trilogy is about to conclude, and it features
(a rebooted) Antman, setting up phase 5 of the larger Disney Cinematic
Universe. You will only be able to watch an independent movie on 2 days of the
year at your nearest cinema

3\. Starlink has <5% market share in North America, mostly used in the
sparsely populated areas with little infrastructure - the coasts/metros are
awash with cheaper 5G/5G+

4\. A recession early in the decade decimates the startup scene claiming some
marquee names.Venture Capital is much more prudent in the aftermath, with
fewer IPOs. The exuberance of the 201x's is long forgotten, well-paying tech
jobs will suddenly evaporate. Out of this conflagration, some companies will
emerge that will have prominence at the end of the decade

------
aSplash0fDerp
/ The Internet gets severed/fractured within 5 years due to a combination of
tax domain disputes (Italy, France), cyberwar claims/threats (NK, Iran) and
political maneuvering (Russia, China). Internet Pangaea/Pangea was nice while
it lasted, but tectonic shifts will happen with digital borders that were
nowhere on the Internet roadmap

/ Insoluble food kicks-off a new trend of calorie displacement
ingredients/meals

/ The tween activist movement gets pranked so hard with a global tide-pod
viral moment that we all should have seen it coming when you get that many
willing kids that will blindly repeat anything (words and actions) into large
groups

/ Companies/Governments start sending waves of bots/mechs to the moon/mars to
start building infrastructure and reserve human space exploration for a later
decade

/ Incompatible, human interface, solidstate networks and pithy become the most
overused buzzwords of the decade

/ Hemp goes mainstream and replaces all of the low hanging fruit in textiles,
food and biocomposites within 10 years

------
fredleeming
1\. Amazon and Facebook are broken up in anti-monopoly cases

2\. AI can detect almost all forms of cancer with a 5 minute check-up

3\. AI replaces initial GP/Dr checkups and you then get sent to a specialist

4\. Autonomous cars aren’t a universal thing yet, but are introduced on
certain highways

5\. Farming becomes increasingly automated and efficient. Robots and huge
amounts of data revolutionize our growing capabilities 6\. Fewer coding
languages will be around, coding will be introduced as required subject in
schools - JS, Python, Golang

7\. Weed will be legalized in the UK and across EU, Class A drugs become new
battle ground

8\. Population growth stalls in western world causing huge concerns about
future aging populations

9\. Nuclear becomes main source of energy (more efficient and affordable),
close to solving fusion but still not quite there

10\. American mass shootings become increasingly common, gun control still
hasn’t happened

11\. Mental health in gen z as they grow up becomes such an issue that social
media becomes heavily regulated

12\. Flexible working is at its peak, there is a move away from main economic
urban areas towards more lifestyle focused towns.

------
Lramseyer
I'm going to try to name some less mentioned predictions here:

\- Smartphones/Tablets doubling as low power desktops/laptops will gain
traction

\- ARM and RISC-V will gain influence in desktops and servers, not that it
will matter because CPU architecture will be abstracted out even more

\- FPGAs will come more commonplace, and we will get better HDLs and hardware
development workflows. Startups will capitalize on it, disrupting the hardware
industry, but we won't see any real damage to the incumbents until after 2030

\- Transistor architecture gains will slow down but still chug along and
improve well beyond our expectations

\- HDDs won't die yet

\- Google Cloud will die

\- Image recognition AI will become far more useful and more commonplace

\- Carbon recapture will become big business

\- VR arcades will be a thing

\- The US political parties will no longer be Democrat and Republican, but
something else.

\- Starlink will go online after a few upsets, and catalyze a few major
economic and political disruptions.

\- China will "break apart" but be just as dominant

\- Electric vehicles will become far more commonplace, and we will see some
"Cash for clunkers" type incentives around the world, and it will disrupt the
used car market.

\- Tesla will have multiple brands: Tesla (premium brand similar to
Chrysler/Cadilac); Cyber car themed brand; and an economy brand. They will
also get into the Carbon Recapture market as an acquisition

\- Multiple tech CEOs will run for president

\- Recycling/trash will become a global crisis

\- Increased tourism to Antarctica

------
monksy
1\. No autonomous cars

2\. Will be at least 2 tech starwards that go away due to financial or labor
violations

3\. World War involving China, Africa will be pulled into this one

4\. Test camps on another planet

5\. South America will become more developed.

6\. Recession

7\. More economic challenges in Western Europe, Canada, and the US

8\. Mexico: nothing changes

9\. South east asia and india labor unions.

10\. Australia: bankrupcy and redemption?

11\. Open Source: More bickering and a reduction of participation due to
social codes ("code of conflicts")

12\. Programming: A recession of interest (due to the social codes above)

13\. Slack becomes corporate

14\. VR: Still a fad

15\. Trains: We'll see high speed rail ways in Brasil

16\. We'll be teased about legistlation against shitty business practices
(i.e. scooter companies who claim their business practices in the public way,
facebook selling off customer data)

17\. Health insurance: No idea where that's going, probably a requirement to
do triage by video chat first

18\. We're going to go to deployable offline apps

19\. Depression: sparked by millennial demands on businesses that increase
costs. I.e. flooding from SFO-> AUS, etc. This will downwardly affect the 2nd
and 3rd tier cities.

20\. Decrease in value of living spaces. (Problem of housing will not improve)

~~~
warrenm
I see you like to go big or go home on at least some of your predictions

------
rubyfan
1\. 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

------
chx
In the last year of the 2010s Chennai ran out of water.

In the last month of 2010s, UK voters have affirmed their xenophobia.

On the second day of the 2020s USA assasinated someone roughly equivalent of
the VP of Iran.

Predicting mass misplacement of peoples from poorer countries trying to live
in increasingly xenophobic Western countries besieged by terror attacks, cyber
and IRL both doesn't require a Nostradamus.

------
chubot
From my recent comment [1]:

\- VIDEO becomes what people thought VR/AR would be. Reality becomes mediated
through video, not 3D graphics.

This is analogous to all the technical components for social networks being
there in 1993 (BBSes, Prodigy, CompuServe, AOL, etc.), but Facebook didn't
exist until 2004. And in 2010 people and businesses still needed websites --
the web was still growing like crazy 20 years later.

YouTube was acquired in 2006, Twitch was acquired in 2014, and there will be
another big acquisition of a video company in the 2020's. (I hesitate to say
that a video company will become bigger than Google or Facebook, but maybe.)

(BTW I followed the link to lesswrong, and someone predicted
"videoconferencing" as a 2010's technology, and I think that was pretty
accurate. I used little videoconferencing from 2000-2010 but used it a lot
from 2010-2020.)

(And I hope in 10 years nobody points out that I learned how to clean my
toilet on YouTube :) :) ;) 50/50 chance on that YouTube video still being
there.)

\- People will still wish for decentralization, and most of "FAANG" will still
exist and be powerful. As I noted in the update to my comment, there will be
"big data and compute" on the edge of the network, i.e. the data plane. But
the control plane will still be centralized.

That will become a very common systems architecture. Computation and data
won't be as centralized as they are with AWS, but "the cloud" will still be
dominant.

\- Self-driving cars won't impact the average consumer in the next 10 years.
It will continue to be cheaper to operate rideshares with human drivers in
most parts of the world and most terrains/climates. It will make sense for
commercial applications though.

\- Addendum: Even though IoT products are widely mocked now, and for good
reason, I think the trend is inevitable. Automation is economically valuable
and technologically feasible.

The IoT tech stack improve and many useful new applications will be found.
There will still be security concerns and thus some significant holdouts. But
overall both industrial and consumer "IoT" will greatly expand in the next
decade.

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21929342](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21929342)

~~~
chubot
Another prediction: there will be a swing back toward dynamic languages, or at
least toward extremely fast PHP-like, R-like, shell-like iteration.

The language will either be dynamically typed or have an ultra fast
(optional?) type checker. Or maybe 2 execution modes.

The constraints of human cognition change very slowly, and iterative feedback
will be as valuable in 2030 as it ever was.

Right now there is a natural swing toward statically typed languages because
so many huge codebases were built in dynamic languages (Wikipedia, YouTube,
etc.), and people are understandably having trouble maintaining them. And the
user base of web services has increased by an order of magnitude in the last
decade, while Moore's law has stalled, so compiling to machine code with
static types makes a lot of sense.

But in 2030 people will still want to iterate quickly on their code.

note: Maybe parallel / incremental typechecking will become commonplace. Fast
feedback is incompatible with the status quo of single-threaded type checkers
because type checking is a "global" algorithm, it scales non-linearly, and
codebases are growing.

------
Jagat
\- Level 4/5 self driving cars will not happen. Investments will dry out
pretty much in the next few years and the scope will be limited to freeway
lane assists and adaptive cruise after a few accidents caused by software bugs
becomes media fodder.

\- Climate change activism gains more prominence as school aged teens who are
already politically active join the workforce. It'll be one of the biggest
talking points in the 2028 election if US economy continues to grow. If
US/world economy falters, climate change will continue to be considered a
first-world-coastal-elite-problem and will be ignored for a long time.

\- Loneliness and social awkwardness becomes the norm as face to face
interaction is no longer required for most real world tasks.

\- Marijuana doesn't gain widespread usage like cigarettes did in the past.
Legalization doesn't change its usage pattern. Stocks of marijuana companies
die out.

\- People start caring more for others' welfare, and healthcare in US is
funded fully by taxpayers dollars

------
c1ccccc1
Some (not very well calibrated) predictions for the 2020s:

\- No new experimental result in fundamental physics not explained by the
standard model of particle physics or GR. 70%

\- No satisfactory theory of quantum gravity developed. 80%

\- Lightspeed limit remains inviolable. 99%

\- Some fusion project (eg. General Fusion or SPARC, not ITER) achieves break-
even, (though likely reactors won't yet be in widespread use by 2030). 65%

\- No AGI developed. 90%

\- Another "AI winter" happens, as the current neural network boom runs out of
steam. (To be clear, I think people will still use the techniques, but will
gradually stop thinking that the field's accomplishments are all that
impressive.) 65%

\- Protein engineering improves dramatically. 90%

\- Okay, "dramatically" is kind of a cop-out, so to name something more
specific, biochemists will be able to engineer a molecular Turing Machine (a
universal turing machine running with an RNA strand as the tape) Since a
molecular Turing machine would be kind of useless for computation, I'm not
saying people would actually build one, just that they would be able to if
they wanted. 60%

\- Another protein engineering prediction: Proteins that run on electrical
current, rather than ATP. 50%

\- Proteins that synthesize specific DNA or RNA sequences based on electrical
signals they receive, allowing cheaper synthesis of arbitrary sequences. 40%

\- Riemann hypothesis remains unsolved. 90%

\- P vs NP remains unsolved. 95%

\- P != NP if P vs NP is resolved. 70%

\- Progress on aging research, but no single advance adds more than 5 years to
expected lifespan. (5 years might accrue as a result of several different
advances, though) 80%

\- Universe not discovered to be a simulation. 99%

\- Universe not discovered to be an "accidental simulation". (see Greg Egan's
sci-fi story "Wang's Carpets" if you don't know what I mean here) 98%

\- No intelligent alien life discovered. 97%

\- No alien life discovered. 93%

EDIT: A few more:

\- Ideas from logic programming languages are incorporated into some
"mainstream" programming language(s), similarly to how python currently has
some ideas from functional programming in it. 60%

\- No new millennium prize problems solved. 70%

\- Quantum computing still impractical for factoring crypto-sized numbers. 80%

\- Quantum computing used to do something useful. 60%

------
temp04012020
Predictions

\- TikTok is either acquired or killed by Facebook/Youtube copying it

\- At least one major (previously unheard of) social platform like TikTok will
pop up from nowhere with FOMO as its fuel & gain 500M+ users

\- Rise of some Wikipedia/DuckDuckGo like community for news/blogging

\- Voice assistants devices didn't take off much. They find a safe home in our
TVs & Mobile phones - since they come preloaded and provide a handsfree
interface

\- JAVA is no longer used for mobile development. JAVA updates still tout 3
Billion+ devices run on JAVA

\- Rise of some lightweight vanilla javascript coding paradigm \- ReactJS
peaks its popularity and then continues without less hype & more stability

\- The decline in popularity of GraphQL & flutter

\- More people want to work remote. Remote work still didn't take off much

\- US and SV continues to dominate the software industry. Canada becomes
another destination for hiring top talent but nothing as compared to the bay
area

\- Electric two-wheelers become mainstream in India

\- 75+ Tech unicorns from India

\- [Personal] I am a VP/Director/`Head of X` in one of them

A.T.

------
openfuture
The first 'western' autocrat steps forward triggering a chain reaction.

Global warming reaches levels that causes countries most affected to consider
war, could lead to them forming an alliance (i.e. threatening war to
incentivice others to take this more seriously)

Type theory will grow and will be applied to more domains.

Consumer computer hardware will mostly stay stagnant but alternative or open
architectures as well as pinephone-esque devices will trudge on, slowly
closing the gap.

Wikipedia will collapse under the weight of special interest groups'
propaganda (governments, religions,...). Of course this will happen relatively
silently but it will become increasingly apparent.

Some nations will step forward protecting library genesis and scihub. This
will be a relatively small part of the US increasingly losing it's 'soft'
influence. It will feel pressured to declare war on some 'ally' to reclaim it.

There's going to be a Snowden from some other country.

Free social network finally emerges, has a cryptocurrency primitive that
starts to displace nationally minted currencies. It'll be banned in some
places and increasingly used as a system of government elsewhere.

A new religion may also start forming from the convergence of people trying to
understand how to avoid black mirror. This could be expressed as 'offliners'
but I think there is a chance an actual religious narrative/organisation will
be used.

Making phones and laptops p2p mesh networks becomes plug'n'play as 'normal'
people get increasingly interested in paying money for devices capable of it.

No 6g.

It starts to become more common for friendgroups / families to rent their own
server together. This will be from businesses grown out of fediverse.

~~~
twic
> Type theory will grow and will be applied to more domains.

I'll piggyback one here: category theory will still have no practical use.

------
Gunax
Mostly writing this for myself... why would you read predictions from an idiot
like me?

1\. Bitcoin will never have surpassed double their 2017 high in real terms.
2\. Apple will not be in the top 5 of publicly traded US companies by market
cap. 3\. NASDAQ index will be between 13k and 15k. 4\. Republicans will win
the 2020 presidential election. Democrats win in 2024 and 2028. 5\. A woman
will hold/have held the office of vice president of the US. 6\. The US senate
will have a republican majority. 7\. The biggest domestic (US/canada) movie in
2029 will be part of a franchise that existed at the start of 2020. 8\. The US
will not have a fully public/universal healthcare, and the average american
adult will get health insurance through his/her employer. 9\. The top
programming language will be neither Java nor Javascript. 10\. More than 25%
of video game revenues will go towards VR games. 11\. half life 3 still not
released.

------
lifeisstillgood
My two cents:

Tech:

\- WASM makes huge inroads. it just does.

\- Agents and privacy / anti-data collection start to make real dents into
FAANG dominance. Services will exist to not stop data being collected about
you, but to use that data to help / guide you. Massive Open Online Psychology
(moop) will measure your behaviour at home or work and suggest improvements
(Therapist / life coach as a service)

\- Government provided public private keys will be the new passports, but at
least majority of people have secure online identities that are mostly
consistent - being anonymous online becomes socially suspect. It also means
bots become waaay harder to run on services like FAANG - and there is a
corresponding point at which the pressure to turn off accounts that do not
have a passport becomes irresistible and the 50% cut in user base for at least
one of them causes share price collapse

\- The flaws underlying Self driving car business model becomes obvious : cars
are good enough for perfect conditions but never quite make the liability
sweet spot - they kill enough people on shared roads that the manufacturer
liabilities become impossible and the only solution is to have separate road
networks. This new railway, has the same safety record as todays rail, but
same costs (basically unaffordable without massive subsidies). Warehouses are
built on this network and there is a huge industry in the last mile delivery
problem - humans taking over trucks for driving through cities probably from
central "mission control" areas like remote pilots

\- construction industry moves dramatically to prefabricated models - this has
huge impact in emerging markets but also produces new commuter enclaves -
cheap housing outside normal urban areas, but with automated car access
effectively free public transport from house to city entry points. The ability
to remove car ownership creates a value virtuous circle.

------
dijit
1\. Quantum computing. Lots more research in this field due to the end of
Moore’s law. Maybe some attempts at graphene CPUs but they ultimately fail and
new architecture is needed. I think it’ll be quantum- finally ending x86
dominance.

2\. AMD will fail to capture any true market share despite them doing very
well in recent times. Intel capitalises on alternative architectures.

3\. The SF bubble half-bursts lots of companies die or are consumed by the
tech giants, leading to very few startups and bloated large companies.

5\. Divergence of client and server processor architecture.

6\. The increase of touch-first mobile websites. Much less “apps”, only
professionals have laptops. Executives use tablets for nearly everything.

7\. Dockable “business” tablets everywhere.

8\. Excel finally dies, google sheets takes its place.

9\. AWS’s chasing of features over quality finally bites them and they are no
longer able to compete in cloud. But they have such a monopoly it doesn’t
matter for most people. AWS becomes the “Microsoft Windows” of servers.

------
riversflow
1) The US will not get any sort of major infrastructure renewal.

2) There will be major pushback against drones across western nations. They
will be seen as infringing on people’s rights/a safety issue.

3)China will continue to rule with an iron fist, but towards the end of the
decade demographic problems will start to show their colors. Trillions will be
dumped into chest puffing around the South China Sea.

3) AR will become fairly normal in the workplace, but it will still be weird,
but not unheard of, to use in public

4)Major strides are made on reversing/slowing the aging process. The average
life expectancy will go up 5-10 years in advanced economies.

5) this will be paired with an epidemic disease coming out of China or China
controlled Africa, and will spur increased world scrutiny of Chinese economic
practices.

6)UBI is rolled out in some European economies.

7)Possibly a large swing to the left in American politics, spurred by Social
Security and Medicare coming to a financial impasse. UBI in the US not out of
the question.

8)California finally chases most of Silicon Valley out of the state. Major
tech hubs will be in Texas, Colorado and Toronto. California also on verge
of/declares bankruptcy. The transition won’t be complete by 2030, but the
writing will be on the wall.

9)lack of software developers persists driven by constant churn, there will be
a major shortage of programmers who are willing to take on maintenance of old
systems.

10) average level of techsaviness goes down significantly as gen Z becomes
adults who have never had to use a challenging computer.

11)Regulation of social media will be a hot-button issue globally, but the US
will struggle with it because of how it relates to Free Speech. Without
leadership on this problem Chinese style authoritarianism will proliferate.

~~~
dmode
I am curious about #8, because this was literally the prediction over the last
decade. Remember - entering this decade California had 12% unemployment and a
$27bn deficit and all businesses were supposedly "fleeing" California. The
exact opposite of that prediction happened, and California actually widened
the tech gap with other states. My prediction will be that this gap will
actually increase in the next decade. Texas will continue to be one of the
worst states in tech.

~~~
riversflow
We shall see. The ability to do hardware prototyping in the Bay Area went from
expensive but feasible, to nearly impossible thanks to increasingly stringent
environmental and occupational safety regulations, unique to California(which
has its own “CalOSHA” and environmental health agencies), and as I understand
it the manufacturing capabilities in region was a major boon at one point for
tech. Additionally, the inequality in the Oakland-SF-Berkeley area is
definitely driving people away. Something like 50% of the state is considering
moving in some polls.

Also, if you aren’t aware, California has a fundamentally underfunded Public
Employees Retirement Funds, which were designed during the dot.com bubble with
those growth rates in mind as being sustainable forever(seriously). Even after
the decade long bull run it’s still only 70% funded, the fund even admits that
this could be a rough decade.

[https://calpensions.com/2019/08/26/calpers-gets-candid-
about...](https://calpensions.com/2019/08/26/calpers-gets-candid-about-
critical-decade-ahead/)

------
yatsyk
1\. No self-driving cars this decade. Most self-driving car companies go
bankrupt

2\. AI winter. NN will be used for classification and deepfakes. No self
driving and important areas were AI decision could kill or make harm. Military
is exception.

3\. Tesla will be largest car company.

4\. Daily volume of GRAM transaction will be more than all other
cryptocurrencies combined. Most of smart-contracts will be created for for
telegram open network. Bitcoin will be used for wealth accumulation and at the
end of decade will cost about the same as today ±10k usd.

5\. No mainstream VR,AR etc. it will be used in niches like education, gaming
and porn. This technologies will not dominate in these niches.

6\. iPhone will look like current model but may be with more cameras.

7\. China economy will be in depression next decade.

8\. Russia collapses like Soviet Union, or may loose some territories.

9\. US will be the largest economy but not with wide margin as most of the new
business will hide from US taxes and regulation in offshores and crypto.

10\. Search will be cash cow for google, but users will use search less and
less during decade. Video monopoly will be more important for google at the
end of decade.

11\. Most content producers will try to escape youtube monopoly.

12\. Most new code will run on webassemby runtime

13\. Decriminalization of cannabis around the western world. Decriminalization
of psychedelics in a few countries.

14\. Few huge leaks of personal content and data. People will care less about
privacy. Huge dirty secrets will be leaked but nobody care in a week.

15\. More populist elected around the world.

16\. Sharing economy will dominate all niches.

17\. Multiple people rating providers appear around the world.

~~~
klntsky
> Daily volume of GRAM transaction will be more than all other
> cryptocurrencies combined

Isn't GRAM, like, already dead? You are overestimating it, even if it is not.
It's only an embedded currency in one of moderately popular apps. Which is not
even deployed yet.

~~~
yatsyk
I would say that it still not born. This is just my speculation knowing
resources they have, team and absence of limitations that have competitors.

------
yuy910616
China doubles down on censorship and authoritarian government, but in the same
time becoming world leader in some technology frontiers, stabilizing its
government and leading to further polarization in tech. America no longer
maintains its technology edge in silicon over the rest of the world.

Hong Kong becomes just a providence in China not because military intervention
but because economic stagnation.

New houses are sold without kitchen and garage. City planning becomes a hot
new field.

Wearable tech becomes much more in fashion. Medical devices tracking sleep,
diet, or exercises are not only ubiquitous but necessary.

Rust takes off. Programming in Python becomes standard curriculum in high
schools. We have less programmers, but more professionals who also programs.

Data Science is no longer a buzzword but just another part of programming.
Modeling becomes less important, but the so call "ML OPS" will take off.

Math becomes much more important in programming and a sexy degree for college
students.

~~~
mrfusion
Why are people saying rust will take off?

~~~
teleforce
Because this is HN :-)

------
ksec
TSMC 5nm in 2020, 3nm in 2022 without GAA, 2nm GAA in 2024, 1.4nm with GAA &
NanoSheet in 2027. So we should be around 1nm or even Sub 1nm in 2030.

RISC-V is still very much used in embedded.

ARM finally dominate the Server Platform, thanks to AWS.

AWS will remain number 1, Azure 2nd and Google remain third. Nothing changed.

Microsoft to Open Source part of the Window Operating system by the end of the
Decade.

X86 remains alive and well on PC, simply because WinTel is now a gaming
platform.

As much as I love BSDs and OpenPOWER, both being technically the better of its
competitor, they will unfortunately remain niche.

Apple will become the first company to reach 2 Trillion Market Cap.

Full AV is still only available on high way. And not working well enough in
Cities.

CO2 is still on the rise, but we finally accepted Nuclear is part of if not
"the" solution. Hopefully it wont be too late.

A movement back to Analog, Tube Amp, Vinyl, Film, VHS.

20 Years, the longest running period without a recession. We are stuck with
another 10 years of Stagflation. ( And then the next recession will be bigger
than everything we have seen in the past 100 years combined... )

As much as I hate it, all world leaders wants to get rid of cash, and enter
into Digital Currency. But needless to say Cash = Freedom, something I will be
fighting for.

Subscription is still not the right model for majority of things, we will move
back to a better buy once model.

We still dont have that hyped super battery. But Battery continued to improve
and has 50% more capacity per volume while being 50% cheaper. It is good
enough and cheap enough for anything else to compete.

I wish Hong Kong all the best.

I will be rich enough to retire.

------
dynamite-ready
I've been fascinated by the potential of biometric - computer interface
development for a while now.

Medicine will become the greatest driver of the technology, and BCI systems of
the Neuralink class will surely become the figurehead.

But I'm also looking forward to what industrial design innovation can do for
the likes of somewhat less glamorous, but cast-iron technologies like GSR
sensors and oximeters.

Could make for some riotous (and terrifyingly intrusive) videogames. Large
companies have flirted with biometric tech for decades (Nintendo, Steam et
al), but market fit / traction has been slow because, I guess, it comes across
as 'creepy', and early devices have looked cumbersome.

I think that could change in this coming decade.

Furthermore, developments off the back of the game industry can quite easily
feed back into medicine and heavy industry (like controllers for heavy
machinery), and the productivity gains there would lead to wider acceptance in
society.

------
mzitelli
Some ones that come to mind:

1\. Unemployment due to AI and automation will be moderate, mostly affected by
the transport sector as autonomous driving improves.

2\. The political discourses will tend to extremes because the political arena
is now in social media. Image ads generated by GANs and optimized for
conversion will be widely used, memetics will be more relevant than ever.

3\. The run for exploration of the pacific will intensify, big companies will
invade small islands for mineral exploration. It will be the new US and China
economical battleground.

4\. Financial solutions that democratize access to markets will grow. Billions
more will have access to foreign stock markets. Educated high-middle classes
around the world will be getting richer.

5\. Service apps like Uber will be responsible for allocating significant part
of the emerging countries work force. Work laws will need to be rethought
around the word.

6\. Software developers are going to be OK, the software dinner keeps
happening.

------
nijynot
Here are my predictions:

1\. Countries and private companies will launch stablecoins and it'll be the
most used payment medium in developed countries.

2\. Bitcoin will grow, but it'll not be the biggest cryptocurrency anymore.

3\. Total market cap of all cryptocurrencies (including stablecoins) will be
~$8T.

4\. Around 50% of the software jobs will be remote.

5\. USA and China tradewar will turn into something more scary and people will
be increasingly more wary of a third world war.

6\. Apple releases their first iteration of AR glasses and it'll use an iPhone
as it's driver.

7\. Renaissance of piracy through decentralized systems like Filecoin. We'll
have illegal products that will be easier to use than Netflix, and more
content. Netflix, Spotify, et al. will never be able to have a complete
library of all content, but it's pirate competitors will.

8\. OpenAI will start building products or provide services for consumers or
businesses. They'll be very profitable and have a valuation of around $30B.

------
franciscop
I'll bite. I can imagine 2-3 important technology changes that are happening
right now. Predictions in technology, fairly conservative:

1\. Computing becomes dirty cheap and small. This includes processing and
memories like SSDs. This trend has been happening for a while, but at 1/2th of
the current price and size things star to become even more interesting.

2\. Batteries (and chargers) become cheap and smaller. This changes a lot of
things about small and large gadgets, from watches to buses. Again, already
happening, but at 1/2th of the cost and size things are a lot more
interesting.

3\. Internet access becomes fast and cheap everywhere. Speed-wise we are
already there with 4G, we just need more coverage and 1/2th or 1/4th the
price.

Consequences of this technology:

\- We no longer have wifi in our homes. Consumer cables for data further than
1m away becomes obsolete. Since batteries are a lot better, this also removes
the need for permanent cables almost everywhere. No more cabled headphones,
power tools, etc.

\- Energy also becomes decentralized. Except for the larger buildings that
still need external energy, it becomes a no-brainer to have a large cheap
battery and solar panels in your home. The battery might be part of your car.

\- Paper stops making sense. For $30 you can get a tablet or e-reader on the
restaurant that is also translated and has pictures, so no one keeps those
paper-printed menus. Servers only deliver food and clean the table, for now.
This happens across all industries.

\- As labor drops, real state becomes even more important in EU and Asia.
Prices skyrocket in the urban centers, but interestingly in Japan where the
population is even older by now Tokyo _starts_ to get cheaper. Traditional
housing advice starts to get weird.

\- Amazon Kindle finally switches to USB-C and we all rejoice as we throw our
micro-usb cables away.

------
impalallama
1\. Another attempt will be made to have national healthcare in the US. We
will still have employment based health care to some extent.

2\. Lab grown meat will be sold for public consumption. There will be a lot of
hit pieces about how it's less healthy or organic than "real" meat.

3\. Autonomous cars will never quite be ready for public use as cabs or
personal cars but will revolutionize the shipping industry.

4\. We will have a treatment for Alzheimer's.

5\. Streaming services as we have then now will be the same (Netflix, Hulu,
Disney+) (that HBO one will hopefully stick around) and are the unmovable
juggernauts of the industry.

6\. Online etiquette is something people will seriously teach to children.
Don't dox, "cancel" others etc.

7\. Instagram or WhatsApp will be broken off from Facebook after an anti-trust
investigation.

8\. Wales will vote to leave the UK for the EU. It will be an even more
difficult transition than Brexit.

9\. Humans will go back to the moon, but not land on Mars.

------
lake99
I'm Indian, so some of my predictions are about India.

# Global Issues

1\. More pervasive surveillance states across the world.

2\. Even more polarized politics across the world, with major riots between
factions, i.e. hundreds dead as a result.

3\. More Indian cities with unbreathable air. More toxic pollutants make it
into our food-chain, and hundreds of millions of Indians and Chinese will find
themselves unable to escape the rather drastic consequences.

3\. Antibiotic resistant diseases are way more common, all because of how
animals are farmed in the developing world.

4\. The problem of corruption (esp. India) still has no end in sight.

5\. China to be the de facto owner of many countries.

# Sci/Tech

1\. Intel/AMD/Nvidia, Android/iOS will remain as dominant as they are now. But
Android will borrow some features from Fuchsia.

2\. China and India continue to install GW-scale solar energy farms.

3\. Lab-grown meat available at your local grocery.

4\. More electric car brands manufactured across the world.

5\. Neural network will become more ubiquitous, often going hand-in-hand with
IoT.

------
arthurofbabylon
1\. Sustainable electricity will dominate and the cost of electricity will
shrink to near zero.

2\. Manufacturing will catch a second wind. As software principles and cheap
electricity take effect, the cost of experimentation will fall and we will
become agile at creating physical products, from smart devices to city blocks.

3\. Automobile traffic will get worse.

4\. At the end of the decade, cities will begin a redesign phase with the
intention of solving human problems. This will be hastened by major gains in
manufacturing and improved understandings in biological science.

5\. We will see the first generation of children growing up with primary
personal computers that don’t rely on visual interfaces.

6\. Depression and mental illness will become an increasingly major political
focus.

7\. Olfactory “AR” will offer a consumer product breakthrough involving near-
direct emotional and memory manipulation.

8\. China will begin mass application of genetic modification of humans.

------
kirse
Tossing my 2020 -> 2030 tech predictions in here for the sake of posterity:

2020-2025

\- Crypto currency receives its biggest test when the next recession hits. BTC
value will collapse to the $100 - $1,000 range during this period, as hodlers
make a "run" to reclaim spare cash to feed short-term monetary needs caused by
the recession. This crash will be the optimal time to purchase cryptocurrency
if one holds a positive long-term (10-20 year) view

\- Foldable screen tech revolutionizes mobile. The stagnant decade (2010-2020)
of boring and uninspired rectangular-slate mobile phones produced by
essentially the same factory finally comes to an end. The 1995-2005 joys of
flipping, sliding, bending, turning, and tapping physical keyboards returns,
with unique phone designs that allow for greater personal expression

2025+

\- By 2030, WASM / WebAssembly will be the dominant language powering Web
Applications. Lot of cool tech here, but also a lot of problems and quirks to
smooth out in that ecosystem in the first 5-7 yrs of the decade (by folks a
lot smarter than I). We'll see a "jQuery for WASM" in the sense of a dominant
toolchain that makes it accessible to the masses

\- Privacy concerns reach a tipping point with the US population's mounting
frustration over being categorized, packaged, and resold to the highest ad
bidder. Rebellion against this will come from younger lawmakers initiating
privacy bills, digital "timeout" vacations, and niche companies/apps that
charge small fees for services that come with no tracking or advertising.
Despite this, the growing number of IoT devices continue to turn every analog
soul into a digitized event stream

\- Electric vehicles are a significant (20-25%) chunk of the global automotive
fleet. They've taken over niche markets where high torque and "clean" energy
matter most. All 2030 pickup truck models by major brands will come standard
as hybrids with electric motors

------
habosa
A few random ones off the top of my head:

1\. There will be zero single-owner self driving cars sold by the end of the
decade. There will likely be a ridesharing service powered by self-driving
cars.

2\. A FAANG-level company will refuse to comply with a government fine,
causing a showdown.

3\. Uber/Lyft will run out of money and shut down (or be sold for parts).

------
julienreszka
\- political philosophy merges with cognitive sciences and it will be
scientifically demonstrated that some political philosophies are nothing more
than mental illnesses

\- epigenetics merges with cybernetics and it becomes possible to backup
people's epigenome for later when they aren't as healthy as in their previous
epigenome, in case for example of cancer or in case of degenerative cognitive
disorder or heart disease and so on and this backup can reactivate previous
version of the epigenome.

\- an increase in revenue generation opportunities on social networking
websites

\- Christian faith is the fastest growing religious beliefs in the world

\- growth and domination of nuclear power generation

\- creation of first human like level of general artificial intelligence but
that stagnates at human like level of cognition because more advanced levels
of cognition can't find product market fit.

------
kr4
The biggest spiritual revolution will take a strong shape during this decade
based on values of kindness, compassion and empathy. This is because people
will gradually realize that almost all the current problems including mental
diseases (depression), religious conflicts, political turmoil, economic and
military warfare are happening because of selfish living, and very narrow
mindset. Though technology and comfort wise humans have progressed a lot over
last couple of centuries but mentally the same degree of evolution hasn't
happened. (if it had, we’d have no physical borders/huge national militaries
etc. when in technology we’ve broken all distance and boundaries) The fault
lines are increasingly visible again which may cause WW3 but spiritual
revolution is coming with or without WW3.

------
atarian
Browsers will start to hide the URL bar. Essentially, they'll become like app
stores where you can only visit trusted apps like Amazon or Gmail. Discovery
will only be possible via search; as a result companies like Apple and Amazon
will invest in their own search engines to compete with Google.

------
solatic
1) Significant increases in payment/banking technology (ease and speed of
transfers, primarily) and the continued erosion of cash in society. There's
too much low-hanging fruit for the status quo to continue. Cross-border
transfers may continue to be problematic, for political reasons.

2) Continued improvements in VR will result in first-generation serious
attempts to replace business flying with virtual meetings, by mid-decade.
Serious adoption will start by the end of the deacde, as issues such as eye
contact, body tracking, processing power, and sufficient network bandwidth are
solved.

3) In the absence of regulator intervention or government initiative, a FAANG
will begin to make serious investments in digital provenance / trust.
Ultimately the value of network effects is undermined if new connections
cannot be trusted. Initial attempts like Login With Google/Facebook/Apple,
combined with a stranglehold over messaging, will morph into fuller identity-
management products with implications for contracts, reputation checks, and
more.

4) Increasing geopolitical instability will have no effect on global markets.
Trade will prove to be the new nuclear bomb - MAD will prevent global powers
from going to war.

5) Political pressure for economic solutions for the poorest classes will
continue, whether for UBI, guaranteed housing, what have you. Aside from
isolated experiments, no financial commitments by government will be made and
economic desperation will continue. In the United States, cheap "bread and
circuses" (food stamps and streaming) will continue to serve as an effective
tamper on revolution. The private sector will continue to experiment with
remote work, to deal with continually rising cost of living in urban clusters,
but dramatic, industry-wide changes won't happen until VR advances
materialize.

6) We will see a serious PaaS emerge for Kubernetes that is sufficient for 80%
of LoB development, that will continue to bury traditional ops roles for most
companies, and do more for NoOps than Lambda and similar FaaS.

------
marcosdumay
Well, let's place my predictions here for a first time...

1 - About Global Warming, Solar capacity will increase until our nominal
production capacity is larger than our consumption. Yet, a lot of it is
wasted, so we are still dependent on fossil fuels.

2 - Self driving + remote controlled freight becomes a reality. It doesn't go
everywhere, it doesn't run all the time, but it is still the first important
labor class to be quickly replaced by machines... causing...

3 - Civil turmoil all over the world. Rich countries governments have a bad
financial situation, while poor countries have grave social problems. One or
two rich governments may fail, but I wouldn't bet on it; either way, most will
make through.

4 - Moore's law is dead, so we get more electronic diversity. We'll end the
decade with way more CPU architectures than we started it, we'll have CPUs
designed for MIMD and MISD parallelism, search (map and reduce) activities,
communication tasks, and all kinds of things.

5 - VR won't be widespread, AR will have a few niche widespread uses.

6 - China won't take over the world. There is a small chance of them breaking
out at this decade, but the most likely option is that they are a bit richer
than now, with a heated internal climate, but still holding toguether.

7 - The poor vs. rich countries disparity does not close down. Instead, it
increases a bit more. That is despite widespread structural reforms on the
poor countries that should make them richer - it's just that a decade is not
enough.

8 - Information security (including privacy enforced at the endpoints) becomes
a wanted feature of many niche applications. Mainstream ones adapt because it
is so widespread.

9 - Private space exploration will go beyond the inflection point of its
logistic curve. Thus exponential growth will give way to sublinear one.

10 - Oh, and editing, we'll see the first trial of a rejuvenation treatment.
It will fail.

------
swilliamsio
1\. The first nuclear fusion power plants are being built.

2\. Universal Basic Income is being implemented across Europe.

3\. Marijuana legalisation is commonplace in the west.

4\. Steam will still dominate the PC gaming space.

5\. Earth is not on track with regards to CO2 emissions.

6\. Self driving cars/vans/lorries are common, replacing taxis and mutating
the transportation sector.

7\. Legislation will exist banning or requiring notice of deepfake videos,
similar to current legislation around product placement/sponsorship.

8\. Copyright laws will change to prevent early Disney cartoons from being
public domain.

9\. Streaming service industry become more fragmented as all studios create
their own versions of Netflix. Other companies sell package deals of bundled
services, effectively recreating all the problems of TV.

10\. Instance of massive cyberwarfare/cyberterrorism hits a large NATO power,
grinding the country to a halt.

------
abhisuri97
Monoclonal antibody drugs will flood the market soon and usher in a new era of
treatment for several diseases (MS, AD, certain cancers, etc).

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

~~~
type0
And how could that "flooding" happen? that still would be produced from the
living cells, cell division is slow. If breakthrough happens, such
synthetically produced antibodies would not be called monoclonal and instead
we'll hear some new marketing name there.

~~~
abhisuri97
Monoclonal antibodies are just antibodies that are monospecific (ie they bind
one target really well). And it looks like there a number of drugs under this
category (anything ending in -mab usually) are in stage II/III of clinical
trials (meaning they are likely to be approved in the coming years).

What you mention about cell division rates being slow was solved by the
hybridoma protocol where you fuse two cells, one of which is a myeloma (cancer
that is a rapidly reproducing cell line) and another is a B cell that produces
Antibodies that are specific for your intended target. Since then there have
been a lot of strides in monoclonal antibody production.
[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monoclonal_antibody#Production](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monoclonal_antibody#Production)]

~~~
type0
> cell division rates being slow was solved by the hybridoma protocol

It's still cell division, nowhere near the speed and cost of chemically
produced drugs.

------
necubi
* AR / ubiquitous computing will be available, but still niche and primarily used for commercial purposes. Most people will still use a mobile-phone style device.

* Autonomous tax fleets will be common in cities, but most personal vehicles will still be manually operated (alongside improved level-3 technologies like autopilot and super cruise)

* Google's business will still be dominated by ads, with cloud revenue making up the rest

* Facebook will still be the dominant social media company in the US, although Facebook the product may become niche

* >10 chronic diseases will have been cured using gene therapies

* General-purpose CPUs will have <5x performance/price gain by 2020. Specialized hardware will be used widely.

* Crypto-currencies will be seen as a hilarious 2010s bubble; effectively no global commerce will be transacted through them

------
k4ch0w
\- Crypto bubble will burst

\- China will have huge social reform in favor of citizens

\- Bioengineering will become an everyday discussion when thinking about
having kids. (Designer babies)

\- GCP or Azure will fall off in the cloud game.

\- Linux desktop will have a breakthrough and become more mainstream.

\- Free education or heavily subsidized college will become real in the US.

\- Blocking ADs in browser will not be possible anymore.

\- Rust will become C++ and Go will become Java in enterprise environments.

\- AMD will dominate the chip market with intel struggling to catch up.

\- Gas will be $12 a gallon. Currently ~$3.50 in Seattle

\- Streaming services will become like cable tv channels and you’ll need to
spend $70 to unlock all the regular channels.

\- Drones will become a social problem. Drones stealing packages and spying on
neighbors.

\- Disney will buy paramount

\- Google buys Salesforce

\- Oracle buys IBM

\- Apple buys Waymo and becomes dominate force in automated driving

\- First asteroid is mined

\- Another recession like 2008 but worse occurs

\- Scotland leaves UK

~~~
bcaa7f3a8bbc
> _China will have huge social reform in favor of citizens_

What is your rational? All the current signs showed the opposite tendency. On
my first thought, I'd say it's the Cold War that is coming, not any social
reform.

But on second thought, there are indeed possibilities, if you follow the
argument, that lead to a social reform in favor of citizens, is either (1) The
state believes the nation is powerful enough (in terms of politics, economy
and culture) so the rulers can launch reforms without threatening their own
powers, or (2) The current political-economic system is unsustainable, reforms
must be done.

Both are possible, but I'm still in favor for the prediction of an upcoming
Cold War, or at least an intensified international conflict.

> _Blocking ADs in browser will not be possible anymore._

It's possible.

> _Oracle buys IBM_

Let's hope for the best.

------
beilabs
Climate change has another decade of inaction by the USA.

Unification of Ireland.

Scotland will not leave the UK.

South East Asian countries will follow China's lead imposing dictatorial
policies / invasion of their citizens privacy in the name of national
security.

It'll be the year of Linux on the desktop, 10 years in a row

No Half Live 3 release.

------
austincheney
* It will take 10000NPM packages and 3tb of JavaScript to render basic HTML in the browser.

* The DOM and other basic web standards will become a mysterious lost art. Developers who understand this arcane art will be like COBOL developers of the previous generation.

* Desire for WASM to replace JavaScript will result in shallow webpages that are hollow shells containing only a WASM instance. Accessibility will be achieved with an alternate path to a poorly updated plain text document.

* The basic web technology stack will be several layers of large frameworks each doing the same thing. This, not games or video, will drive the future growth of computer hardware acceleration.

* A junior web developer will be somebody who graduates from a two day boot camp and wields the power of copy/paste.

------
nrp
1\. Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Google and Microsoft will all be more valuable
than they are today, and none will be broken up by government action.

2\. Legislation will increasingly come into place in the US and EU forcing
tech companies to clean up their act on privacy, anti-competitiveness, and
Right to Repair. All of these will further entrench the success of the
companies in #1, but they will also open up market opportunities for start-ups
focused on each. Some of those will be bought up by the giants.

3\. Increased availability and efficiency of specialized compute for inference
acceleration will bring about the rise of per-user generated video and
rendered content, rather than only personalized text and recommendation feeds.

4\. Politicians, advertisers, and scammers will find creative ways to exploit
#3. Legislation to counter it will be late and ineffective.

5\. Commoditization of machine vision and other sensing technology and AI will
result in drastic changes in guerilla warfare and terrorism. Major attacks
will occur in the developing and developed worlds before effective counter-
measures can be put into place.

6\. Head worn AR is still mostly used for productivity and industrial niches,
and ubiquitous all-day-wearable headsets are only beginning to be practical as
smartphone replacements. VR timespend for gaming exceeds traditional game
consoles and gaming PCs and similarly makes headway in productivity.
Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo all release VR-primary gaming systems.

7\. The trade tensions between China and the US escalate into an economic and
cultural cold war with the rest of the world picking sides.

8\. 3D printing is increasingly used for specialized industrial and custom
decorative design applications, but does not replace traditional fabrication
and construction methods for mass production.

9\. Bitcoin fails to gain traction as a mainstream transaction medium but is
the de facto default currency for grey and black market transactions.

10\. Several countries will develop gene-hacking industries, boosting medical
tourism for procedures illegal in the US and EU.

------
qwtel
More of letting my imagination run wild than real predictions:

* Fixation with tesla bankruptcy morphs into fixation with tesla breakup as it becomes the most valuable company in the world.

* SpaceX is a telecommunications giant, making Elon the richest man alive by a factor of 2.

* More than his wealth, Elon's cult of personality starts to raise eyebrows in washington and beyond.

* Elon is forced to move into politics, as a) he can't defend his businesses otherwise, b) it becomes evident that he can't realise his visions without state power.

* Elon continues the trend of his predecessors (trump and some unknown populist in 2024) to wreck havoc on the American system.

* However, he does succeed in reuniting the US, as his brand of green techno evangelism and cosmic evolution speaks to both rust belt and hyperliberal cities.

* His primary focus then becomes destroying American elites as he rationally and correctly identifies that they are the main obstacles to his vision (the joke goes around that Elon is the AI he warned us about)

* Elon remains the de-facto leader after his 2 terms in office and Shotwell becomes the first female president.

Other notes:

* Elon indirectly commands a private militia of mostly 20 year olds, who found each other and organize via the internet. By 2026, this is not unheard of. They frequently clash with other militias.

* NY and SF have a social credit system (implemented by the same companies that built it in China). Spying on neighbours is commonplace, as is being sent to reeducation at a former collage campus. Anyone who wants a career accepts this as cost of doing business. Many careers are ended by false allegations.

* Events in China will change everything above.

Comic relief:

* Joe Rogan serves in a communication role in the Musk government.

* Alex Jones is the only one who warns early about a Musk dictatorship. He is ridiculed by everyone. It doesn't help that he thinks Musk is a literal alien.

~~~
burfog
Elon Musk is constitutionally ineligible to be US president. He is an African
American, having been born in South Africa. He comes to us by way of Canada,
which is almost enough to make up for Canada sending Justin Bieber.

------
neckardt
This is a list of things I hope come to be this decade. 1) The death of ads on
the internet. Looking at advertisements becomes much less socially acceptable,
and ad blockers become the norm. 2) A properly open source mobile OS takes
over. 3) The Linux desktop hits 20% market share. 4) IPv6 replaces IPv4, all
but the biggest websites switch over completely. 5) On the back of IPv6, fully
peer-to-peer secure messaging takes over. I can now send a full movie to my
friends within a group chat, no servers needed. 6) Self-hosting software
becomes easy and mainstream (something like yunohost, but not necessarily that
implementation). No more command line knowledge needed.

~~~
jcranmer
I take that it's a list of things you hope will happen but know will not
happen?

------
mburst
1\. Mickey Mouse will enter the public domain

2\. An eSports league brings in more revenue than MLS (Major League Soccer).

3\. Still no Half Life 3

4\. Self driving personal cars aren't a thing yet but, autonomous trucks on
highways is common with humans doing the last mile delivery.

5\. A FAANG company is broken up due to anti-trust regulation, my guess is
Google.

6\. Britain ends the decade as part of the EU in some form

7\. Quantum computing will become more accessible and people will be solving
real business/global problems with it

8\. All crypto currencies will be trending (if not already) toward $0

9\. At least one global recession, similar to 2008 due to rising debt levels

10\. Most in person payments in the US are contactless (Apple/Google Pay)
instead of via swiping/inserting a card or paying in cash

------
klntsky
Tech-related:

\- Programming languages compiling to JS _and_ WASM will appear.

\- Substructural type systems will be incorporated into mainstream languages.

\- Technologies like Nix and guix will become the default for package
management and CI.

\- click-to-deploy self-hosted services that offer real privacy will become
really popular (email solutions, ActivityPub-based social networks, personal
clouds and such).

UIs:

\- Popular apps will ditch scrolling from their UIs.

\- Windows will start supporting tiling (as in tiling WMs).

Society-related:

\- Artificial wombs will become mainstream as a more "safe" way of giving
birth.

\- Deepfakes will not cause any of the predicted damage.

\- Cryptocurrency market will not grow significantly.

\- Massive movements against ads on the streets will spawn. Generally, people
will care much more about safety/comfort of their minds.

------
throwawayhhakdl
Fun!

1) European countries become increasingly poor and economically irrelevant
relative to the United States and Asia. EU breaks up.

2) Climate change is surpassed by ground water depletion as the most important
problem, ecologically. Not that the former gets any better...

3) No world wars, but many violent internal movements.

4) Most governments triple down on surveillance. Nothing useful comes of it
but practical consequences turn out to be pretty rare.

5) Disney starts making high budget live or Lion King style CGI adaptations of
anime

6) Social mobility grinds to a halt and more and more people are employed in
increasingly personal attentive service jobs

7) Liberal coastal states push for a modified governing system which allocates
more power to states that generate wealth

------
majewsky
Maybe not this decade, but at latest in the 2030s, we (or our children) will
look back on our current consumption patterns in utter disgust.

For context: I live in a city in East Germany, and there is a tourist
attraction called "Trabi Safari" where people can do sightseeing in Trabant
cars (the East German model that according to folklore was made from
cardboard). Whenever I walk down the street and a line of these cars drives by
me, I'm disgusted by the smell of the exhaust and wonder how people could
stand to live in a city full of these cars. I imagine that 2040 kids will look
back on the 2010s in the same way that I look back on that aspect of the
1980s.

~~~
badatseciruty
I'm hoping that when my kids grow up they're horrified that we ever drove gas-
powered cars.

~~~
tehlike
That sounds crazy. Nobody is horrified by trains burning coal, noone is
horrified by old tech. It is part of progress.

They should be horrified by wars, political unrest and so on...

~~~
flaque
Lots of people are horrified that we used to put lead in everything.

------
qphe
These are conservative predictions

\- Software engineers will continue to get paid more and more.

\- The bay area will not solve its infrastructure problem, leading to large
amounts of remote work.

\- China's housing bubble will pop and take down the global economy. However,
China will emerge the strongest from this recession.

\- China soft power will increase significantly and will cause the average
American to question liberal democracy.

\- ML will continue to drive big profits for the bigcos but not be a source of
new significant startups

\- AR/VR will not have mass adoption this decade but will have a strong POC
(think smartphones in 2010).

\- We will have L4 autonomy, but drivers will have to take over fairly often.

\- >50% of new cars sold will be electric by the end of the decade

\- Bitcoin > $100k

------
ethanjdiamond
\- 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.

------
reilly3000
Some global war. At least 1 public cloud AZ will get blown up in the process
and undersea cables will be targeted. This will bring about new network tech,
widespread autonomous weapon systems, and major disruption to global economic
patterns. Once the dust settles there will be global interest in innovation in
political structures, like direct digital democracy (frequent, contextual,
paperless voting). Maybe we’ll get a decent canonical ID system with
widespread adoption. These all might conspire to upend the dominance of USD.
And JavaScript shall litter the planet, reaching 3 billion new devices each
year. I hope I’m wrong about most of this.

------
tombert
\- Twitter becomes so ubiquitous in politics that it purchased by the US
government and officially becomes a government service.

\- The successor to Google Glass, Google Contact (an enhanced version of Glass
that uses contact-lenses) becomes popular and a staple of nearly every
household.

\- Google is split up into separate companies.

\- At least one plague happens because of overuse of antibiotics.

\- China develops hypersonic weapons and takes over Taiwan.

\- There becomes a backlash against the "cloud", and people start moving
everything into local storage as prices-per-terabyte become cheaper, and after
a bunch of "cloud" companies shut down.

\- The US will still have expensive, crappy healthcare compared to the rest of
the world.

------
alasdair_
Augmented Reality glasses have an "iPhone moment" where one moment they are
barely around and the next, suddenly everyone has them. Gaming and mapping
(especially interior maps of places where GPS sucks) are big draws, as are
multi-user, shared realities in a particular physical space (where you can see
and interact with objects that others can also see, in the same space, in
realtime). 5G networks will prove essential in facilitating this.

Relatedly, "the cloud" will get more and more local and will likely entail
having compute resources co-located with 5G cell stations in order to provide
optimal latency for such applications.

~~~
rimliu

      > suddenly everyone has them.
    

Yeah, sure. People are not sick of ads already.

------
Namrog84
I predict hn will have not have fixed the code block vs quote bad experience
on mobile.

------
LatteLazy
A working, large quantum computer is built rendering existing encryption
useless. But everyone switches to quantum-resistant encryption algorithms long
before this becomes a problem for the average person as the machines remain
technically complex, expensive and too hard to program for the average
fraudster. It then becomes clear that there are very few actual applications a
quantum computer is better at (given price, difficulty to program, the fact we
mostly use computers to check facebook not to do hard maths etc.). Quantum
computer become irrelevant outside a few specialist applications in things
like protein folding.

------
austincheney
Online privacy will be solved with end-to-end encryption across point-to-point
communications over IPv6.

* Social media empires will decline some as a result.

* Advertisers will seek new disruptive offline channels to engage users with individually targeted marketing.

------
lewiscollard
\- Firefox hits 20% market share on the desktop, prompted by Chrome's nerfing
of extensions in Manifest v3 (e.g. uBlock Origin won't work on Chrome anymore,
forcing nerds & privacy-conscious people to switch). Firefox on devices gets a
tiny boost as a consequence. ETA: 2021-2022.

\- Tesla implodes as soon as a major manufacturer releases a high-performance
all-electric car affordable by people on modestly-good salaries that actually
ships on time. Shame, because the Cybertruck is badass. ETA: 2023.

\- In other EV news: Electric vehicles will dominate in unrestricted
motorsports (drift racing and some classes of drag racing come to mind). ETA:
Rule changes to allow EVs will come in 2021. A couple of big-name drivers
switch that year. Domination is established in 2025.

\- We get a real, viable open source Linux-on-phone with all the apps we need.
There's that Purism thing already, but that's flagship money; this will be
boosted by the Pinephone (and whatever follows) being cheap enough that almost
every hacker will buy one (Android and iOS will continue to dominate the
mainstream). ETA: 2021.

\- Attacks in the Spectre/Meltdown genre (side-channel attacks on CPUs) get
frighteningly good, and impossible to defend against. By the end of the decade
we may need to either simplify processor design massively (and take the
performance hit) or abandon the idea that processes can be effectively
separated at all. ETA: new attack at least once every year of the decade.
Complete rethink of processor design before 2030.

\- A data breach on an unimaginable scale will happen. The Big One will be a
tracking or analytics or advertising company. Equifax was bad, but this will
be everyone's personal preferences, porn preferences, and (subset of) browsing
history, which will easily be linked to identifiable people. ETA: any time
now.

\- House prices in the United Kingdom collapse. This causes global ripples
similar to 2007-2008, in which we find out just how much of the financial
system is betting on an asset price to keep going up, forever. Massive social
unrest over the attendant bailouts. "That which cannot go on forever, won't".
ETA: 2025. (I have hilariously mistimed this one in the past!)

------
SuoDuanDao
-Analogue technologies will gain ground on digital, based on their current statuses

-The Global Mass Extinction will accelerate.

-Polite disagreement with authority will become harder. Most people will be either law abiding citizens of an increasingly authoritarian system or acknowledged criminals, with fewer 'naughty' figures.

-Global life expectancy will increase by 5-10 years

-Nation states will have a slow-motion Kessler event. Cities and city politics will become increasingly important on the global stage.

-psychedelics and other tools that work at the overlap of psychology and physics will increase in prominence. Religions will get weirder, more Florida than California in flavour.

------
jwbdecker
Interesting how most of the predictions seem either pessimistic or minor
compared to last decade.

Here's mine:

1\. Apple enters at least one new product category. This will likely be a
wearable such as AR glasses.

2\. Apple introduces hearing enhancement and protection features into the
AirPods, attempting to expand its use case outside of music.

3\. The next generation of console gaming will be VR. This includes a Nintendo
VR console.

4\. Webpages will become increasingly rare by 2030. Apps will emerge as the
dominant web platform and traditional webpages will start to disappear.

5\. Information will continue to become untrustable. Deep fake videos, AI
generated articles, paid reviews, nation state propaganda, etc will explode.
It will become increasingly apparent that anonymity is damaging the web.
Verified identity will become much more commonplace. New businesses will begin
to form around authenticating information. Talk about tech regulation will
become much more serious.

6\. The trend will continue towards more privacy. This will result in more
processing being performed locally on personal devices, and more peer-to-peer
technologies that don't require sending information to a third party.

7\. Companies will start to pay users for the right to see and use their
personal information.

8\. Grocery store delivery will become commonplace.

9\. Electric cars will become more common than gasoline cars in terms of new
purchases.

10\. There won't be self driving cars, but individual autonomous features like
adaptive cruise, lane keeping, parallel parking, and some new ones will
continue to be experienced by more and more people, increasing people's trust
in autonomous features.

11\. AR calling will be created in some basic format. You'll be able to see
the person you're calling as if they were standing in your living room. This
will be AR's "killer app."

12\. iPhone will not have any buttons or ports by the end of the decade.

13\. iPhone camera will be able to take 3D pictures. It'll also be able to
take AR pictures.

~~~
rewq4321
Interesting thoughts!

> Companies will start to pay users for the right to see and use their
> personal information.

Retail companies already do that, right? With "loyalty cards". Correct me if
I'm wrong - I've never used one.

------
scscsc
1\. Mainstream CPUs get a lot more cores, making difference between software
and hardware rendering disappear.

2\. More and more features of programming languages for verifiable software
(e.g., Dafny or Coq) get into mainstream languages, resulting in better
overall software quality.

3\. Computer mathematics (e.g., in Lean) gets traction, with some high-profile
mathematics breakthroughs enabled.

4\. Package manager-based attacks become more common.

5\. Despite higher performance computers, a new level of abstraction in the
process-container-vm stack makes up for performance.

6\. Similarly, mainstream OSs will still lag and take seconds to, e.g.,
display the contents of the C drive.

~~~
scscsc
7\. Another AI winter, despite AI/ML progress.

------
type0
Small scale production will resume, new education programs in manufacturing
and applied business aimed at the smaller efficient entrepreneurs will develop
everywhere. Consumers will have more small-local brand awareness.

------
proc0
A new form of AI will be invented, that will lead the way to AGI. This theory
will also be able to explain consciousness and brain processes to a great
extent, and we will at least know why we can't yet build it.

------
ciocan42
#1. Swarm of robot builders to make the habitats for the next billions who
will need to move from rural areas. By the mid of the decade, the battery
industry will mass-produce the next generation of 10x or more capacity long-
lasting and fast-charging batteries.

#2. Peer-to-peer mobile networks coupled with low orbit satellite networks.

#3. Privacy-aware end to end encrypted apps.

#4. End of fiat currency. A new global electronic money.

#5. Personalised 3d-printed medicine.

#6. Full immersion BCI VR spaces

#7. By the end of the decade digitisation of public administration will make
space for direct democracy and fast-paced public projects based on real-time
electronic voting.

------
testy_38844
The S&P 500 will close on Dec 31, 2029 above where it opened on Jan 1, 2020.

~~~
answers_49955
Seconded.

------
sbussard
• Bay Area real estate will drop

• At least one tech giant will be broken up due to antitrust proceedings.
Privacy legislation will dramatically increase

• Data blackmarkets will grow substantially. (Now they are just known as
markets)

• The deep web will grow, as more legitimate businesses move there to prevent
censorship from other companies. Investigative journalists will also flock to
the deep web for the same reasons, and for reasons of physical safety

• WebAssembly will grow, creating competition that will usurp javascript's
market share

• A wasm-based framework will become popular and power cross-platform native
apps

• YC companies will reach $1T aggregate in value

------
blrboy
1\. Level 4/5 autonomous trucks everywhere. Speed-regulated, will probably
have special lanes in freeways to pacify people. Cars will take some more
time. 2\. Global carbon emissions not reduced, we're all essentially screwed
wrt global warming 3\. About 50% of the US population is vegan or
predominantly vegan 4\. Google loses a lot of its sheen, becomes the
equivalent of IBM in terms of glory (like air7's prediction) 5\. Privacy
becomes a major concern in China - young population growing up wants more
rights, major anti-censoring/privacy industry

------
wehriam
Large (42”+), shared touch-enabled displays will become ubiquitous. Home
televisions, conference room displays, and open-air marketing will become
deeply interactive.

More than 50% of American homes will have voice controlled home automation in
one or more rooms.

Unsheltered homeless populations recede to pre-2014 levels by 2023.

Javascript continues to dominate web development.

Renters rights and associated concerns become a main issue for the American
left.

Scotland leaves the UK.

Grocery delivery and picking services account for the majority of groceries
sold, the number of traditional supermarkets recede by 30%.

“Showroom shopping” (like Tesla) occupies 25% of street level retail.

------
ash
1\. Google loses significant market share.

2\. Fusion research breakthrough.

3\. Software is more complex, slower and buggier.

4\. Nothing major is done about climate change. Countries that try to do
something, suffer economically.

5\. Sea level rise continues the same trend as in the last 200 years. [1]

[1]: According to NOAA, only about 10 tide gauges in the world indicate sea
level rise more than 5mm / year. I predict the situation will stay
approximately the same.
[https://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/sltrends/sltrends.html](https://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/sltrends/sltrends.html)

------
rdm_blackhole
My own predictions:

1)Either the UE will become a superstate with countries relegated to the role
of provinces with much less power than before or the UE will start breaking
apart due to the inadequacy of the Euro currency and the disparity between the
successful European countries such as Germany and France and the less
successful ones such as Portugal, Italy and Greece.

In the second scenario, one major country may be in the process of exiting the
EU and go back to using its own currency or has already done so by the end of
the decade.

3)Russia will become a food superpower due to rising temperatures making it an
ideal place to grow lots of food. This will help keep the oligarchs in place
and no real political change will happen within this decade.

4)China will not see a change in its political system. Xi Jinping will still
be ruling China but there will be political turmoil due to his failing health.

5)A mega recession will happen and subsequently, asset prices will be cut in
half around the globe due to QE and low-interest rates having pushed the
prices of shares and real estate to levels completely disconnected from the
real world economies.

6)The pace of Automation will continue to increase and 10s of millions of
people will be out of work as there won't be enough time to retrain them to
find a new job. This will force governments to increase unemployment benefits
dramatically or implement UBI to appease the population of the countries most
affected by this.

7)Crypto currency may or may not be mainstream by 2030

8)Apple will enter the healthcare space with a major and still unannounced
product, potentially a wearable device that would monitor your well being
24/7(not a watch)

9)Phones are starting to be replaced by AR glasses or contact lenses.

10)Facebook’s median user’s age is 45 years old in 2030.

11)The price of a secondhand Tesla car is roughly equivalent to that of a
secondhand ICE car.

12)Self driving level 4 is mainstream.

13)Elon Musk is the richest man in the world with a net worth approaching
200Bn

14)New electric cars have an autonomy of 1000 miles on a single charge.

------
Razengan
Less a prediction and more like a hope/wish:

I hope some worldwide conversation takes place over the structure of human
society and our endgame.

We have too much crap that's not conductive to a pleasant experience for any
sentient existence. Things that used to make sense or were necessary once are
no longer so, or don't have to be:

• The need for everybody to "work."

• Survival-of-the-fittest mentality (e.g. no safety networks for people who
fall on hard times.)

• Every nation maintaining their own army.

• The obligation to remain in relationships you do not enjoy.

• Repression of emotional and sexual expression.

• Mass breeding and slaughter of animals for consumption.

------
sml0820
2030 decade predictions: 1) A rise of smart robots both physically, ranging
from military to household uses. A robot can actually clean your house. A
newspaper article talks about the "Fly State" in which people cannot tell
whether a fly is a surveillance fly or a real fly.

2) Advances in quantum computing lead to breakthroughs in medical science.
Notably the immune system is modified to monitor key health metrics on an
everyday basis. This will enable early detection of Cancer, and combined with
advances in immunotherapy Cancer eradication will be in sight. Clinical trials
of immune based early detection start toward the end of the decade.

3) The combination of advances in machine learning and 5G becoming ubiquitous,
enabling level 5 self driving cars. The cars themselves can't handle all
situations, but they are able to identify uncertain situations and let a third
party take over via the 5g network.

4) Mass protests against the rich start to form, which leads the rich to
create communities defended by mercenaries in the name of self defense.

5) Concrete plans to send people to Mars by 2040. SpaceX wins this contract
from the United States Space Force. China is in competition as they view this
as a military threat.

6) An increased nuclear war threat globally as income inequality becomes more
drastic between countries, which sparks a rise in companies that specialize in
safety. People start to move out of major cities and office headquarters
become more remote with the advent of self driving cars enabling an easier
commute.

7) Sports gambling and wave of real time applications around sports gambling
becomes ubiquitous, as people become more bored and need distraction.

8) Google starts to show clear signs that it will beat Apple, Amazon, and
Microsoft. Cries to break up the company grow increasingly louder with daily
protests starting around the the Google campus.

9) People start to seriously consider the idea of genetic modification of
their babies for higher intelligence as machine learning makes it incredibly
difficult to be competitive in the world.

10) Virtual reality is still a niche market, but augmented reality becomes
more real with e-readers and even television taking augmented reality form.

------
DivisionSol
* The demand/supply of customized compute, or specialized compute, will accelerate. Utilizing dirt-cheap technology of bygone eras will allow fabs to spring up and satisfy the niche demands of various industries. GPUs were a bridge for floating-point heavy tasks, FPGAs will begin to satisfy the needs of even more, and eventually will culminate in many industries sponsoring custom chips for their needs.

* We will see level 5 autonomous cars. They will be relegated to rent-seeking behavior. There may be some opposition, but in the end those who can create autonomous cars will turn them into reoccurring revenue.

* Custom manufacturing capacity will increase. Hobbyists will continue to iterate on 3D Printing technology until "The Reliable" solution comes to fruition and "It Just Works," allowing any household to produce any sort of plastic part they need. Further down this path, fully automated factories will start this decade. It will be expensive, at first, but, soon, it will be as easy as submitting a CAD file to get 1,000 custom parts delivered fully autonomously, and for a price cheaper than most other options. We may see the rise of fully custom car culture, and an uproar over safety.

* This decade's AI, or, compute-assisted task completion usage will rise. Custom physical/virtual interfaces will be created to satisfy any task. Jobs will be lost. Nothing will be done, except the occasional per institution protest. Other jobs will be created, but I can't predict what industries will crop as a result of it.

* The Four Horsemen of the Infopocolypse will continue to be referenced against any form of privacy or encryption. No progress will be made on either front, and certain individuals in power will continue to treat any sort of encryption as villain-tier behavior.

* Web and JavaScript (and all related technologies) will continue to grow and dominate. Chromebooks just came out too early. 2020-2030 we will see compelling browser-only experiences.

* Compute could become commoditized or even converted to a utility. Everything between 'local RAM' and 'cloud RAM' will be abstracted away. With the rise of custom chips, we will see even better virtualization technologies rise. Computers will drift towards compute-less terminals.

------
mv4
1\. some cloud services (storage, delivery/CDN) are completely free.

2\. AWS has won the cloud game, but had to dramatically simplify its
offerings.

3\. there are no truck drivers in the US.

4\. VR is officially dead, like 3D TV now.

5\. BestBuy is out of business.

6\. AI assistants are now 100% autonomous and do not publish your data to the
cloud.

7\. IBM no longer mentions Watson and is now focused on quantum computing.

8\. quantum computing is still not readily available, accessible, or
practical.

9\. there have been several major hacks where people's genetic data been
stolen, and it's now being used against them.

10\. major consolidation in online video services (Netflix, Disney+, Hulu,
etc)

~~~
mv4
11\. healthcare apps where hospital and doctors can bid on procedures.

12\. whole classed of jobs disappear due to AI and automation.

13\. those who are lucky (tech jobs, medical, custom genetics) all have
multiple human assistants.

------
TheRealSteel
The only one that matters:

No significant progress will be made on climate change, and the fact that the
world really is ending and we're facing world war 3 becomes a significant
cause of depression for young people.

------
morrbo
My two:

There will be a phone virus similar to conficker/iloveyou which will exploit
millions of android phones/smart devices on a huge scale.

IPV6 will become the de-facto for phones relatively early on in 2020s. There
will be a push to try and move devices to have dirty connections to the
internet (ie. no more routers) for home users and laptops, followed by PCs
(potentially with 5g USB dongles per-device). This is seen as logical, but is
it really just a way to track/identify people more easily and they are pushing
for it, for this reason, in the UK already.

------
tsaprailis
I think that one sector that has not been given much spotlight is space. I
feel that space will get lots of more startups leveraging LEO in unexpected
ways. The current rate of progress for the different launch systems, bring the
cost/kg to orbit further down, as well as further satellite
miniaturization/mass production will prove space as a new breeding ground for
ideas that we cannot still think about, but I think in a decade from now we
will be looking at space as on of the sectors pushing economic growth across
the planet.

------
ScarZy
* Apple becomes a true lifestyle brand, where you subscribe to different plans. They offer cellular plans. Macbooks by default are internet connected devices. The touch bar becomes bigger. One dream is that they release a smaller iPhone again.

* Major technology companies invest into public infrastructure. From bus stops to cycle/scooter lanes.

* Car ownership decreases due to more alternatives and aforementioned investment.

* Major uncontrollable fire within a major city, much like the fire of London.

* Ocean Cleanup project are a success.

* SpaceX enter the commercial airline industry with an electric/solar plane.

------
rybosworld
1\. Central banks will continue to exercise more control of their economies -
and market busts as we know them will be mostly a thing of the past
(specifically their magnitude).

2\. A reusable rocket will land on Mars, though I think it will be unmanned.
There will be a very small and permanent manned presence on the moon.

3\. Global CO2 emissions will steady out during the decade. (Not increased or
reduced significantly).

4\. The effect of autonomous vehicles: The price of car insurance will rise
significantly, and human driving will begin to be priced out in favor of the
safer alternative.

------
DerSaidin
Expectations 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.

------
RickJWagner
Things will keep getting better and better.

Worldwide poverty will continue to decline.

Infant mortality will continue to shrink.

Electronics will continue to get cheaper and provide more value.

We'll live longer and be healthy longer.

Pretty much an extension of the last decade.

------
Waterluvian
I'll be optimistic for once tonight:

1\. IoT-less offline appliances and electronics will become a serious feature
that sells.

2\. Self-repairability and modularity will become a serious feature people pay
an apple premium for.

------
jcfrei
Very broadly:

* Enjoying movies and series on a flat screen will be replaced by experiences inside virtual reality devices.

More specifically:

* All actors will be turned into 3D models.

* The experience will be mostly passive.

* They can be enjoyed by multiple people at the same time, which replaces going to the cinema.

* Manufacturers will be the same, ie. Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo.

* Disney either launches their own "console" (ie. a standardized PC like current consoles) or enter a partnership with one of the three large manufacturers (Nintendo being the most likely candidate).

* There will be lots of reboots of existing franchises in VR.

------
rhegart
NASA SLS does routine trips to the moon via Artemis. Musk sends Starship
successfully to Mars yet science shows risks for human travel through space
too high. James Webb discovers something amazing.

Battery prices hit $50 making ICE obsolete.

SF6 becomes the biggest worry as carbon is being tackled successfully. 0 coal
plants left, LNG replaces with batteries

Bay Area and NYC see population decline and housing market stays stable. Texas
is blue 2030

Social media becomes like cigarettes for mental health and politicians ban
fb/insta till age 18

Quantum computing primarily used by big pharma

~~~
tempestn
Wow, I doubt any of those things will happen in the next decade aside from
batteries getting cheaper and electric cars becoming more common. I hope many
of them do though!

Edit: and possibly Texas turning blue by 2030.

------
terminaljunkid
So some predictions for SW industry:

* We would be still using Python 2 and Linux kernel 3.X somewhere in production * Google Fuchsia will reach beta * Go will not get generics * Rust won't reach dreamed popularity -- still deemed terribly difficult & non ergonamic outside HN circles.. * The AI hype slows down as investors realize most things sold as AI are not really AI. * Hopefully a well designed, productive native programming language emerges with top notch tooling and flow of programming similar to python.

------
magwa101
AI 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).

------
leonidasv
* IoT hacking becomes a real issue; ransomware exploiting smart door locks will lock people off their homes, refusing to open until ransom is paid.

* The end of Moore's Law force more and more engineering effort to be spent on performance optimizations; "performance optimization" is the new cool keyword to have in your resume.

* Discrete optimization becomes a hot topic much like neural nets are today.

* WebAssembly with Rust is the new trend in web development. JS still lives, tho.

* Forget Docker, unikernels are the future.

* Foldable smartphones are still a joke.

------
mjpuser
* College will become less common, and focus on vocational jobs will increase.

* Autonomous cars will be available by the end of the decade

* First person will land on Mars

* 20-40% of wild animal populations will be gone

* Lab grown meats will be introduced and become the norm as meat prices skyrocket

* Taxes in the US will increase to 40% to "target climate change" even though those funds will be poorly handled

* Starlink becomes operational, disrupting mobile carriers

* New phone number system comes created as all systems will go though the internet

* precision medicine for cancer care improves but is too expensive

------
chriswalz
Huge increase in informational distrust (e.g. because of fake videos)

FAANG company is broken up

Bitcoin maintains value

Huge population drop in US. Government intervention takes plus with some sort
of incentive to have children

Tesla is most valuable car company in the world

Rank voting for presidents

VR will allow people to the most beautiful things and for others very
disturbing things

There will be some cases of rich people will secretly genetically modify their
children

Quadrocopters/Drones will be used for raids and police enforcement

Global Internet will become distinct country-nets to protect citizens from
increasing cyber warfare

------
garganzol
1\. Rust will gradually become a top language for native development

2\. C will remain, but it is role will be gradually diminished to a nice-to-
read somewhat portable assembler code

3\. C# will be poisoned by a bulk of badly thought out features that will
gradually turn the language into catastrophic cacophony

4\. .NET will gradually loose its appeal for new developments due to its
removal from the OS

5\. Apple looses the remaining tropes of innovation and fades away in the
second half of decade

6\. macOS market share will shrink to 2% by the end of the decade

------
wbl
We start to enter the post literate age with more information online conveyed
through video and symbology then text. Computers become less and less
understood by the masses of people who use them. Moore's law ending means
software no longer sees gains from its complements and efficiency matters
more. Cloud compute margins start getting squeezed as new entrants optimize
more and customers evaluate data center ownership or partial leasing more
favorably.

~~~
MacroAffairs
> post literate

> more then

The future has arrived.

------
paulgb
\- The new “Uber for X”-type trend will be ”Figma for X”. Just as Ajax enabled
the web to compete with MS Office, WebAssembly and WebGL will produce viable
competitors to CPU-bound desktop software.

\- Cryptocurrencies (by today's definition, i.e. proof-of-work stores of value
that spiritually descend from the Satoshi paper) won't revolutionize finance.
Bitcoin and Etherium end the decade down from the start. Libra is either
vaporware or launches but remains niche.

------
jmstfv
In no particular order:

1/ More jobs will be automated. You can imagine what kind of scary
implications that might entail.

2/ Remote work will become more popular, but not ubiquitous.

3/ The Balkanization of the Internet will continue. Smaller governments will
try to create their own Internet. Nothing good will come out of it.

4/ Phishing is still an unsolved problem.

5/ More people will care about their privacy on the web (still a minority
though).

6/ Web pages will keep growing in size.

7/ Psychedelics will be decriminalized in some countries.

------
amai
\- fossil fuel power stations will not be built anymore

\- still no safe deposit for radioactive waste

\- electric cars will be everywhere

\- if not electrified trains, ships and some planes will use hydrogen as fuel

\- new houses will use a combination of solar/wind power, batteries and
hydrogen storage making them energy autarkic

\- nuclear fusion for energy generation will finally be developed. However
nobody cares, because renewable energy sources are so much cheaper in 2030.

\- Oil-producing countries will be in decline

\- SpaceX will build space-based solar power stations

------
r0rtega
1\. Ultra-fast internet connection, from nearly everywhere in World (5/6G,
Satellites)

2\. China's Aircraft future giant will be born

3\. More tensions inside Europe, people will get defiant against the EU (for
good reasons)

4\. WYSIWYG app builder will be better and actually produce decent code.
Famous apps will be built on this with a lot less hand-written code

5\. First brain-computer interface

6\. AI and computer science will continue to help all other fields without
disrupting them

7\. First real-world experimental attacks using quantum computers

------
vanrysss
1.) In the US regulators will step in and for someone to be considered a
software engineer something like the FE and PE exams will have to be taken.

2.) The above will drive a larger wedge between high and low earning software
workers.

3.) A heatwave in the subcontinent will kill over a million people, sparking
the first mass migration.

4.) Western politics will trend to more conservatism and isolationism.

5.) Grab or Gojek will be worth as much as Facebook is today.

6.) A $100 Billion tech company will get it's start in Africa.

------
coldcode
My prediction is most of these predictions will not come true as stated, but
things that have not been discovered or are not obvious will dominate change.
Having seen 4 decades now since I started I have seen so many technologies and
changes appear that no one even thought of at the start of each decade. It
might be different this time because the internet is so prevalent today and
it's much more difficult to make something under the radar.

~~~
fullstackchris
I know this is like a hindsight 20/20 thing, but it would seem to me the only
'problems' left to solve are just the really hard ones (even on the scale of a
decade): fusion, unified field theory, intelligent / extraterrestrial life,
becoming multi-planetary species, etc.

My feeling is that biotech or nanotech have the most room for something
revolutionary or unforseen to be produced

------
nknealk
Some bold predictions. Many may not come true:

1\. Intel loses its lead in the data center and in laptops/desktops. This will
be lead by Apple replace Intel with their own CPUs later this decade, AWS
continuing to build out their ARM offerings, and AMD biting at Intel’s heals
on the low end. A competitor from China may emerge, but won’t penetrate the US
market due to national security concerns.

2\. Boeing will require a government bailout. The Boeing brand never recovers
from the Max incident. China starts to compete with Boeing and captures some
of the Asian market. The allegations published this year of poor manufacturing
practices start to materialize in the late 2020s with Dreamliners falling out
of the sky.

3\. Social program reform. Medicare goes insolvent causing either (1) an
increase in taxes, (2) a cut in benefits, or both. Ditto on many pension funds

4\. Climate change starts to cause major displacement and famine.

5\. Rudimentary knowledge of a programming language will start to become table
stakes for getting a job in developed economies. This won’t fully occur for
several more decades though. However, companies will start to realize that the
optimizations that can be rendered through “low code” methods has already been
rendered.

6\. I say this as someone pursing an MBA — MBAs will become less valuable as a
degree.

7\. Bitcoin bubble bursts for mainstream users. It’s niche will be a payment
method for “hostage” software and sanctioned nations to launder money.

8\. Brexit leaves the UK economy looking a lot like Japan.

9\. A millennial will become president of the US.

10\. Some kind of “offline” movement that’s on par with Yoga — people brag
about it being good for health.

11\. Still no fully autonomous self driving cars.

12\. Google and Amazon lose their luster as employers. Microsoft gains more
clout as an employer.

13\. Ethics becomes a central part of corporate decision making. This isn’t
driven by wanting to be good but rather what I’ll call the Susan Fowler effect
where a single contributor can bring down a CEO with a blog post.

14\. Company valuation currently tends to track revenue growth. I think it’ll
move closer to something like EBITDA growth or operating cash flows growth
over the next decade.

------
kenips
1\. This will be the last time I’m typing my decade prediction on HN

2\. AR/VR will be complementary only, travel industry will be bigger than
ever; shopping will happen as your travel (product placement in all your
experiences)

3\. Weather-related disasters to be more rampant and frequent

4\. Governments go bankrupt and hyper-inflation in developed countries

5\. Disney still owns everything

6\. Intel loses leadership in CPU market, as Apple leads the post-x86 world

7\. Facebook to be the Google of the decade; Tesla to be Facebook of the
decade

~~~
corporate_shi11
Regarding 4, governments will probably not go bankrupt because almost every
single nation is in massive debt relative to its GDP so almost all nations
will be forced to print money.

In isolation, a single country printing its way out of debt would devalue its
currency and cause inflation, but if all countries do it together there should
be little relative change in their currency values, meaning nothing would
actually change.

It's kind of hilarious to think the global debt "crisis" may amount to little
more than nothing.

------
1auralynn
The US's massive cuts in spending for basic science research and the arts
through the 2000s and 2010s - which led to many of the brightest minds either
struggling to make ends meet, designing better ways to sell products, or
working on get-rich-quick schemes - will open the door for another
country/region to become the dominant force in societal evolution. There are
only so many ways we can repackage and reboot old IP.

------
russfink
1\. Quantum computers are still not practical for attacking crypto keys with
reasonably secure bit sizes.

2\. We will see a practical application of homomorphic encryption for privacy
preserving search, in a niche space at first.

3\. The "gold rush" days of ransomware will die down as organizations start to
take backups seriously, but the problem will never go away.

4\. Related to 3., some people/orgs will still be using Windows XP, e.g.,
specialized hospital equipment.

------
aazaa
1\. The election of 2020 will catalyze the creation of a third major political
party composed of former Democrats and Republicans. By the end of the decade,
this new party, propelled by its charismatic leader, will have relegated the
current parties to minority status.

2\. The fastest-shrinking part of the economy will be middle management. Flat
organization restructuring will be driven by a dizzying proliferation of cheap
decision-making systems directly instructing low wage workers.

3\. At least two digital 9/11s will take place. These will be major attacks on
crucial infrastructure of a world power by a group no larger than 2,000
individuals.

4\. At least two digital Tonkin Gulf incidents will take place. In the rush to
pin blame and "do something," the victim of a digital 9/11 will identify - and
attack - an innocent country.

5\. At least one low-yield nuclear weapon will be used in a combat situation.

6\. New battery technologies will make it possible to power a full-size car
for 500 miles with a unit costing under $300.

7\. The value of bitcoin in circulation will exceed the M1 money supply of all
but the top 3 countries.

8\. Teenagers will rarely leave their houses, replacing most physical
interactions, including school, with telepresence tools.

~~~
senordevnyc
Wow, I think almost every one of these is wildly unrealistic :)

1\. Third parties are desperately needed but the rules are stacked way too
hard against them. And there’s not nearly enough true dissatisfaction in both
parties to see a new one overcome.

2\. People were saying that decades ago. Really skeptical.

3\. Unless they result in thousands of lives lost, it won’t have nearly the
same effect. And that seems unlikely / hard to predict.

4\. See above

5\. Weird. There are very few nuclear powers and none of them have much
incentive to start using nukes in combat, let alone low level nukes.

6\. I hope so! But this would probably be the most transformative one on this
list. That level of battery innovation would have huge cascading effects
throughout society. Feels like wishful thinking.

7\. Only if there’s some killer app, and the last decade doesn’t inspire
confidence.

8\. You think most countries are going to tear down a multi trillion dollar
education / babysitter system in favor of telepresence homeschooling in the
next decade? No way. And teenagers don’t leave the house as much anymore due
to technology but that trend will not explode in a decade. Maybe over longer
term, but I also think it’s a real problem that society will attempt to solve
well before we end up with most teens rarely leaving the house.

Anyway, just mildly disagreeing. Guess we’ll see!

~~~
peteradio
re: 3. For me it's easy to imagine something as simple as a long sustained
power outage would result in the deaths of thousands.

------
busymom0
1\. Reddit dying/overtaken by another site in next 2-3 years.

2\. Current dating apps dying. OkCupid will become irrelevant. Tinder will get
overtaken by another app but not the FB one.

3\. HIV AIDS cure will be fully and easily available in next 5 years.

4\. Twitter will die off in 5 years.

5\. No World War.

6\. YouTube will get less traffic and a new competitor will be around with
more traffic.

7\. Tesla will become a Trillion dollar company.

8\. Mankind will step foot on Mars and Moon again.

9\. Google will launch a few more products and then kill them after 2 years.

------
duderific
What I'm finding kind of interesting is that in the 2010 predictions here
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1025681](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1025681),
most folks were only offering one or a few predictions. In this thread, most
people are putting out 8 to 10 predictions. I wonder what that says about us
now as opposed to back then.

------
Dowwie
An AI will write the first bestselling piece of fiction. The team behind the
project will sell the technology to Disney for more than a billion dollars.

------
hobabaObama
Bitcoin becomes the goto currency for the world.

More open conflicts between China and the US (potentially serious).

Twitter / Facebook era ends and replace with something else.

------
francescopnpn
1\. BTC's ATH is $50K and it's still the dominant cryptographic assets & will
overcome gold as preferred store of value

2\. There's a recession, SPY drops 40%+ in 1Y

3\. First Electric Planes

4\. We go to Mars

5\. First somewhat general intelligence robots wandering the streets and homes

6\. No 5L autonomy in sight

7\. x10 space companies

8\. in 2030 AR/VR will be iPhone 1 level

9\. I will have preserved countless acres of virgin land and be on my way to
space

10\. in 2030 there will be the first migrations due to rising temperatures.

------
username90
We will see temperature records broken in almost all parts of the world.

The richest person on record will roughly double the current record.

Another job family gets converted to a gig economy.

Another tech company will join the top 10 market cap ranks and none of the
incumbent tech companies will fall.

... Wait a minute, all of these already happened in the previous decade!
Anyhow, I basically predict that 2020's will be just more of the same.

------
JohnFen
My prediction: the amount of trouble and strife will increase over the next
decade to a level that will make the current day look placid.

------
Balgair
1\. A Nuke will go off in anger

2\. Most African countries will not default on their debt to China, but will
restructure it as they gain independence and strength.

3\. Somalia finally splits up formally.

4\. US restructures it's social security system as outflows increase. No
medicare for all.

5\. Someone finally invents a cheap, small, and good-enough memristor,
changing a lot of basics in computer EE.

6\. The Raiders move to LV and then back to Oakland

------
mxschumacher
the debt cycle will come to an end: inflation will pick up significantly,
interest rates will be higher, there will be a great deleveraging for
governments, companies and private individuals.

The US won't default, but it will devalue the dollar. US debt (both bonds and
unfunded obligations from Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security) and the
$1tn/y deficit will begin to matter.

Higher taxes, high unemployment, social unrest ensue. Passively invested money
(through ETFs) will cause a stampede to leave the market. Volatility will be
back. The long running bull markets in bonds and stocks will come to an end.
Pension funds will lose a lot of money. Not necessarily a crash, but a long,
painful decline.

\- oil will hit $120+/barrel

\- Facebook, Alphabet, Amazon, Microsoft will come under a lot of anti-trust
scrutiny

\- Germany will have a chancellor from the Green Party

\- AOC will become US president

\- mobile internet will come from satellites in the US (Apple, SpaceX)

\- Java, C and C++ are still going strong

\- large layoffs in retail, automotive and banking

\- VR will become mainstream

\- hacks will begin to matter financially, unlike the incidents at Target,
Sony at Equifax

\- Deepl will be acquired by Microsoft

\- Twitter will be acquired by Alphabet

\- a move out of large cities: as remote work becomes more widespread (and
fewer people work physically) people use more affordable living options
outside of metropolitan areas. telemedicine, pharmaceutical eCommerce and
faster internet connections will help. Shared satellite offices will take off
as a result.

\- the UI of HN will stay the same

\- Gamestop and J.C. Penney will declare bankruptcy

------
piiswrong
1\. Next economic crisis will break down world financial order because
interest rates cannot be lowered and QE is no longer effective.

2\. Total meltdown of social & political order in middle east and latin
america. EU and US face larger refugee floods like never seen before.

3\. European Union dissolves.

4\. Internet sovereignty becomes a common claim and at least one of FANNG will
pull out of Europe and India

~~~
mxschumacher
I'll eat my hat if the EU dissolves. Seems extremely unlikely to me.

~~~
tonyedgecombe
Brexit seems to have killed that idea, probably for at least a decade. Britain
won't rejoin but it will end up in a BRINO (Brexit in name only) type
relationship by the end of the decade simply because the economic arguments
will be overwhelming.

------
iandanforth
Next Decade

1\. Reinforcement learning starts working. Though the techniques required to
make it work stretch today's definition of RL.

2\. Mobile robotics in warehouses and big-box retail matures and reaches a
tipping point where for some it is now boring and the majority of the industry
has a roll-out plan.

"The future cannot be predicted, but futures can be invented," so I'll stop
there.

------
j2bax
Apple starts a social network with the promise of data privacy and Facebook
loses a large share of their high value users to it.

------
mcphilip
-A massive electronic medical records breach due to a security misconfiguration in the cloud gets posted on the dark net and reignites conversations around privacy and flaws in HIPAA regulations.

-The AI job market dramatically shrinks due to automation and tooling built by current AI experts. Advancements in AI puts AI workers out of work, ironically.

~~~
euvitudo
> -A massive electronic medical records breach due to a security
> misconfiguration in the cloud gets posted as a torrent and reignites
> conversations around privacy and flaws in HIPAA regulations.

I can see this. The two big vendors are pushing their own cloud. One slip-up
on their end will do it.

This becomes even more plausible now that third-party access is required to be
supported. It's becoming easier for these third-parties to slurp up as much
patient data as they can. Data from health systems will become much more
vulnerable to exploit and the possibility of having all patient data exposed
is increased. Likely worse than Equifax and/or Cambridge Analytica.

------
adt2bt
* In the US, the left-right divide continues to fester, resulting in violence and even more inhumane treatment of migrants.

* Cancer fatality rates plummet further as individualized care regimens continues to improve. Heart disease and diabetes-related complications are the two big killers

* No major action is done on climate change as society continues to fall into the boiling frog trap. The investment needed to tackle climate change is never made at a significant level.

* Outside of a coming recession, cities continue to attract the vast majority of new jobs, resulting in even more insane affordability problems. Remote work doesn't stem the tide.

* Bananas go extinct.

* Cloud providers remain wildly profitable, but meta-providers begin to put some pressure on the bottom line by dynamically provisioning resources based on cost between clouds.

* A moon base happens. Astronauts travel from the ISS to the moon every few months.

* SpaceX sends multiple unmanned missions to Mars to lay the groundwork for eventual human habitation. NASA announces the selection of its first crew to visit Mars in the 2030s.

* The ITER project produces the first net-positive fusion reaction in history. Elon Musk announces a new company to mass-produce reactors.

* Nothing is really done to address inequality. Populist violence breaks out in some European countries.

* A revenue-neutral carbon tax will be passed in the US.

------
loh
No one here has specifically mentioned the two primary things I'll be working
on over the next decade. Although, the trends surrounding these two things
have been (generically) mentioned many times, and I actually see a handful of
people predicting the exact opposite of one of them.

I see this as a good sign that I'm on the right track.

------
qznc
If you want to track your predictions or bet on others, here are some sites:

[https://predictionbook.com](https://predictionbook.com)

[http://www.knewthenews.com](http://www.knewthenews.com)

[https://www.metaculus.com](https://www.metaculus.com)

------
tyscorp
\- MicroLED will replace both LCD and OLED in most consumer devices and 240hz+
will become standard

\- Truly useful quantum computers will be available on cloud providers

\- Cars as a service

\- Strong evidence of alien life via exoplanet atmosphere spectroscopy
(assuming successful deployment of JWST)

\- Discovery of gravitational wave background

\- Fake news will be out of control due to AI

\- Wireless charging via Wi-Fi

\- Alzheimer's will be cured

------
Aeolun
1\. World will either explode, or move towards even greater globalization.

2\. Facebook will be overthrown as the dominant social network, being replaced
by something just as functional, but without the data sales.

3\. First serious manned mission to Mars, and the moon will be visited by
humans again.

4\. Decent AR will finally be a thing. Though probably by the end of the
decade.

------
yhoiseth
Shameless plug: If you want to quantify your predictions for (some)
cryptocurrencies or stocks, check out
[https://www.empiricast.com](https://www.empiricast.com), the no-nonsense
forecasting forum.

Feel free to reach out to me on yngve@empiricast.com if you have any comments
or questions :)

------
Flowdalic
1\. Concurrency platforms finally help to utilize multiple cores of a system,
as result we will see many-core architectures with plenty simple cores

2\. The consequences of quantitative easing will emerge and affect us all

3\. Another cryptocurrency and bitcoin will form the backbone of a usable
payment network with near-instant transactions for a low-fee

------
preommr
* Food printers will be commonplace. Lots of homes will have equipment to automate the cooking process. Same for restaurants that have equipment that is more specialized and expensive.

* AI and expert systems in design.

* People WILL care about privacy

* VR really takes off

* Very few political changes.

* Self driving cars don't become a thing until 2030s, after which society changes dramatically.

------
LatteLazy
The decade's best stock is not a stock: it's a commodity ETF. The rising
population, climate change, crop/livestock pandemics, higher personal incomes
and falling supply drive record prices for everything from gold to pork to
copper.

No nation takes significant action on climate change. Some push renewables
hard, but this is more about economic sustainability and geopolitical
independence than CO2 levels. People "learn to live" with a work that is as
much as 1C warmer and will soon be 4+C by 2100.

The EU continues to move towards ever tighter union. Crisis in smaller, more
southern nations and the lack of the UK-veto effect mean than true power sits
in Brussels and regions exercise only the autonomy they're permitted. Germany
is so polite and generous about this that no one notices.

Brexit goes badly for the UK which suffers a but the EU barely notices. The UK
suffers a "lost decade" as young people leave and fewer people work compared
to being retired; old voters give themselves more free stuff leading to
spiraling taxes (and no services) for the young. More people leave worsening
the problem. It's basically just the 80s again...

~~~
eigenvalue
I think the idea that a commodity etf outperforms every single equity is
absurd. The best performing stocks can go up 100x in a decade. The only way a
broad based commodify etf could go up that much is if there is hyperinflation,
and in that case some companies (stocks) will benefit a lot more from that
trend.

------
tomasGiden
Predictions

1\. Dark silicon will push us even further into heterogeneous computing. Major
cloud providers will build their own silicon and proprietary software stacks
for things like databases and other common computing tasks.

2\. Nationalists focusing on Making their own country great will keep doing
nothing about climate change. This will in turn create the inevitable need for
people from poorer countries to become climate refugees. This will in turn
create even more nationalism and fortresses build around rich countries.

3\. The push towards sustainability will come from the economics of clean
energy actually becoming cheaper than dirty energy. It is still too late to
limit us to 2 degrees.

4\. Speciality vehicles will reach level 4 and go driverless. Ie trucks in
mines will be totally driverless. Long distance trucks will be driverless on
highways and run to depots outside cities where drivers will jump in and take
the wheel.

5\. Most embedded control systems where correctness is more important than
latency and computation/watt will move to Linux from microcontrollers and get
a standard software stack. Probably built first by a cloud vendor for IoT
devices. Thus making embedded systems will be far less work (and less
interesting engineering problem).

6\. There (finally!) will be a remote work solution which makes it economical
to have most teams remote most of the time. Economical as in the the decrease
in productivity for complex (see Cynefin model for definition) problems in
remote work will be less than the increase in productivity given by removing
commuting and the ability to get the best people no matter where they live.
This in turn (past 2030) be the thing that starts to decrease traffic around
cities, maybe even start people moving to smaller cities or villages closer to
nature.

7\. Mainstream microwaves will go solid state and stop making that annoying
sound!

8\. A standard to electrify roads (highways) will be set.

9\. 6G will be released. Will allow sending and receiving on the same
frequencies simultaneously.

10\. AR/VR glasses will not become a thing for the general public.

11\. Remote surgery (with VR glasses and robots) will become a thing where
specialists in a few major hospitals will serve smaller local hospitals for
specialist surgery. (Past 2030 for it to become the norm)

12\. Same with Air control. Smaller local airports will be controlled by air
controllers in a few hubs by standard.

13\. Tech for the care of the elderly will spawn a unicorn.

14\. Meatless meat will overtake meat in a few European countries.

------
alkonaut
\- “AI” will be a continuing hype that still falls to deliver. “Self driving
cars“ will be a thing but not in the sense that they are fully autonomous.
People still buy (more often leads) and drive cars.

\- Personal Integrity will be the new “organic” of gadgets. A more tech savvy
and privacy conscious generation will demand to not be listened to by their
TVs.

\- Traditional auto makers have a tough first half of the decade, converting
to BEV production. They do catch up with electric vehicle production in the
second half.

\- Regulation catches up lots of tech from the last decade: drones, deepfakes,
gene editing cryptocurrency etc.

\- We are nowhere close to a manned flight to mars.

\- Lots of lowland is ocean!

\- Nuclear power makes no big comebacks

\- Fusion power is now looking promising but still far from commercial

\- We still use PCs and we still use desktop software. It’s becoming more and
more niche however (e.g used by certain professions.).

\- smartphones look pretty much the same as they do now (slabs). The same goes
for monitors, TVs: incremental improvements (8K, HDR etc) but no major
revolutions.

\- VR never makes a big breakthrough, but the tech matures to something
incredible (but niche).

\- There won’t exist a good way of paying for content online so news outlets
will still struggle.

\- FM radio will be almost gone

------
bowlingx
I think a highly underrated Topic:

Food and Environment:

1.) Clean meat will become affordable to produce and cause a big shift in the
meat industry.

2.) More People will switch to a (more) plant based diet, either for health
and/or environmental and ethical reasons

3.) There will be a lot more startups in the plant based food sector (like
beyond meat, just egg etc.)

------
tanvach
I predict the internet becomes addictive to a point where we will start seeing
regulations and advisory for kids to stay offline. I'm already seeing parents
my age being concerned about their kids.

Also, there will be a niche demand for people who go online and manage online
life / identity for these people.

------
runeks
Interest rates will continue to fall.

US government bonds with a duration of 10 years and up will have a negative
yield.

Some US corporate debt will have a negative yield.

Some banks will further lower the account balance limit over which depositors
pay negative interest on their deposits.

As interest rates continue to fall, house and stock prices will continue to
rise.

------
steelframe
Lots of great predictions here. I'll just offer a couple about Tesla:

* Tesla's supercharger standard is discontinued in favor of CCS1 for EV rapid charging in the United States.

* Large battery packs providing lots of range in Tesla EVs stops being a competitive differentiator as large battery packs undergo commoditization.

------
orsenthil
* Self Driving Cars become a reality. All Cars have self-driving capabilities. * IDE's become better and assist programmers further and programmers continue to enjoy programming. * Learning becomes easier assisted by computers. Kids benefit a lot and become equipped to solve harder problems.

------
mango_indian
Some real world predictions _ asset bubble crash at least once like 2008.

-lighter batteries in cars and mobiles

-many Internet's based on the country you are in.

-post truth world based on religion and belief.

-life lessons/guides as subscription services, basically bots and people helping you live/work/play.

-tech guy runs for president.

-major cyber terrorist attack.

-alternate stock market.

------
opminion
No full, level 5, self-driving cars, but still 50% fewer traffic deaths due to
increased driving automation.

------
carapace
I tried to come up with some upbeat predictions but they weren't realistic
(see the bottom of this comment.) So here's what I got, and it's mostly pretty
bleak:

Major climate disasters. Fisheries collapse, crops and livestock devastated by
disease, heat, drought. (~25% of the pigs in the world died last year.)
Famines. Mass migrations. Unilateral geoengineering.

> "People always raid before they starve."

[https://spaswell.wordpress.com/2016/11/18/dr-gwynne-dyer-
geo...](https://spaswell.wordpress.com/2016/11/18/dr-gwynne-dyer-geopolitics-
in-a-hotter-world-ubc-talk-transcribed-sept-2010/)

AI tools will destroy the job market for programmers. Most necessary software
is already written, it just needs to be selected and configured.

Governments of all kinds will use technology to lock down their subjects and
this will be welcomed.

Organ regeneration (-or- organ theft becomes more common.) "What Bodies Think
About: Bioelectric Computation Outside the Nervous System" (youtube.com)
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18736698](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18736698)

Fusion finally. "Fusion in a magnetically-shielded-grid inertial electrostatic
confinement device" (arxiv.org)
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21539103](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21539103)

\- - - -

So what about unrealistic-but-possible crazy stuff?

The "Electric Universe" crackpottery turns out to be true and artificial
gravity starts a huge exo-planet-bound exodus. "Cities in Flight" eh?
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cities_in_Flight](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cities_in_Flight)

Levin's lab's work leads to scientific acceptance of the personhood of Gaia.
Communications are formally initiated and together we regenerate the Earth
almost overnight. Humanity is welcomed (back) into galactic civilized society.

Neurolinguistic Programming et. al. reaches critical mass and reprogramming
yourself becomes commonplace. Reason and capability conspire to engender a
mass movement to "Be excellent to each other." Humanity is welcomed (back)
into galactic civilized society.

------
walrus01
Starlink, Kuiper and Oneweb will all be built as LEO based satellite networks,
and go into service, dramatically changing the $ per Mbps economics and speeds
for previously unreachable areas of the globe.

One of the three will probably be less successful and end up getting acquired
by a larger entity.

------
btilly
Let's make some predictions and put confidence figures on it.

By end of decade:

Over 80% of new cars sold are electric. (90% - it is hard to not see this one
happen.)

At least 3 of General Motors, Ford, Hyundai, Volkswagon, Toyota and Nissan go
bankrupt or are sold. (70% - the electric transition will not be nice to
them.)

The car dealer system will undergo major changes in the USA. (60% - car
dealers and manufacturers are at odds on electric vehicles and manufacturers
tied down by car dealer laws are at a major disadvantage against companies
without car dealers. Such as Tesla and companies that will try to enter from
elsewhere like NIO from China.)

The EU monetary union will collapse. (70% - An economic union is only
sustainable in the long-run with political union, and there is no appetite for
political union. The result is growing tension between savers like Germany and
debtors like Greece, Italy and Spain.)

The UK's economic growth post-Brexit will exceed the EU as a whole. (60% - due
to less regulation and continued EU financial crises)

Democrats win the Presidency in both 2024 and 2028. (70% - this is based on
demographic trends and the fact that the Republicans can't change their
policies until enough of their base dies of old age.)

Suborbital flights replace over 1% of long distance air trips. (30% - SpaceX
is the only one who can and a lot has to go right for them to succeed. But the
vision is realistic and out there - it is now mostly a question of when.)

Facebook no longer is or owns the dominant social network. (30% - the value of
a social network scales like O(n log(n)) but Facebook recognizes this and is
doing a good job of buying competitors. Eventually they will fail.)

College tuition no longer outpaces inflation, and the ending of this trend
will be tied to a financial crisis. (30% - Stein's law says, "If something
cannot go on forever, it will stop." However there are two corollaries by
Stuart Stanisford, "It will go on a lot longer than we think," and "It will
end badly when it does stop." The first is why I think that it has a good
chance of not happening this decade. But the second captures the fact that
behavior won't be likely to change without a crisis. And consider that at $1.6
trillion, student loan debt is the largest source of personal debt, and the
only one not dischargeable in bankruptcy. If it triggers a crisis, there are
the makings of a good one here.)

------
nlh
My predictions (writing this before reading others' so I'm not too corrupted
yet ;)

* The AR revolution starts/takes hold. We move from holding 5" screens in front of us to glasses-mounted or contact-lens based AR devices.

* Crystal (the language) gets more popular and Svelte (the framework) gets more popular.

* WebAssembly takes shape, languages other than JavaScript become first-class citizens of the web, but ES27/ES28/ES29 still dominates.

* Cryptocurrencies get relegated to the sidelines as purely speculative instruments, but Blockchain finally finds some real commercial uses.

* Electric cars reach 50% market share in US / Western Europe.

* At least one major gas station brand converts at least some of its stations to 50/50 electric. The era of going to EVGo charging stations in Whole Foods parking lots ends.

* San Francisco goes through at least one strong (but not 2008-level) downturn of at least ~2 years. Real estate prices stabilize.

* There will be at least five trillion-dollar companies

* There will be at least five 100-billion-dollar companies that haven't been founded as of today.

Can't wait to come back to this on 1/1/30!

~~~
zamadatix
Five trillion dollar companies is a bit of a cheap bet considering there are 3
public companies that fit the bill right now and goog/amzn are 95% the way
there :p.

------
jktj
By 2030.

1\. There will be more electric cars bought than non-electric. Countries start
banning petrol diesel cars.

2\. Huge wave of internet content moderation/censoring. New laws passed across
countries to moderate content.

3\. Bitcoins gain traction, everyone starts using them, although it's value go
down considerably.

------
swfsql
Everything will go backwards as many effort will be spent on dealing with the
consequences of all malinvestment from the beginning of the last century until
now, which includes the accumulated debt that countries made. This will be a
lost decade.

Also, Bitcoin at 100 million dollars per unit.

------
hyperpallium
World War III begins in Syria. It doesn't lead to nukes, but millions die,
including on US soil.

~~~
selimthegrim
Psst, you're not allowed to peek on Twitter.

------
knbknb
I also think that Amazon will get Robotic Picking and Refilling in their
Warehouses to work. Of course this will result in an large number of heartless
firings of workers.

I doubt their cashierless brick-and-mortar stores will take off. (In 2019 they
had such a pilot in Seattle I think).

------
ars
* Mobile phones eat even more of the world. (i.e. people have fewer hobbies, and spend even less time doing anything else except using their phone)

* Augmented reality glasses become commonplace and people care more about what the world looks like in their glasses, than what real life looks like.

* The ability to resist mobile phones (and AR glasses) becomes the best indicator of future success in life.

* There are no new discoveries in Physics. Dark matter and Dark Energy still make no sense (i.e. have no explanation), but are still held onto as theories.

* Non-computer progress slows down, both because software development is so easy, and because the green revolution means hardly anyone wants to make things anymore.

* The world because more conservative as a backlash to the current ascendancy of liberalism.

* The world becomes more peaceful, with even fewer wars, and fewer people living without basic needs. (Because physical items like food become so cheap even fewer people lack it.)

* The current business model for TV collapses. Something else emerges that is not based around a 3 hour block of drama and comedy.

* There are no autonomous self driving cars. But there are trials on "rail road" like trails for cross country trucking. (i.e. trucks autonomously drive on highways, sharing with human controlled traffic, but not into cities)

* Humans do not land on the moon or mars. But there are more humans in orbit than before.

------
burfog
1\. Utility-scale battery storage switches to a technology that is unsuited to
consumer battery storage. For example, the batteries might only operate at
high temperatures. They could be based on sodium.

2\. The USA will dominate soccer.

3\. Immigrants will cause a civil war or revolution in a European country.
There will be genocide.

4\. Car communication will be hacked, again, but this time it won't be for
cautious fun. One day during rush hour, all cars of a particular manufacturer
will suddenly accelerate. They may even aim for other cars. Roads everywhere
will be blocked with so many burning wreaks that emergency services simply
can't go anywhere.

5\. We will find the cause for the loss of masculinity that has occurred over
the past century. (reduced Sertoli cell number, reduced sperm count, reduced
testosterone level, reduced anogenital distance, etc.) Fixing this will
require the elimination of a large class of chemicals that is in all sorts of
products, so there will be heavy lobbying effort to avoid banning anything and
to avoid liability.

6\. Pain medication based on psychoactive compounds found in M. speciosa will
be in FDA trials.

7\. GMO animals, modified to avoid organ mismatch, will be used to grow organs
for humans. They will be universal donors. Immunosuppression will not be
required.

8\. Some organs will be grown from induced stem cells in a 3D-printed shape.

------
a_imho
2020s will be the decade of medical breakthroughs especially via gene
technology. Male baldness is still around. Life expectancy for the rich
increase.

Economic inequality increases.

People getting more laid back.

A critical mass is getting fed up with bullshit jobs, major push for changing
the 40 hour 955 work week.

------
hummel
1\. Google and Facebook struggle to keep their power position and will be
stripped down for many reasons. Microsoft and Amazon will capture the spoils
of war becoming larger than they are today.

2\. No AGI yet, but some AI companies will create overnight data-driven
monopolies, same as Private Equity did on the '80s. These early companies will
start as B2B consulting/services until they have enough data, experience, and
models. Then they will stop servicing others and start disrupting every
industry and vertical they could. Same as PE, it becomes an arms race that
will eliminate any competition. To keep their power position, Data Science
becomes an esoteric-obscure knowledge, spawning another "AI Winter".

3\. We will see last-mile and self-driving operational for logistics purposes.
Driving will become a privilege, only rich people would allow driving their
cars (electric or gas). Others would need to use ride-sharing or public
transit. Fewer Toyotas, more Bugatti.

4\. There will be significant advances in research in many fields, technology
leverage scientific output. But academia works (quantum) will not translate on
real-world applications.

5\. European Union as we know will disappear on the next economic recession,
European countries will recover their historical relations while eastern
countries will see a raise on nationalisms/violent uprises and never-ending
migration crisis.

6\. China will suffer their first economic recession, taking down the older
elites and spawning a war for political control creating instability and
broken the Belt and Road initiative. Russia will face another 1990-moment
between powers and factions inside the country.

7\. Offline will be the new wave. Online relations were no longer trusted or
authentic. Back to the real world, real experiences, moments and friends.
Ibiza is the center of the civilized world.

8\. Extreme personalization of payments and lending, an era of rent-to-use,
pay month-to-month, get an instant credit will go down to basic needs like
water or toilet paper. Finance will extract value from all economy layers.
Only rich people own things.

9\. Global emissions and pollution will be reduced significative in rich
countries thanks to advanced technologies (Switzerland, Germany ..etc). On the
other side, people from Third-world countries will die because of pollution.

10\. Flying Cars for Rich people. No Mars yet, but increased interest in space
exploration.

Hello future me! I hope you did it well in this decade.

~~~
bmsleight_
> 3\. Driving will become a privilege Agree - insurance of human non-assisted
> driving vs some computer self-driving (level 3/4/5) differential will make
> it too expensive for human non-assisted driving. Data will drive the
> insurance costs.

------
geuis
My takeaway from reading the top voted 2010 predictions is that people are
terrible about predicting what's going to happen 10 years later.

A few of them are correct (cheapish high density displays, commercially
successful ebook readers, self-driving cars) but most are terribly inaccurate.

My fun (and probably wrong) predictions:

* Hacker News will still look mostly the same in 2030 as it does now and did in 2010.

* Most predictions in the parent post will be at most mildly accurate and otherwise completely wrong.

* The Artemis program, if it survives into the next administration, won't land anyone on the moon until the latter part of the decade (2025 or later).

* With the emerging increased commercial lift capacity we've been seeing in the last 5 years we'll possibly see the first commercial space station or at least the plans for one to start launching in the 2030's.

* (Unlikely) Elon will decide he wants his Roadster back. A Starship mission to demonstrate deep space recovery capability will launch to intercept the car and return it to Earth.

------
Blammar
I'll focus on unexpected effects of climate change.

1\. Insurance companies stop offering fire and hurricane insurance to
forested/coastal area properties.

2\. Major fires and hurricanes hit and millions of people lose everything
(because they are now uninsured) and have no place to go.

3\. Local governments are unable to support the citizen climate refugees, so
FEMA is tasked to manage the new refugee camps. There's a massive unbudgeted
cost to all of this in the hundreds of billions of dollar range that
significantly increase the US deficit.

4\. Fed continues to try to make money cheap by holding down interest rates,
but China realizes now's their chance to crush the U.S. government and stops
buying T-bills. Interest rates rise despite the Fed.

5\. The rise in interest rates has a cascading effect across the entire U.S.
economy which was taking way too much advantage of low interest rates. A major
recession occurs. Inflation hits 10%+. Migration away from the dollar as the
default world currency occurs.

6\. We're fucked.

------
waste_monk
1) The world population will not exceed 1b humans by the end of 2020.

2) Some level of nuclear exchange will take place, whether on a limited level
using tactical nukes, or an all out strategic rumble e.g. India v. Pakistan

3) The above will be due to resource wars, particularly fresh water.

~~~
pretendscholar
Thats quite the prediction. Heres hoping it's wrong.

~~~
waste_monk
I hope so too, but I have no faith that will be the case.

~~~
pretendscholar
Are you making any preparations for this outcome?

~~~
waste_monk
You can't fight state-level disasters as an individual. I might invest in some
long-life food stores and other stuff to weather particularly bad times, but
realistically there's nothing I can do. I think the course is set.

------
nathanathan
1\. Soli style gesture controls will be ubiquitous.

2\. Construction will begin on a structure that will be taller than anything
we have now and use an active support system.

3\. A child will be born that lives to be 234.

4\. Andrew Yang will be elected to some office, but it probably won't be
president.

------
war1025
1\. Manufactured "green" hydrocarbons will become a big business. Taking
advantage of the existing fossil fuel economy, but using alternative processes
to extract the carbon from the air, making for a high-density carbon neutral
fuel source.

------
SolubleSnake
1\. Almost all property in every major city owned by Chinese funds. 2\.
Student loan bomb explodes and universities close. 3\. Renewable energy
generation becomes the new 'Software Development' for people trying to get
rich out of innovation.

------
tomd3v
1\. A huge recession like never before happening before 2025.

2\. Facebook Libra becomes prevalent. Others (Google, Apple, Microsoft) follow
to have their e-coins.

3\. AR and/or VR is the smartphone of the 20s.

4\. Facebook becomes the most valuable company in the world first to reach a
2T$ valuation.

------
cynusx
1\. Technology sector will become regulated globally mandating minimal
security standards, privacy protections and ethical machine learning
standards. Enforcement will be economic and increasingly technical.

2\. Governments will start to adopt blockchains for currencies and registers
of record.

3\. Real estate prices in city centers will continue to increase every year

4\. Climate change enforcement will trigger a global trade war

5\. By the end of the decade, every country on earth will have implemented a
carbon emission trading scheme

6\. All new cars on the road will be electric cars

7\. Global poverty will no longer exist by the end of this decade

8\. Assisted legal suicide will be legal in many countries by the end of this
decade

9\. Ultra-fast wireless internet will cause a major decline in wired internet-
subscriptions

10\. The middle-east will still not have any real democracy

11\. China will see major popular uprisings leading to an increase in
democracy but still not be a full democracy by the end of this decade

12\. Latin America, Russia, east africa and SEA will transition to real
democracies

13\. Nuclear energy will make a comeback and new plants will be build

14\. A cure or vaccine for HIV will be in phase 3 clinical trials or beyond

15\. General AI will not exist yet and neither will fully autonomous cars

16\. Politicians will fail to enact any regulation in regards to fake news
leading to much deeper polarization of society and widespread acceptance of
biggotry

------
tzfld
With all this hype around SpaceX and reusability in general the cost of space
launches are not going to drop orders of magnitude, not even significantly.
SpaceX's Starship will fail to achive the costs and flight rates currently
considered.

------
nickgiordano
I think the first iteration of CRISPR/gene editing therapy for treating
diseases (and possibly just plain human enhancement) will begin to go
mainstream, similar to the rise of LASIK.

But only for somatic cell editing - cells other than sperm/egg.

------
Vinnl
We use far more parts of our bodies to interact with technology.

(And if this comes true, someone will comment with a reference weird sex thing
that fits this bill, and then someone else will respond with how that was
actually already available in 2020.)

------
igammarays
China will seize control of Bitcoin and adopt it as a national currency, or
issue its own. And for that reason alone, the crypto-nerds will be right about
crypto taking over the world, but not in the decentralized way they expected.

------
deft
1\. Decentralized social media grows rapidly, reddit/twitter/FB lose users and
power 2\. Identity politics culture wars end 3\. Alien disclosure / discovery
/ first contact 4\. AI winter 5\. Rust dominates development

------
dacracot
* A new browser-like application will emerge which uses HTTP, but neither HTML nor Javascript as its UI construct.

* Electric cars using glass batteries will start to out sell gasoline cars.

* A product with the form factor and capabilities of current smartphones will emerge that can plug into a base and replace all be the most powerful desktop computer functionality.

* Genetically designed crops grown using ocean salt water will emerge first as animal feed and later directly to human consumption.

* Somewhere a war will be caused by the encroachment of sea level.

* The superpowers will attempt to negotiate a new Antarctic treaty in anticipation of becoming reasonably warm enough to exploit for resources.

* No manned expedition to either the Moon, nor Mars. Multiple robotic expeditions to both and perhaps the gas giants' moons.

* Polarization of American politics will take a back seat to major recession (or depression) that causes nationalization of the banking system to avoid national debt default and gives rise to talk of a Constitutional Congress, not from the progressives, but from the conservatives. The congress will fail and the United States will break up into five or more separate countries.

------
joss82
1\. People finally realize that wind and solar are not going to replace coal
any time soon. Nuclear goes back in fashion. China and Russia lead the way.

2\. Interval combustion engines are finally seen as the bane of mankind.
Electric cars become commonplace. Petrol is only used in planes and boats.

3\. The world gets used to negative credit rates. Some companies abuse this
system and a few large bankruptcies threaten to pop the bubble. The central
banks massively inject money to prevent systemic collapse.

4\. Remote work becomes the norm. Real estate prices in large hubs go down a
bit, but not much.

5\. South East Asia becomes the new silicon valley, welcoming a horde of
digital nomads.

5\. Hurricanes gain in strength and some coastlines are redrawn.

6\. Trump-like governments are elected all over the Western world. Global
trade slows down a bit. People get happier overall. Global Super richs are a
bit less rich and way less global.

7\. Fully autonomous Electric cars are there but only for niche use (touristic
islands, Gated communities). They are slow and uncool.

8\. Intel and Boeing go under. US federal government save both companies with
taxpayer money. Both companies are cut in pieces and resold to competitors.

~~~
SamuelAdams
To your point on 7: Fully autonomous Electric cars.

I predict we will have electric cars widely available by 2030, IFF car
manufacturers stop trying to make them autonomous at the same time. Consider
the Chevy Volt [1]: it's just an electric car. It does not include any
autonomous capabilities. Furthermore, electric charging stations will be more
common. Existing gas stations will have charging stations added, or they are
abandoned all together and new charging stations (maybe "refuel" stations)
will be built.

The world surely needs electric vehicles sooner rather than later. This will
help climate change due to reduced emissions from vehicles.

However, I don't think the autonomous part will be figured out by 2030. I
predict progress will slow. More government oversight will be applied due to
the 737 MAX issue [2] and self-driving cars killing people [3][4]. Due to
these issues, general distrust in computer-driven-machines (airplanes, cars)
will increase. People will go back to non-connected / offline / "dumb"
devices, including and especially their vehicles.

[1]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chevrolet_Volt](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chevrolet_Volt)

[2]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_737_MAX_groundings](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_737_MAX_groundings)

[3][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Elaine_Herzberg](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Elaine_Herzberg)

[4]: [https://arstechnica.com/cars/2018/03/tesla-says-autopilot-
wa...](https://arstechnica.com/cars/2018/03/tesla-says-autopilot-was-active-
during-fatal-crash-in-mountain-view/)

------
jcranmer
Politically:

\- No meaningful regime change in places like Russia, China, Cuba, North
Korea, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, Burma, United States.

\- A meaningful regime change will occur in a boring autocracy that catches
everyone by surprise (like Tunisia did a decade ago).

Economically:

\- There will be a major recession in the 2020s.

\- In 2030 itself, there will be a simmering row over tariffs for carbon
emissions. Between whom, I am not going to speculate.

Technologically:

\- IPv4 is still around.

\- Self-driving cars (Level 5, if we're still using NHTSA's terminology) do
not exist.

\- Quantum computers are "just around the corner."

\- The phrase "deep learning" causes people to take a few seconds to remember
what it means.

\- Exactly one of the following companies will no longer exist (due to
bankruptcy or being acquired): Amazon, AMD, Apple, Cisco, Facebook, Google
(aka Alphabet), Huawei, IBM, Intel, Microsoft, Netflix, Nvidia, Oracle,
Qualcomm, Samsung, Tesla, TSMC, Xilinx.

~~~
ivan_gammel
This one is good, but I would exclude Russia and Venezuela from the list. In
Russia Putin will retire in 2024 and transition to the new leadership will be
soft and non-violent. Likely this will mean some positive changes in internal
and foreign policy. Venezuela depends on Russian support, there’s no intrinsic
stability, and current regime may collapse as a result of some US-Russia deal
(as it happened with unification of Germany). Nevertheless the regime in Syria
will stay for another 10-15 years, with some territory still occupied by
foreign powers.

~~~
jcranmer
> In Russia Putin will retire in 2024 and transition to the new leadership
> will be soft and non-violent. Likely this will mean some positive changes in
> internal and foreign policy.

I doubt that. Just because the constitution says Putin must retire in 2024
doesn't mean that he will. He could change the constitution to stay in power
longer, outright ignore it, or transition into a different official role but
still wield the power: consider the swapping trick he did with Medvedev a
decade ago. Furthermore, the corruption in Russia has been running so deep and
so long that any successor is going to have a large degree of ideological
similarity with and loyalty to Putin--everyone who hasn't has been purged and
will be disqualified from any attempted succession race.

~~~
ivan_gammel
Constitution will be respected: Russian elites would consider it too dangerous
to violate and until now have always followed the letter of law (see the
annexation of Crimea). The change of it is possible but only to a stricter
rule of two terms (Putin hinted at this possibility recently). The successor
will be loyal not to Putin personally, but to their mutual agreement, which
will be fulfilled. He or she will not necessarily have the same views -
there’s a precedent of such transition and it will likely be used in 2024.
Moreover, it will be more convenient for everyone to put there a centrist or a
technocrat with some political weight (former governor or member of
parliament, like Dumin or Matvienko). Corruption won’t be a significant factor
here, at least no more than it is in US primaries.

------
busymom0
HN will look almost identical.

------
justinzollars
1\. China overtakes the USA GDP by 2029

2\. Trump wins reelection

3\. The United States has a recession by 2021.

4\. Inflation becomes an issue in the United States because of high debt,
increased military spending as a result of great power competition and huge
pension debts/promises coming due with baby boomers retiring. The best
investments (other then great startups of course) becomes Gold (because of the
proclivity to favor spenders over savors.)

5\. The United States will focus on big infrastructure spending.

6\. Google develops a competitor to Huawei's Safe City project for the United
States and its geopolitical allies

7\. Humanity will reach mars

8\. Humanity will turn the corner on Carbon pollution

9\. San Francisco reaches a breaking point and elects moderates whose focus is
building more housing.

10\. The United States will join the TPP

11\. Chinese culture and media breaks out and becomes popular in a similar way
Hollywood and American culture is popular in other places

12\. Amazon will be bigger than today

13\. TikTok will have regulatory problems, and with those a Facebook TikTok
clone will emerge, and gain local traction.

14\. Autonomous trucks will displace millions of works, but some may find a
niche doing last mile trucking.

15\. Go will be a top 10 language

------
type0
The new AI winter is coming and everyone would call it machine learning again.

------
ben509
1\. Fusion reactors break even.

2\. No progress in identifying dark matter or understanding quantum gravity.

3\. At least one of the major social media corporations are overtaken by a new
competitor, e.g. Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Youtube, etc.

~~~
sandov
I think young people don't use Facebook anymore.

------
beefman
As of Jan 1, 2030...

* Donald Trump won and served a second term as US President. He was succeeded by a democrat.

* Marijuana is legal in the United States.

* The EUR-USD exchange rate is lower than at any time in 2019 (or the EUR is no longer in circulation).

* China's per-capita GDP (at market exchange rates) is less than that of the US. Its total GDP is less than that of the US.

* Globally, the vast majority of vehicles being made are EVs.

* Globally, the portion of total primary energy supplied by fission is higher than in 2019. The portion supplied by fusion is zero.

* Satellite internet has largely replaced cable and cellular networks. SpaceX (or a spinoff) is the leading provider.

* Serverless architectures (lambda functions) are standard for backend development.

* It has been discovered that the holographic principle severely restricts general-purpose quantum computing. There's still a regime in which quantum computers are useful.

* In the US, the percentage of babies conceived by IVF is at least 3x higher than in 2019. Among these, screening for sex and intelligence is common, with females being preferred to males.

* Humans have walked on Mars.

* We have discovered alien life.

------
MperorM
These are the predictions that I think go against the norm, where I think it's
most likely someone would take up a bet with me. Otherwise it would just be a
list of "things largely stay the same, and things people predict will happen
wont"

1.) UK's Brexit is an economic success, leading to a boom in Britain's tech
sector and a modernized efficient state.

2.) Concerns about climate change will be a driver for terrible policy,
further stifling the European economy.

3.) Probably not this decade, but it might happen near its end: Many European
nations have their own vote leave, Denmark among others leave the union.

4.) The colonization of mars begins. By 2030 there is still no humans living
on mars, but machines are shipped off to mars to start building the colony in
which humans eventually will.

~~~
legulere
I have a counter-prediction: the UK will leave the EU but join it again this
decade and adopt the euro.

------
qlk1123
China falls. People seeking better food or environment conditions will keep
suffering in the foreseeable future, but regional conflicts and the weakened
economy will finally kill the old dragon.

------
maelvathk
It'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.

------
negamax
This decade will see stagnation and fall of Google and Amazon as new entrants
replace them. Not sure by what but public will binge on something else instead
of instant information and shopping.

------
hyperpallium
Here's a really obvious short-term one: superfast SSDs in nextgen consoles
lead to the same standard in PCs, and SSD prices drop dramatically, finally
replacing HDDs as completely as tape.

------
robcohen
I'm impressed. Not one single person mentions blockchain seriously in this
thread.

I think micropayments are going to take off in a tremendous way. This will
enable new applications and disrupt the advertising and content creation
systems in place today.

Stablecoins will be required, and will probably begin to take off once the
next generation of blockchains launch successfully.

Payments in general will move over to blockchain - specifically layer two
payment systems. We are close but it will likely be another year before the
potential is obvious.

Other applications in blockchain will take hold too, but the ones above are
the first real killer apps. Later it'll be peer-to-peer lending and a move to
decentralized gig apps (like TaskRabbit or Uber on a blockchain).

~~~
david927
I would counter that all currencies in major countries will become digital but
that blockchain will not be behind any of them and will have died out.

------
leoplct
\- Someone will invent a decentralized/anonymous way to convert fiat currency
to Crypto without KYC and Monero will be the unstoppable currency for all
illegal/tax evasion activities

------
philipkglass
The rate at which US solar electricity generation grows will pass 33 TWh per
year, surpassing nuclear power's best decade (1980-1990) when US nuclear
generation grew by 32.6 TWh per year.

------
gjvnq
I predict that by 2030, we will be discussing treaties unifying internet rules
because each country will have its own version of GDPR and other laws, causing
compliance to become a nightmare.

------
softwaredoug
* Demographics does not become not destiny for Western Leftist parties. continued failure of elites to win electorally, and an aging, white, and geographically distributed coalition, that votes reliably, wins most of the time. Immigration has slowed in the US and will continue to slow in other countries. This makes Trump more likely than not to win 2020 Further reading on this POV: [https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2016/11/16/the_go...](https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2016/11/16/the_god_that_failed_132363.html) See also the work of David Runciman from Talking Politics podcast (who makes this argument quite well in a series of lectures)

* Society makes progress on tough issues despite political deadlock. Problems continue to be solved outside of the political process

* Obamacare lurches forward, barely in the US. It likely won’t be repealed, but not much beyond shoring it up will happen even if a Dem is elected in 2020. It’s just too hard for Dems to get to 60 in the senate.

* Amazon continues to grow and possibly triggers antitrust action

* Someone will sadly get seriously hurt or killed due to an Amazon marketplace item of low quality. This may prompt regulation or lawsuits

* Brick and Mortar Retail continues to evolve towards being about physical brand presence for a Web-first business, less about stores selling stuff. This gradual move means there’s no huge commercial real estate crash

* Google loses its way, search market share shrinks, suffers from a serious brain drain, loses ability to develop great products

* Privacy concerns break through even more beyond the Hacker News crowd!

* Lots of unexpected things will happen, totally changing everyone’s predictions!

I likely will disagree with these tomorrow and think of even more important
ones! :)

~~~
tropo
Demographics is destiny, but this does not benefit Western Leftist parties.
One political side is producing about 2.5 kids per woman, and the other is
producing about 1.5 kids per woman. (numbers for USA) Above 2 is exponential
growth, and below 2 is extinction.

The reasonable prediction here is a shift to the right. A few decades may be
required before it is dramatic and undeniable.

------
Karunamon
1\. The "streaming games" concept crashes and burns when Google gives up on
Stadia, probably around 2025 or thereabouts. People simply don't have the
internet to support it, and Google's infamously short organizational attention
span takes its toll. It might come back, but check back in ~30 years when
everybody has gigabit or better.

2\. One of the big public cloud companies either stops doing public cloud
stuff or that business unit gets acquired, and I think the victim will be GCP.
Microsoft seems safe with its government contracts and name recognition.

3\. Some nasty new nasty, globally-agreed-upon legislation comes out that
effectively cripples cryptocurrency for legitimate uses. Bitcoin burns as a
result, but overall, it's about as effective as the war on drugs, and some
privacy coin like Monero or GRIN has its price skyrocket as the new go-to for
otherwise shady transactions.

4\. Politicization of _everything_ finally reaches a breaking point and most
people check out. It once again becomes a faux pas to bang on about who you're
voting for and why at the family dinner table.

5\. One or two large social networking companies go belly up or are acquired
and unsuccessfully restructured (think Tumblr). Probably Twitter or Reddit.

6\. VR grows and becomes a stable "third platform" rather than a mere niche.
Facebook/Oculus proved the market demand, and standalone headsets from various
companies pushing their own walled gardens come and go. Oculus becomes the
market leader in this category. Valve leads with the "cadillac" PC-connected
enthusiast hardware. No major quantum leaps - quality slowly improves, but no
full dive or anything like that. At least one AAA game is released VR-
exclusive and posts good sales numbers.

7\. Full legalization of cannabis for recreational uses finally happens. One
or two states hold out and keep it illegal or greatly restricted within their
borders, but most states notice the tax revenue being left on the table and
finally relent, and as more and more states decriminalize or legalize, the
federal ban is finally lifted with surprisingly little fanfare. It becomes
common to see cannabis products in convenience stores right next to
cigarettes.

8\. Solar continues to improve and gets ridiculously cheap. Installing a grid-
tied, or even non-grid-tied, system becomes a common home improvement. Tesla
will either lead the way or exit this market.

9\. Nothing crazy happens with quantum computing. Some niche use cases are
found, but by 2030, RSA or other algorithms based on prime factorization
remain safe ways to secure data.

------
probinso
* Populism and Nationalism will get worse, worldwide

* Cure for HIV

* A surprising country will need to squash a civil war

* There will be a measurable effort for tech companies getting ahead of politics on AI ethics

* Swelling increase of remote workers

------
paul7986
\- In 2030 Google will still be around, yet without the same market share it
holds now. Also, the public grows tired of their creepy advertising & federal
laws are passed to protect our data possibly forcing them to change their
business model.

\- Google Home and the Alexa's of the world either change to privacy focus or
are shunned for assistants that are privacy focused.

On a different note I think the guy who created that HBO Michael Jackson
documentary (Dan Reed) is currently working on a similar piece about Silicon
Valley. I would guess based on his MJ documentary that it might not be a
flattering piece. Such could hurt one the current tech giants reputation &
their market share.

------
wallaconno
1\. VR is huge, AR picks up steam

2\. 3D Printers are much more widely used for manufacturing

3\. Energy-positive, profitable fusion is demonstrated

4\. Natural disasters get so bad that the US government declares a war on
climate change

------
lazyjones
We will get AGI and from there, further predictions are pointless.

------
hyperpallium
Without Moore's Law computing will continue to consolidate (mobile, cloud,
desktop), like every other industry.

Near the end of the decade, a way to continue Moore's Law will be found.

------
29athrowaway
\- Phytoplankton decline accelerates, creating a cascading food crisis
compounded by overfishing.

\- Antibiotic resistance becomes more prominent.

\- Some major underground aquifers around the world start drying up.

------
zakokor
"Smart" toys for babies and toddlers, with the ability to understand to teach
by playing, connected to the Internet with upgradeable software and accessible
to all.

------
magwa101
Remember when everyone laughed because Google was spending millions to
recognize cat images?? Autonomous cars will suddenly be ubiquitous, 3 years.
Exponential learning.

------
stevewillows
well, my prediction is that a new startup will appear with the intention of
getting people offline. It'll start as an event organizing platform with
comments.

A year or two in they'll add chat so people can keep in contact before and
after the event.

A year after that it'll pretty much become a new online social network built
around interests that are tied to an event, leading the company to create a
new feature called, 'groups.'

... and we'll end up back where we started.

------
scknurr
* There will be a game-changing quantum hack of everyone's social/email/financial account passwords. It will be called, "Pandora's Dox."

------
mooreds
Tech:

* Rdbms will still be then backbone of most internet facing applications.

* Java will still be around. So will COBOL.

* Python v4 will be under development.

* There will be only 3 cloud providers of any relevance (AWS, GCP, Azure).

~~~
0xdeadb00f
> * There will be only 3 cloud providers of any relevance (AWS, GCP, Azure).

Is this not already true?

~~~
mooreds
Haha, good point. I think there are some other companies trying to compete
(IBM, Oracle).

Actually this is already wrong because Alibaba has a cloud offering and they
will certainly be relevant in 2030.

------
1996
I'll try some big and bold predictions:

In finance, BTC price stabilises around 100 kUSD after peaking at 115k

In industry, Telsa goes bankrupt and is bought by a foreign car marker wanting
to set foot in the US

In telecoms, an established foreign network starts a 4th national network in
the US

In tech, a third CPU builder emerges next to AMD and Intel, likely from China.

In biology, we discover how methylation works, a few regenerative therapies
based on differentiated stem cells become available in Asia and Latin america

In politics, freedom of movement in the Shengen area is replaced by passport
control + biometric verification, and fascists take power in one or more of
the big EU countries

------
isoprophlex
Prediction for the 20s: breakthroughs in s̶c̶i̶e̶n̶c̶e̶ ̶j̶o̶u̶r̶n̶a̶l̶i̶s̶m̶
fusion power will mean it'll only be 10-20 years away at the end of the decade

------
lukasm
Tesla goes all in into energy/housing market and will become 1 trillion dollar
company company.

ICE cars are like horses in 1920

Privacy is dead.

China spirals into authoritarian ultranationalism nightmare.

------
w-m
* due to increased energy efficiency and energy harvesting, nightly charging of personal devices becomes obsolete, devices are charged every two weeks or so or before long trips

* increasing volume of private people investing in ETFs will cause huge problems and a shift in how stock exchanges work

* many European cities ban personal cars from their centers while fully self-driving cars remain very limited in scope and use

* hunger is no longer an issue. Poor people struggle to have access to carbon-neutral products

* meat production from livestock is more than halved in developed countries

* AR devices become ubiquitous, but in a completely new form factor

~~~
anonu
> * increasing volume of private people investing in ETFs will cause huge
> problems and a shift in how stock exchanges work

Can you elaborate more on this?

------
inasio
All viral diseases will have simple and effective therapies (one pill a day
kind of thing). Eradication of most viral epidemics will be well on its way

~~~
majewsky
Based on what technology? (Genuine question, I'm not following biotech too
closely.)

------
ximeng
Household robots that can launder and fold clothes and cook food will be in
use but not ubiquitous yet. Say top 10% households in developed countries.

~~~
tehlike
Ill bite. This will not happen, cost will be too restrictive even if it is
technologically possible

------
redditmigrant
I wonder if the current environment around tech will mean the predictions this
time are more for status quo and for doom and gloom or slow declines.

------
thescribbblr
1\. Increment in pollution and population level. 2\. Increment in temperature
rise. 3\. Drone deliveries. 4\. AI and Robotics will eat more jobs.

------
say_it_as_it_is
A progressive political wave will lead to eminent domain of private golf
courses and their conversion into public housing and public parks

------
sharkenstein
The year of the Linux desktop will come... handed by Microsoft and their Linux
subsystem making developers return to buy Windows machines

~~~
syshum
Microsoft abandons the NT kernel and makes Windows a Linux Desktop Environment
on top of the Linux Kernel, like Gnome or KDE...

------
taylorlunt
Some will definitely not come true as these are relatively bold, but:

1\. People welcome always-on video cameras into their homes

2\. Self-driving cars actually do take off (but are introduced gradually)

3\. AR never becomes more than a gimmick. VR occupies a similar place in the
gaming market to gaming consoles and is basically unused outside of gaming.

4\. Higher education in many areas begins to die and is replaced with online
certification programs.

5\. After major breakthroughs in pharmacological(?) treatment of
depression/anxiety, humans may now choose how happy they want to be. This
threatens to shake society to its core, and many are against it.

6\. Robots become a lot more common, but think Roomba, not I,Robot

7\. The role of CO2 in human mental health is discovered and legislation
begins against high CO2 levels in rooms.

8\. The death of truth: photo and video evidence are easily faked, and we have
to rely on the source of information to know whether or not to trust it, not
the information itself.

9\. The incorporation of neural-network specific hardware cards into most
personal computers.

10\. Personal assistants like Alexa or Siri remain fairly unintelligent and
limited in scope.

11\. After some horrific example of genetic engineering on human babies gone
wrong, laws limit genetic engineering on humans to a few limited things like
gender, eye color, etc.

12\. Scientists discover that perfect pitch can be reliably acquired through
extensive practice, despite 2020 "common knowledge". But there's still not
really a point to doing so. It's just one of many new demonstrations of the
plasticity of the human mind.

13\. Some psychedelics become legal in many countries.

14\. Polyamory becomes a thing that most people are at least familiar with.

15\. Attempts are made to outlaw the use of blockchain-based communication and
video apps.

16\. A platform mixing the best parts of Patreon and Youtube becomes popular.

17\. Universal basic income is implemented in many countries, but not the US.

18\. A cheap technological remedy to global warming is produced, and the issue
disappears quietly.

19\. Moore's law basically plateaus mid-decade. The impressive stuff in
computing is being done by different types of computer architectures
altogether, like neural-network chips.

20\. Boldest prediction: first convincing (but non-conclusive) evidence of
extra-terrestrial intelligent life.

------
chrisco255
\- Gene editing and CRISPR advances lead to first viable and legal designer
babies

\- Longevity research extends life expectancy by at least 10 years

\- Cold war with China is still ongoing

\- New battery tech finally makes electric cars cheap enough to be practical,
boutique electric automakers proliferate

\- driverless transportation exists on pre-defined routes, mainly powering
shuttle and transit buses, but not able to navigate all roads autonomously yet

\- still no general AI

\- blockchain based loans and financial instruments grow by at least 100 fold;
decentralized finance hits mainstream

~~~
hinkley
Batteries will likely have 2x the capacity in 10 years, but range will
increase a only fraction of that. The rest will be spent on lowering prices
and curb weight.

By 2030, ownership of ICE vehicles will start to go bimodal, with new luxury
vehicles catering to the rich, and used vehicle ownership moving to the those
of limited means.

By 2030 even the fusion people will be making fun of general AI. Again.

------
starik36
A major movie exclusively with CGI characters will be released. I am talking
really good CGI on the scale of Tarkin in Rogue One.

------
shaklee3
I think SpaceX, while cool now, will be either non-existent, or a shadow of
what it is today due to costs going out of control.

------
wyxuan
Here are mine:

\- Smartphones become a relic of the past, and are replaced by wearables

\- Onboard processing becomes non existent, and is replaced by low latency
decentralized networks (a little like stadia)

\- Changes in climate ensure that the way we live our lives, and living in
bunkers becomes popular

\- privacy doesn't matter as much as it did before

\- the US becomes displaced by China as the hegemon, but the designation
doesn't matter as much anymore

\- The world as a whole moves away from manufacturing physical goods to
digital 'goods' and services.

~~~
suyash
Disagree on the smartphone one, they will actually be the main personal gadget
replacing even laptops and complemented by other types of wearables.

------
briholt1
The low-code / no-code programming ecosystem surpasses the manual programming
ecosystem in both developers and revenues.

------
jwblackwell
NodeJS / Javascript finally matures. A true, robust Rails like framework
appears and becomes the new default for web dev

------
slumdev
1\. Climate feedback loops will intensify.

2\. No actions of any great consequence re: #1 will be taken.

3\. Scientists will rename the planet "Uranus".

------
treespace88
Just one long shot.

We will get a big surprise in battery tech. Allowing for at least 10x power
stored for less the 10% of the current cost.

------
hoschicz
1\. Current wave of AI research is dead within 5 years, AI winter commences as
semiconductor density growth slows. AI will be able to solve problems, but not
formulate problems (and thus invent solutions). There is only so much to be
explored with "we used method x on dataset y and got results" 2\. There will
not be a huge technological breakthrough, akin to wireless connectivity and
cameras in this decade. We will still be using phones and laptops in 10 years.
2\. Anti-trust goes mainstream again. Some of big tech gets broken up or
regulated. 3\. Self driving cars will reach Level 4 slowly. 3\. Robots slowly
start to grasp "complex" tasks. Folding T-Shirts is a recent development as of
2019. People who are unable to learn fast, keep up and get jobs will begin to
more strongly resent the wealthy. Taxes on the wealthy go up, but not enough
to curtail the rise of socialism. 4\. The USA will stay politically paralyzed.
(dems x reps, cities x towns) It will stay attached to its constitution and
traditions, just like it was designed to. USA is not the dream country
anymore, Europe is looked up on as the dream place for regular people. 5\.
Low-cost airline tickets will get more expensive, at least there, climate
activists will succeeed. 6\. Climate change will not be helped by politicians,
but by technology. Solar is already cheaper than nuclear/coal/gas and will
replace it. Batteries will get cheaper.

------
RomanPushkin
Personal cubicle is going to be a new dream of many software engineers. People
will start hating open space.

------
pgcj_poster
Wordpress will remain the most popular CMS.

ChromeOS and Android will merge into one product with Fuchsia as the kernel.

Donald Trump will be re-elected.

IPFS will not catch on.

ActionScript will make a comeback.

Bill Gates will give away all his money and join a monastery.

Universities will go back to teaching LISP in intro programming courses.

The FSF will buy out Microsoft.

At least one major country will outlaw cash and make everyone use Bitcoin.

Facebook will become "the real world."

Scotland will leave the UK, but France will join it.

PhP programmers will be found guilty of violating the Geneva convention.

Paul "the people's hammer" Graham will lead a successful communist revolution.

No celebrities will die.

------
fractaled
* Planet Nine discovered/spotted * No evidence for Dark matter WIMP theory * Firefox switches to blink

------
type0
Facial recognition will be used in all stores in order to determine how happy
you are about your purchases.

------
type0
Implantable electronics will become almost as ubiquitous in the same way that
the mobile technology has been for the last couple of decades.

When the battery tech, encapsulation (anti immune-reaction coating) and blood
flow powered electronics is solved, the only thing we will have left to solve
is the slow and buggy software. Anywho, just be afraid that it might never get
solved and my prediction fails.

------
discordance
My prediction for the next 5 years: Facebook and Google will face antitrust
cases and will be regulated

------
scrollaway
I might write more in-depth predictions on tildes, but for now the most
egregious I can think of is on the change around the cryptocurrency space.

It'll probably still be around in some form. If cryptocurrencies themselves
are still around by 2030 (seems likely) it'll look very different to today.
Probably much more regulated and less fragmented (or on its way to standardize
on fewer currencies; also fewer single-use-case currencies). If
cryptocurrencies are successful 10 years from now, there will be a few
government-backed ones at least. Libra (the Facebook one) won't happen, but
something like it will be tried again, probably by Google or Amazon.

ICOs will be considered a joke and the scam of last decade. We'll look back at
people falling for crypto scams in the 2010s like new web users fell for
Nigerian scams in the 2000s.

Edit: just to try my hand at an extra prediction here, I think the rise of
streaming services around tv means piracy will make a strong comeback with
Plex and the like; and gaming will increasingly be streamed as well (think
Stadia, but something that is successful, maybe by Steam). This may be more of
a 20 year prediction but I think game developers will actually adapt their
code, engines etc to better support the entire gameplay being streamed
(latency-sensitive games becoming less mainstream).

------
PopeDotNinja
Goldmann Sachs will buy all of taxi medallions, Uber, Lyft, and going anywhere
will triple in price.

------
crazypython
I predict we will see the further consolidation and co-integration of
programming languages.

------
3pt14159
1\. A major cyber event kills over 50k people. Could be over 1 million if it's
something as bad as a really bad windows update or a cyber war.

2\. China contests Nato leadership of the world in a way that makes countries
pick one side or the other.

3\. Quantum computing becomes mainstream.

4\. AI isn't real AGI, but it's much more adaptable and pervasive than it is
now. Fewer annoyances in major software products.

5\. Push comes to shove with surveillance capitalism. Do we want our cars
recording everything and beaming it back to home base or not? I'm not saying
it will get outlawed, but it will get decided.

6\. A new social network will emerge that's cooler than the existing ones and
with some amount of privacy and sheltering from bullies and fake accounts.

7\. Webs of trust will finally start to control the gamification of the
internet. Star ratings don't work right now, but if you trust your friends and
their friends ratings could work again.

8\. Rights for poly relationships get extended.

9\. Global warming gets serious. Mass protests, mass buildouts of solutions,
mass migrations.

10\. Major advancements in space exploration headed by the private sector,
like Space X.

11\. Advancement in communicating with intelligent non-humans like dolphins.
Possibly even the recognition that there are non-human sentient beings.

~~~
euvitudo
> 5\. Push comes to shove with surveillance capitalism. Do we want our cars
> recording everything and beaming it back to home base or not? I'm not saying
> it will get outlawed, but it will get decided.

It's likely insurance companies will push laws making it a requirement in
order to provide insurance services. (At the moment, they just ask you to
install their devices in exchange for a "lower premium.")

------
jostmey
1\. The widening gap between rich and poor in the United States will result in
violent conflicts. We will witness lone-wolf shootings in affluent
neighborhoods targeting rich people.

2\. Disease outbreaks will become a bigger problem because of denser human
populations.

3\. SpaceX will take passengers around the moon but not to mars.

4\. Electric, self-driving capable cars will be everywhere.

------
suyash
Java will still be among the top 3 programming languages in the IT/Software
world.

------
albertzeyer
I have some background in speech recognition, translation, machine learning,
so many of my predictions will center around these topics.

1\. More consumer robots, more fancy variants of cleaner robots.

2\. Autonomous cars will be there, at least simple variants which work under
some constraints (e.g. highway). (I think this is level 3 or 4, not sure how
these levels are defined.)

3\. More world-wide conflicts, because of politics, and also because of
climate change. I'm optimistic that a world war will not happen, but it will
become worse and worse.

4\. The deep learning hype grows rate slows down a bit. Custom hardware
becomes more important, as we are currently hitting the ceiling with computing
power, which will not grow as much exponentially as it has before. Custom
hardware will first focus on making existing models cheaper and faster to run
(think of TPU), but at some later point also lead to different models and
learning algorithms (Neuromorphic chips).

5\. Speech recognition is a solved thing, more or less. The focus will shift
towards embedding a speech recognition system/model into some bigger system,
like an assistant, i.e. with parts like natural language
understanding/processing, dialog systems, etc, and that will be more like an
end-to-end system, not so much separated anymore. I.e. one big neural network
for everything. Maybe in the beginning parts of it (like the speech part) are
trained individually, or in a pretraining scheme. Current heuristics and
hardcoded rules will go away and be replaced by neural solutions.

6\. Meta reinforcement learning will become more important, and bigger more
general neural networks. Generality means that they will solve multiple tasks
at once, similar to the dialog system I outlined, but this trend will also
follow in other domains. It will all go into the direction of AGI (which
basically is exactly that: an AI which is (more) general), but not reach it
fully yet. Meta RL will also go along side with online/continual learning, and
being able to learn new things at inference time. There will be stable basic
models / learning algorithms which can be easily plugged into some system as a
building block, and it can be treated like a black box and will mostly work
(think about AlphaZero or MuZero but more advanced, more general, almost no
hyper params to tune, all automatically). Meta RL will also solve sample
efficiency to some degree.

7\. Much more electric cars, maybe being the majority.

8\. Not much people will care about Bitcoin anymore. Maybe other
cryptocurrencies though, but not sure. Proof of work is not a long-term
solution.

9\. China will dominate in many aspects, such as economy, but also research.

------
SL61
A bunch of random predictions that I typed as they came to mind:

1\. Google has a serious competitor in the search engine space, but it is from
an already established corporation and not a new startup

2\. An internet celebrity (i.e. fully-online career like a YouTuber) is
elected leader of a major country

3\. Windows drops 32-bit support

4\. There still hasn't been a huge, crippling state-sponsored cyberattack. The
rhetoric will remain as it is in 2020

5\. Fake news is no more or less relevant/damaging than it is in 2020, but it
will still be in the public consciousness

6\. Similarly, deepfakes will be politically weaponized, but only a few people
will fall for them, as they will be debunked the same way that fake news
stories were debunked in the 2010s

7\. Partly with the help of social media, several western countries will elect
governments that explicitly identify as fascist or communist

8\. As the developing world becomes more connected to the internet, userbases
of popular websites will become more tilted toward countries like India and
China

9\. China will abandon its Great Firewall

10\. The major players in the tech industry will not change. Google, Apple,
Microsoft, et al. will still dominate, even as they attain increasingly
negative press coverage and customer dissatisfaction. Silicon Valley will not
be meaningfully disrupted until the 2030s

11\. Internet privacy will become more politicized and more people will care
about it as a result (i.e., as it ties into other beliefs and identities)

12\. Internet-based cults will become prominent, possibly some as large as
Scientology was in its heyday

------
EGreg
1\. Decentralized open source social networking platforms

2\. Ownership of data, end-to-end encryption

3\. Collaborative wiki news, copyleft drug research

4\. The rapid emergence of a third party in the USA that is neither left nor
right, but much bigger than Libertarian party

5\. Decentralized solar power generation, Decentralized mobile mesh network
communication, Nuclear Fusion, Decentralizing government functions

 _The best way to predict the future is to invent it ;-)_

But also:

6\. Drones filling the sky and terrorism scares

7\. Self driving cars and terrorism scares

8\. Insect and bird populations plummeting and many species going extinct

9\. Water shortages, droughts, desertification and food shortages as humans
cut back on meat, abolition of factory farms

10\. The steady emergence of antibiotic-resistant bacteria is averted with
phage therapy and other approaches as antibiotics see a slow decline

11\. The resurgence of liberal democratic politicians, who nevertheless will
have tough border policies because of the increasing influx of refugees

12\. The rise of NATO-style forces against China and a new cold war

13\. Introduction of UBI funded by Pigovian taxes on Cabon and Plastic
pollution, destruction of ecosystems, etc.

14\. First biosphere colony on Mars lasts for a while but is a tragic failure

15\. Solar storm wipes out power grid, helping build a decentralized power
grid

------
bsenftner
Human stupidity finally catches up, and it's not pretty:

* The 2020 election in the USA is extremely hard on the nation's moral, as Trump appears to win in a landslide, but is quickly uncovered as a massive hack of the popular vote, well as the electoral college, as well as a coordinated deep fake news with Anderson Cooper and other network anchors faked and reporting a Trump landslide.

* Anti-vaxers have their ultimate success by triggering epidemics that wipe out large portions of the 60+ population in the US.

* The rapid death rate of older US citizens triggers a real estate collapse as the younger generations have no economic capacity to absorb the monumental number of luxury boomer homes entering the market.

* The US real estate collapse cascades and trillions of dollars of wealth evaporate over night.

* The US Federal Reserve tries drastic measures, but the international community has had enough of the USA's predatory policies and the poor choice of the Yuan becomes the new international currency of business.

* Attempting a return to relevancy, the US Dollar is converted into a cryptocurrency, but a poor technical implementation leaves an exploit exposed, and the entirety of the US's liquid currency is stolen in a single day's coordinated attack.

* The unreal aspect of all of the USA's poor decisions cascading into such a terrible situation, suicide rates in the US skyrocket. Those that choose life tell themselves "at least its not as bad here as in the UK."

* The UK has the same problems as the US, only their volume is 11 where in the US the terror volume is 10. The UK formally adopts "The Purge" as a means of resolving their differences.

------
intuitionist
Trying to make these as testable as possible:

1\. A pandemic kills at least 2 million people. There are theories that the
pathogen is bioengineered; they may even turn out to be true.

2\. At least one of Amazon/Apple/Google/Microsoft/Facebook's market
capitalization on 1/1/2030 is lower than its market capitalization on
1/1/2020.

3\. There's a 60%+ drawdown at some point in the 2020s in US equities,
exacerbated by baby boomers panic selling their retirement funds.

4\. Mean global temperatures are at least 1K over the 1951-1980 baseline every
year in the latter half of the decade.

5\. US prime-age labor force participation trends downward -- the Keynesian
post-work future is here, it's just not evenly distributed.

6\. A non-Chromium-based browser has at least 25% market share.

7\. Humans return to the Moon, but Mars is still at least a few years away.

8\. Practical nuclear fusion is also still just a few years away.

9\. There are still hundreds of millions of cases of malaria killing hundreds
of thousands of people a year; rich Westerners still talk way more about the
hundreds of Westerners a year killed in mass shootings.

And just to get some sports in:

10\. LeBron James Jr. is not playing in the NBA in 2030.

------
plafer
Moon is colonized and we send astronauts there to prepare for colonization of
Mars.

------
slickrick216
Organs will be harvested from pig human chimaeras. Will likely be uncovered
that it was happening in the 2010’s but disclosed publicly this decade. Likely
China are world leaders in this.

Increased tension along India Pakistan border results in skirmish’s and
possible Balkanisation of Pakistan. India suffers a bad recession and
undergoes a regime change and try’s to divert political opinion by attacking
the Pakistan border region. Similar to Argentina Falklands conflict.

Trump re-elected but democrats win in 2024 with first female president
elected. She will be from a mid western state and have wide base of support
from across party lines and isn’t seen as a contender at this time.

Brexit transition is painful but Britain is doing better and having a
localised boom by end of the decade. This is largely due to less regulation.

Ireland undergoes reunification this decade. Everyone hopes in 2024 to meet
the Star Trek prophecy.

South Africa property seizures on white landowners cause mass emigration leads
to food security issues in the region.

Cyber security bubble pops. Most people catch on to the fact that it’s mostly
vapourware. Most companies in-house security so it’s mostly managed security
service providers affected. One of the big MSSPs goes bust and is merged in
other another one. Likely crowdstrike into fireeye.

A cyber security service provider is hacked and used as a vector to target
customers.

The next recession will be a money recession due to over supply caused by
quantitative easing. This causes inflation on price. This will be preceded by
a year of wide scale introduction of negative interest rates.

Fake meat products linked to one of the following; hormone issues, cancer,
foreign food tampering scandal.

------
llamataboot
* There will be a major and long-lasting global recession, likely within the first 5 years of the decade, that leads to significant sociopolitical shifts in multiple countries

* Major weather events become (even more) common, CO2 levels continue to rise, climate change becomes accepted as "real" across the board very quickly by the middle of the decade, but rather than just being the gateway to more funding for research/innovation or global accords and working together, also gives rise to at least one right-wing eco-fascist type party, open talk of eugenics/depopulation, and/or a rise of a strongly authoritarian but much more eco-friendly Chinese government

* "Anti-technology" fringe movements gain as BigTech becomes increasingly villified and understood as some of the most powerful trans-nationcal corps in the world - not only sabotage+hacker movements, but also a revival of "back to the land" type commune/monastic/retreat/cult movements

* A major breakthrough is made with regards to Alzheimers/dementia

* Religiosity continues to decline across the world, however smallish cults become much more popular

* The culture wars abate somewhat, and some things have permanently changed (ie; genderfluidity and identifying as multiple genders during one lifetime will be seen as relatively common by anyone that becomes a teenager during this decade)

* Extreme poverty will continue to be eradicated and more people will have access to things like basic antibiotics and drinking water by the end of the decade, even with climate change disruption to landbases/watersheds

* Systems science methods become more mainstream - things like agent-based modeling, etc. Basic machine learning stuff is taught in high school.

------
colund
\- Treatment will have improved so that it will be rare to die from cancer.

\- Self-employment will be more popular than working in large open offices in
large corporations.

\- Large investments in AI corporations due to inflated beliefs will result in
a new bubble in similar scale as the millenium IT bubble or the 2008 financial
crisis.

\- Immigration debates will create new tensions and will make political
correctness come back similar to the reverse sexual-revolution after #metoo.
Both auto-adjustments are beneficial for the stability of society.

\- It will become popular to learn to play real instruments again. People will
be tired of rap music and lack of creativity. It will become more popular to
play classical music and jazz.

\- Companies will start to offer fridays off for people to work on their
personal projects or take time to recover or exercise.

\- Countries outside of EU will copy the concept of GDPR to protect their
citizens' data.

\- Screen addiction (Netflix, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram...) will be
considered as a major problem in society and people will be encouraged to
socialize, mate, do exercise and play music instead.

------
jp42
First Human will land on the Mars and we will have permanent presence after
it.

------
stupendousyappi
Political predictions:

1\. Authoritarianism spreads as propaganda and surveillance technologies make
it easier for bad actors in weak democracies to cement their power.

2\. Over the decade, the US dollar declines modestly versus other major
currencies. The U.S. deficit soars, and by the end of the decade U.S. tax
rates have increased substantially.

3\. Without the UK, EU centralization accelerates, including the formation of
a small EU military. France withdraws from NATO.

4\. Belarus joins the Russian Federation. Vladimir Putin retires as President
of Russia on schedule in 2024, but remains its dominant political figure in a
newly created ceremonial role.

5\. Chinese pressure and threats on Taiwan to reunify increase, but trigger a
surge in Taiwanese nationalism. Xi Jinping remains President of China at the
end of the decade. Many foreign companies end operations in China.

6\. Another global financial crisis occurs.

7\. Global animal populations decline sharply, especially marine animals,
amphibians and birds. Food prices increase as global warming negatively
impacts agricultural productivity.

Tech predictions:

1\. Google gets new leadership by 2022 and attempts to reinvent itself with a
renewed focus on privacy and ethics.

2\. The use of AI in medicine increases sharply- models that outperform
physicians (in a limited number of specialties) proliferate and are deployed
primarily outside of hospitals.

3\. Many U.S. cable TV networks shutdown.

4\. A third major smartphone operating system emerges from a non-Western
company.

5\. AI progress continues at a rapid pace, prompted in part by advances in
emulating biological memory storage and retrieval to greatly reduce upfront
training time.

------
longstaff2009
I wrote a post with my predictions here
[https://medium.com/swlh/9-predictions-
for-2020-2029-555312fc...](https://medium.com/swlh/9-predictions-
for-2020-2029-555312fc69fc?source=friends_link&sk=0a7319bbd3ea69cb363c87b91f642ba3)

TLDR 1\. Federated Learning will unlock value from previously inaccessible
sensitive data.

2\. Deepfakes will impact democracy and bring about a need for publisher
certified content.

3\. Nationalism will rise around the world, the internet will splinter.

4\. eSports will take a huge chunk of attention and advertising dollars from
sports.

5\. Blockchain will get adoption in enterprise. Mainstream adoption will
struggle until there is a key custody solutions that everyone can use.

6\. Self driving cars will open up new business models. Regulations will be
the main barrier to adoption.

7\. Welfare systems will get strained.

8\. Digital currencies and negative interest rates will open pandoras box.

9\. Search will get reimagined.

I also enjoyed these posts

[https://avc.com/2020/01/what-will-happen-in-
the-2020s/](https://avc.com/2020/01/what-will-happen-in-the-2020s/)

[https://continuations.com/post/189997132065/an-agenda-for-
th...](https://continuations.com/post/189997132065/an-agenda-for-
the-2020s-inventing-the-knowledge)

[https://alexdanco.com/2019/12/17/ten-predictions-for-
the-202...](https://alexdanco.com/2019/12/17/ten-predictions-for-the-2020s/)

~~~
sideshowb
5\. what applications do you envisage that 100% of enterprises couldn't
already solve far more easily with a database?

~~~
longstaff2009
providing end to end provenance of live exports in cross border supply chains
involving China.

~~~
sideshowb
so you want a blockchain instead of database because of a lack of trust
between who and who? if 2 parties can't you just run 2 databases? and if there
is a trust issue don't you have bigger problems anyway as somebody still needs
to sign off (attach their reputation to an assertion) that item X came from
place Y etc - but if you can't trust the database what makes you think you
trust the person ?

------
tcgv
My two cents:

1) Batteries become much more efficient, by 2030 we will recharge mobile
phones once a week.

2) Health-monitoring wearables will be widespread, driving life expectancy up
by 10 years largely due to early condition detection and reduced medical
response time time.

3) Adoption of centralized crypto currencies by governments and financial
instituions will grow significantly.

4) With GDPR being enforced, countries around the globe either align with it
(Ex: Brazil's LGPD) or try to resist (Ex: USA lobbying). Even so, eventually
all major democracies will approve user-centered privacy legislation.

5) Technology aided social clustering (ex: social networks, messaging apps
groups) will continue to potentialize confirmation bias whitin these groups,
affecting public opinion, disseminating fake news, causing turbulence in
election years.

6) Meat consumption (per capita) decreases, due to pricing pressures and
growing environmental concerns. Alternative/Innovative protein sources gain
traction (ex: cricket flour, lab-grown beef, improved vegetarian hamburgers).

~~~
iso1824
> 1) Batteries become much more efficient, by 2030 we will recharge mobile
> phones once a week.

Like in 2003?

------
ljw1001
\- 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.

~~~
NeedMoreTea
> The EU splinters

I think Brexit guarantees the rest will work 20x harder than they would have
otherwise to avoid a collapse or split. They can clearly see how good for
national unity that leave or raising the question is.

------
starpilot
Google will buy an electric utility and enter into the power industry with
full force. Not only revving up smartgrid and the whole customer experience,
but seriously pursuing fringe power generation like ocean waves,
thermoelectrics. Vast majority of these will be abandoned.

------
Vervious
1\. Democratic institutions globally continue to be tested by rising populism
and the spread of misinformation. Nationalism grows, powered by internet
propaganda

2\. Rising corporate concentration and market power, especially in internet
technology, lead to noticeable increase in inequality without growing economy
long-term (investors/employees in big tech reap all profits)

3\. A minor social/technological movement for preserving information integrity
/ credentialing starts and is monetized by new companies

4\. Universities continue the trend of being software engineer farms. Research
funding continues to plateau

5\. Video games / interactive digital experiences take off, especially social
ones inspired by Fortnite. Someone creates a platform and a marketplace, makes
developing and publishing games very, very, very easy, (easier than unity and
unreal4) and begins reaping the reward

6\. Hopefully, there is more wirelessly powered e-ink paper around. But I
wouldn't bet on it yet. Science fiction

7\. AI fizzles. Big Data mining and targeted digital business persists.

8\. Cyberwarfare grows. Big tech accidentally becomes national security issue

9\. GDPR comes to USA late in the decade, lagging way behind Europe. Major
battle

10\. Amazon grows even bigger. Beyond Meats/Impossible/equivalent become major
food distributor, competing with Sysco

11\. Pay by phone/mobile device takes off

12\. Softbank-funded companies, suffer minor collapses. Uber, Lyft, shrink.
Entire portfolio pulls back. Loss of many temporary/gig jobs. Enough economic
footprint to cause minor dip in stock market. More private investment in safe
startups. More corporate bonds? long-term investment continues to stagnate.

13\. Generally not too much will change

------
techslave
the HN echo chamber will continue to downvote valid but unpopular opinions

------
DrBazza
* C++ 2030 == D 2015

* Javascript is still a thing.

* Proper lightweight AR/VR glasses.

* If it can go into a phone it will. If it can go from a phone into a watch, it will.

* Facebook still around despite feeds being almost 100% adverts.

* Oracle finally beginning to fail. MS/Google/Twitter/FB all still around.

* Some countries go periodically dark on the Internet (see Russia's recent "test" for example).

* China is the #1 economy despite its own credit bubble problems.

* Petrol still dominates over electric (electric cars need a 400 mile range and faster charging to be viable).

* Road charging becomes ubiquitous since taxes can't be collected at the pump any more.

* Climate change is still a thing and another lost decade of politicians procrastinating (especially if Trump is in power for another 5 years).

* First war directly attributed to water scarcity.

* Third world countries still contributing 90% of plastic in the ocean.

* Fusion still 40 years away. Thorium reactors finally commercially in use.

* Planet 9 finally discovered.

* Manned moon landing. Finally.

* Still no room temperature superconductivity.

* Drones become much smaller - firework displays replaced by drones.

------
wildermuthn
1) Cheap DNA sequencing and advances in ML will transform medicine, but also
spark debate over mandatory testing and insurance. Medicine will begin to
focus more on prevention of disease than treatment itself.

2) The boomers will refuse to die, and life-spans will surge into the 90s.
This will cause massive social upheaval as the ‘ok boomer’ phenomenon goes
from a meme to a generational political crisis.

3) AR will have established itself as a threat to mobile phone usage, but will
take another 10 years to achieve primacy over smartphones

4) Nation-states will coopt, regulate, and control cryptocurrency.

5) Hollywood will be transformed by deep-fakes. Old and dead actors will be
resurrected and become the new stars (again).

6) The pornographic industry will be decimated by the rise of VR camming, and
CGI with licensed deep-fakes.

7) ML will drive dating into a new era of automated matchmaking rather than
swiping/chatting.

8) Claims will be made that distributed team efficiency has made hubs like
Silicon Valley obsolete.

------
cryptozeus
FANG replaced by something else from the job opportunity point of view.

------
etxm
Ruby on Rails reaches version 10, supports tab completing entire apps.

------
polotics
1\. Climate change will change everything.

2\. Resource depletion won't help.

3 Think of it as 1910.

------
will4274
A few from me:

* The US economy will maintain the post war status quo. The decade will feature no more than two but probably one recession which will have been trigger by an "X bubble" where X is something everybody uses (e.g. housing or tech). Rich people and "corporations" will be blamed, but no meaningful economic reforms will be passed. UBI will remain a fringe idea, and not be implemented federally or in any of the 50 states, though it will remain quite popular on the internet and in the Democratic primary. The labor force participation rate will drop as boomers retire, but not precipitously, and the rate of drop will slow by 2030. However, this drop will also lead to sustained growth in real (inflation adjusted) wages. Recessions will feature unemployment around 10% and non-recessions will feature unemployment around 5%. Many tech nerds will still regard 80% of jobs as useless and not producing any value.

* Britain will leave the EU fully, but not significantly decline as a worldwide power.

* Global warming will continue and remain basically unsolved.

* The CCP will continue to rule China as an authoritarian regime.

* Mexico will still be controlled by cartels

* India will still be struggling to describe itself as a "modern nation" but will periodically experience various scandals that seem decidedly third world.

* The middle east will still be a mess of competing militias funded by external empires (China, US, Russia), however the US will not formally invade any country with the intention of displacing their government (a la Iraq/Afghanistan).

* The last nuclear bomb used in a war will continue to be 1945/WW2.

* Another WACO or similar domestic terrorist - FBI/DEA/TLA standoff will occur and catch headlines, leading to the fringe group mostly being killed by the government, which will result in many angry words in the press but no meaningful changes.

------
takanori
Singularity does not happen

Therefore…

International banks moving off of Libor triggers loan re-evaluations causing a
financial down-turn

In response, US creates a trillion dollar infrastructure bill that gives power
to states and cities to invest in infrastructure

China introduces state sponsored crypto currency uses it in trade with Africa
and Asian trade partners (starts moving world off the dollar)

Russia replaces Putin, goes into irrelevancy as population ages

Amazon becomes major brick and mortar retailer (buys Best Buy)

Microsoft is first company to hit $2T valuation on backs of azure + developer
tools and enterprise productivity.

Apple does not have another major consumer hit, has to make major cloud
company acquisition to keep services business relevant

Google keeps search ad monopoly and continues to win TV video ads revenue
through YouTube

Facebook + Netflix start dancing. Mobile specific content is released

Tesla is #1 car company globally. Existing companies are forced to license
their tech (VW leads)

------
akuji1993
\- Health care in the UK will reach levels of the US. A few years later you
will see the same process starting in Germany and France.

\- South America will see a transformation of regimes, this time there will be
socialist nations standing their ground.

\- Migration from Africa and South America will accelerate so much, we will
hear calls for armed borders in the US, Mexico and Europe.

\- By 2025 climate politics will be the centerpiece of every first world
nation, pressured by the public. Alas, it won't change much as China will
still be public enemy #1 in the West and will not change much about their
climate policies.

\- Javascript will still be the center of web development, Web Assembly will
not strike it down, but will instead die down after a few years of hype.

\- Web Components will be the standard ground work for new web frameworks.

\- Firefox will die, Chrome and Edge will share market with a 80-20 share.

------
snow_mac
1000 new Javascript frameworks will be released in 2020 alone.

------
theli0nheart
Here's what I predict for 2030:

1\. Trump will either be world dictator, or hardly anyone will talk about him.

2\. Python, Go, JavaScript, Java, and C++ will still be incredibly popular
programming languages. Kotlin & Swift may join that list.

3\. Self-driving cars will begin to see wide adoption. Governments will update
infrastructure to better support fully-automated self driving.

4\. Facebook will be a hollow shell of its former self unless the company
makes a considerable innovation.

5\. The climate change debate will hardly change.

6\. There will be either a major war or a major recession.

7\. Automation will replace hardly any jobs, but the jobs it does replace will
lead to creative endeavors being more highly desired skills in the workplace.

8\. Trump will win a second term.

9\. Space exploration becomes a high priority around the world.

10\. A major disease will be cured / a medical breakthrough of some kind will
occur.

11\. People will still be obsessed with the 90s.

------
brandonmenc
I predict that most of these predictions won't come true.

------
Miner49er
\- Terrorist attacks increase, especially mass shootings.

\- Climate denialism turns into eco-fascism. "Overpopulation" will be used as
an excuse to commit horrible acts all around the world.

\- Socialism/Anarchism also surge around the world, but doesn't catch on as
much as authoritarianism.

\- Facebook plays a large role in ushering in authoritarianism around the
world.

\- China firmly becomes the world's leading superpower.

\- USD is no longer the world's main reserve currency.

\- Mass movement of people moving out of cities to more rural areas.

\- There will be a rise in curated online stores. Which of these stores you
shop at is a part of your identity.

\- Plant based meat becomes cheaper then actual meat, is eaten more at fast
food restaurants then normal meat.

\- McDonald's starts building virtually un-staffed restaurants.

\- With the increase in streaming options, piracy becomes much more popular
again.

\- Kanye West starts a cult in Wyoming.

------
notaharvardmba
1\. Self-driving cars are commonplace, but doesn't change anything except
drunk driving goes down a lot 2\. Major earthquake strikes West Coast, but
doesn't change anything 3\. At least one short recession 4\. Putin drops out
of power in Russia 5\. Many famous people die of old age as the pop stars of
the 60's and 70's reach their 80's and 90's. 6\. India grows to the largest
population country, Africa BOOMS 300% 7\. 10 years worth of solar and EV
progression happen, changing very little 8\. The mob mentality finally causes
some laws to be made around mob mentalities. 9\. Carbon nanotubes/nanodes* are
commercialized leading to the continuation of Moore's Law 10\. Generation X
takes control and we enter a long phase of apathy and minimal change.

------
mellowhype
I have a few too, although I don't know who is going to read them since there
are over 1k comments. Here goes nothing.

1) I'm pretty sure a final cure for HIV-1 and better detection + treatment for
AIDS will come up in the next 4 years. Also, the Pre and Post exposure drugs
will probably become efficient for infections older than 48 hours. The things
with HIV/AIDS research is that a discovery on one end of the disease yields
results on all of them in a short amount of time.

2) Populism and nationalism will start to die out because gen X and Z are
brought up in a more data-available world. They'll probably have a more Hans
Rosling/Steven Pinker attitude towards the world than a Trump/Johnson one.

3) Ethiopia will become the powerhouse of the continent, prompting migration
from all over. If an open and/or tolerant attitude is kept towards neighbors,
it might generate a ripple effect across the whole region - an effect
consisting in stability. That's what Israel could've done if a dual-state
solution was obtained, or Iran if the CIA hadn't generate a coup to remove the
democratic prime minister because BP Oil couldn't buy cheap resources anymore.
I really hope no one fucks up this time.

4) Poorer countries will outpace the more developed ones in terms of digital
governance, administration and bureaucracy since they'll start implement
administrative reforms with the current available tools that have the power to
reach anyone - which are all online. Current administrations from developed
countries still need to overcome the integration nightmare of current systems.

5) Public photography and filming will get intensely regulated worldwide as
the laws haven't been adapted to the smartphone era as well as the digital
privacy era. For example: currently, photographers are allowed to snap photos
of you in public without asking for consent in most of the countries. Then
they sell them off for 100 dollars on Getty Images. Then you see yourself in a
prostate ad from an obscure magazine sold in a mall in Indiana. Life's
complicated.

------
st380752143
1\. Remotely work will be more common; 2\. Revive of hardware;

------
fat-chunk
I really do hope I am wrong about this one, but unless a very strong wave of
international regulation on the big tech companies comes in, particularly with
regards to the gathering, storage and processing of personal data, then I see
us entering a gruelling cold war over the next decade, the main players being
largely the same (US vs Russia & China, with the EU and the larger middle
eastern powers as secondary actors).

Reasons for this prediction: \- The likes of Trump, Putin, the brexit campaign
have all benefitted from the normalisation of outrageous headlines and
extreme/divisive views shared at mass scale and speed thanks to the ease of
viral spreading of low quality media with ulterior motives. \- The hyperlocal
targetting of individuals using their personal data has only exacerbated and
optimised this phenomenon. \- Because of this it is easier for these divisive
and populist politicians who run on policies of rash short term decisions to
come into power, which will in turn lead to worse international relations. \-
(more speculative argument) The algorithms which power social media and
consumer advertising using personal data will placate the middle classes,
feeding them what they think they want to see and consume and keeping them
distant from the world's reality (e.g. what is already happening in China,
Singapore) meaning populists can maintain control by getting votes/support
from the more desperate people with their more extreme policies.

Unfortunately, I do not see the necessary regulation coming in soon, as the
major players would never want to break up their tech giants out of fear of
giving up ground to rival tech giants (e.g. amazon vs ali baba). On top of
that, these governments have no incentive to mitigate the gathering of
personal data by companies as they will want access to it as well for
political reasons (domestic as well as international mass surveillance
provides a big strategic advantage in the context of this cyber cold war).

There are many other reasons why I think these problems are being exacerbated
but I have tried to summarise what I think are (and will continue to be) the
main ones.

------
sawyerjhood
* VR will never become mainstream, but will get an addicting online killer app that will pull in "hardcore" gamers (like WoW was in the 2000's)

* Multiple companies will publish consumer AR headsets at around the price of a high end cellphone. None of them will have mainstream success and only be purchased by earlier adopters until Apple releases a headset around the early-middle of the decade. This catches on moderately as an iPad like success, becoming an extra gadget for affluent households, but doesn't come close to displacing phones.

* Ads are going to become more and more embedded into things that we do. Product placement in movies, social media, and TV will replace traditional ads. * We will see the shuttering of Cable news stations much like we saw newspapers in the previous decade, especially geared towards the child / teen demographics. We will see more of that content move to streaming sites.

* Self driving cars still won't be massively deployed on our roads.

* Uber / Lyft will have major restructuring (maybe go bankrupt) after they still can't find a way to make a profit. Prices will hike and consumers will stop using the services shocking an unprepared public transport system. * Some major Katrina level natural disaster on the West Coast (possibly megaquake or super fire).

* More states will pass GDPR like regulation, slowing down the pace of social media giants.

* We will start to see an influx of technology innovation from Chinese tech companies and this will create fear of mass surveillance for the masses.

* There will be a data breach from Facebook or Google leading to a government investigation.

* They AI fad will trickle into non tech circles. Multiple companies will use bullshit AI systems that claim to be good at qualitative tasks like determining employee's performance reviews.

* Still no signs of general AI

* CRISPER treatments start going through clinical trials and we find cures for a few major genetic diseases.

------
knolax
A new HID will replace keyboards+ mouse/touchscreens.

------
TheOtherHobbes
I'll be happy if we're all still here in 2030.

------
ecwilson
1\. VR/AR finally become a thing as the tech becomes small enough, powerful
enough, and wireless enough to be a good UX. Facebook's investment in Oculus
pays off as Oculus becomes their main profit center, and we transition to a
Ready Player One reality.

2\. The world faces increasingly alarming & extreme weather disasters. The
damage will be utterly devastating and start to really hurt economies.
Governments will still be inept at managing these crises. People who have the
means will move to lower-risk areas like the Pacific Northwest, driving up
real estate prices. Those who are poorer will suffer from homelessness. There
will be massive encampments like we've never seen before of displaced
families.

3\. MDMA and psilocybin will be legalized for medical use and will
revolutionize mental health care for depression and PTSD. Which is great
because we'll all need a lot of mental health care.

4\. Trump loses his re-election bid and ultimately flees the country to avoid
consequences as the world closes in on him. He loses his US assets but is
given safe passage by a foreign power he has had corrupt dealings with.

5\. CRISPR is touted as the tech of the decade as it cures a major disease and
appears to have incredible potential. At least one nation violates
international ethical standards in their experimentation with CRISPR, igniting
a debate over whether we have opened a pandora's box. There are protests and
our CRISPR anxiety is evident in pop culture.

6\. Americans finally catch on to the bidet/washlet craze thanks to an
incredibly effective viral ad campaign.

7\. Learning Chinese in school becomes more common because China has become
the dominant world superpower. India rises to second, and US falls to third.

8\. Bitcoin will cost $500k+ per coin, having peaked at 100-150k by 2022 and
500k+ by 2026. There will be a Silicon Valley-esque tv comedy about rich
crypto bros that everyone hate-watches.

9\. There will be a major pandemic that scares the shit out of everyone
because we are woefully unprepared for it.

10\. We're all going to become preppers by the end of the decade because there
will be so many potential existential threats.

11\. Water will become a lot more expensive, driving major innovation around
desalinization.

12\. Lab meat will have it's first big success a la the Impossible Burger as
clean/lab meat tech becomes commercially available. There will be a thriving
DIY culture around growing meat at home.

------
smoovb
• Elon Musk viewed as more unpopular than Mark Zuckerberg as his company
passes 1T in valuation.

• No new smartphones will contain SIM card slots.

• US government follows China's blockchain based Yuan in issuing a crypto
based USD.

------
Semiapies
1) Cryptocurrencies will largely die off, between attacks, thefts, valuation
collapses, subversion, and regulation. They'll still exist in very tiny
niche/underworld uses, but the word "cryptocurrency" will be so tainted that
every future proposal for private electronic money transactions will call it
something else—and they will include a "This Is Not Like Bitcoin" disclaimer.

2) OS X will head toward sunset for consumers. Apple will finally do what some
people have been predicting for ages and transition to a desktop/laptop iOS
variant for the consumer/business market. A compatibility module will let
users run OS X applications for several years after. OS X (perhaps "OS Pro")
will eventually be a developer's OS aimed at big machines for video effects
and the like...or maybe Apple will sunset it, too, in favor of iOS Pro.

3) Python 2 use will finally die off.

4) Fusion will not happen.

5) Someone will develop a decent system for structuring web apps as local
apps, so that instead of pulling down an Electron app, you just download a
bundle that runs on your desktop. (The lines between web app, offline web app,
and local web app will get very complicated.) 3-4 years after this happens, MS
or Apple build it into their OSes.

6) Level 4/5 autonomous cars will be in testing or close enough that the legal
fights, strikes, and protests will begin in earnest.

7) Americans get some sort of federal carbon tax.

8) Drones become the new CCTV.

9) The die-off is over for newspapers and magazines. Most paper publications
existing today will exist in 2030. Most new news or special interest media
outlets will be online, not on paper, though.

10) The die-off is also over for malls and strip centers, and while the stores
will constantly change, most of the ones open today will be open in 2030.

11) Hybrids get cheaper and expand into a double-digit percentage of the US
auto market.

12) Putin loses power in Russia. This will probably involve his death, if only
from natural causes.

------
everdev
If anyone aggregates these predictions, please share.

------
irs
1\. There will be a major earthquake in a major city. 2\. More states in US
will implement their own version of GDPR. 3\. Tech Conference pass prices will
continue to rise, reach a tipping point until it would be free to attend. 4\.
Queen Elizabeth II would pass away. 5\. Food delivery companies would not be
sustainable and they will have to pivot to something else. 6\. Google will
still be #1 in search, Amazon in shopping but might be forced by government to
break up into smaller entities. 7\. Alternatives to password would be used for
authentication. 8\. "Influencers" will lose value and people will start to not
buy things if it was "influenced"

------
alias_is
Here goes my prediction:

1\. The environment will go even wilder, creating unbalance across continents.
Major migrations will take place into cooler regions. This will probably
create internal conflicts in the host country and the rise of extremist
parties and conservatives. People will be divided based on their interests and
will be globally available while not knowing each other's neighbors.

2\. AGI will not happen, but AI will be an integral part of human life,
solving problems at speed and precision. More tech stacks will be developed
that allows people and business to automate mundane tasks.

3\. The world leaders will not work on climate change and the fuel prices will
soar up. Alternative energy sources will not be the major player in the
industry but rather a flex point for the riches. Amazon will lose up to 20% of
its forest area, impacting the environment even further.

4\. The economic disparity will create a social conflict across various
regions which will ultimately create a huge shift of wealth to the general
public. Thus, booming days are coming where people will be able to earn and
spend on medical bills, education, and entertainment without going broke.

5\. Technological advancement in distributed computing, AI and data science
will allow businesses to solve, and create tools across several verticals.
Thus there will be huge growth in the agriculture, manufacturing and
processing industries.

6\. Biotech will be the trending topic. Immersive VR will be a thing, where
one can feel the things in the VR.

7\. Display technology will change for the first time in later half of the
next decade. There will be emersion of mixed display technology. Mobile
devices will be the thing of the past, however, people would still be using
it.

8\. People will be even lonely.

9\. Quantum Computing will enter the discovery phase and will be available to
local publics too.

10\. Web will have a rapid change and will be designed to support AR stack and
VR stack.

11\. Parallel computing and parallel algorithms will be mainstream and new
kind of programming paradigm will emerge.

------
breckenedge
Half Life 3 (or 2 ep 3) still hasn’t been released.

~~~
majewsky
By 2030, people will be waiting for Half Life: Alyx 3 instead.

------
wetpaws
We will still work long hours and have no money.

------
brandmeyer
Nobody will own their own self-driving car. Autonomous taxis will be available
only in limited markets.

There will be a right-wing rebellion in at least one western nation with 10^3
deaths or more.

Worldwide total carbon emissions will increase every year of the decade.

Mainland China will outright annex one of its neighbors without major
casualties.

Meat alternatives will not exceed the market size of any animal-based meat
(fish, poultry, beef, or pork).

There are no major changes in the US Social Security system. By the end of the
decade, the SSA will still be projecting a 25% loss of benefits in the middle
of the next decade.

In computing, performance per core in high-end computers will be within 15% of
today.

------
lifeisstillgood
Moderators: can we front page this each year?

------
badrabbit
Fossil fuep dependence will be less but not by a dramatic magnitude.

The US will elect an extreme leftist to which as a response ,after 4-8 years
Trump++ will be in charge

A lot more of the usual bad news stuff but with much less optimism which
results in many systemic crashes.

A lot of the fad around self driving cars and ML will fade out leaving
practical long term tech.

The internet's technical debt will finally call the collectors.

Dramatic move away from dependence on targeted ads to sustain web services and
infra.

A payment app will take over the west like with China when they start catering
to offline (cash like) transactions and please both mobile and non-mobile
users (a great feat).

Deep fakes will creat a hype but fade away after a while.

Either america continues fighting both russia and china and gets torn to
pieces from the inside out or most likely succumb to China, win the modern
cold war against russia and give rise to China becoming a second super power
rivaling america and dominating Asia and Africa,leaving Europe,parts of africa
and south america (and some asian countries) to figure out how to restructure
their economies. In the end it will be an energy war where the west moves away
from fossil fuels and builds long term sustainable economy while everyone else
enjoys cheaper fossil fuels as their sphere of influence builds up
economic/military resilience against the west (I think late 40's and 50's will
see everyone going green).

HN will still be the same. IRC will still be the same (less people though).
Infosec will thrive while threats become even more adoptive and agile against
mitigations.

International participation in foss will dramatically shape the culture and
consistency of foss communities.

Consolidation of home automation/assistant technology.

Actual (dangerous), information and propaganda warfare will happen
(2016+russia was nothing if you know much about WW2 ,50's america and
communist propaganda)

And finally, I will likely be wrong at least 6/10 on my predictions. :)

May we all live in boring and uninteresting times!

------
phodo
HN’s style sheet and design remain the same.

------
gkolli
I have a feeling entrenched higher education will be less prevalent, and that
there will be a rise in trade schools. Any predictions for the future of
education?

~~~
AnimalMuppet
By 2030, at least one fully accredited, fully- or mostly-online university is
available that offers a recognized diploma at significantly less than the cost
of in-state tuition at a state university, yet still offering equal or better
education.

------
kolinko
The decade of Linux on desktops. Obviously.

------
kp98
1) Wealth inequality will mean revert

2) America will reform entitlements in the wake of a depression

3) China will become a serious regional aggressor

4) We debate capitalism vs socialism more often

5) We realize AI is a buzzword that won’t replace 40+% of jobs

6) Tech gets its 2 minutes of hate, we reject chinese style surveilence

7) Europe's decline quickens due to negative rates, low productivity, an aging
population, indebtedness and unfunded obligations

8) Trump wins and the DNC reforms then runs 2024 on healthcare policy

9) Education gets slightly less liberal, prices will drop

10) FAANG's aggregate market cap won't recover its peak value before the next
crash

11) Bitcoin crosses 40k

------
nullspace
My predictions, not as grand as some others, but anyways!

Software Engineering / Startups:

\- FAANG will be continue to provide the best monetary compensation, that no
startup can beat. However, there will be a few startups that will figure out
something to attract the best-of-the-best. Similar to how Google figured out
how to do it in the early 2000s. I thought maybe something bitcoin would have
been it, in 2010s, but I don't think that's come to pass yet. These companies
will become HUGE, bigger than Google by 2040.

\- UI development in the browser and browser based technologies will be
dominated by one framework, and we will stop seeing new frameworks every other
month. Think Qt but with web technologies. Performance afforded by native
applications will still not be a priority for all but the biggest apps.

\- Java will continue to be dominant in terms of market share, and JVM will be
continue to be huge on the server side. In fact, Java will supersede Scala and
Kotlin in terms of the most important features. As in it will have the best
parts of both the languages, but designed better.

\- There will be huge progress in developer tooling for machine learning. Just
as how you can do `npm install`, run docker containers, and virtual machines
very well, without knowing anything about how it works, you will be able to
train and use "good enough" models without knowing how machine learning works.
AutoML is just the start, I'm thinking the stereotypical 17 year old hacker
who gets into JavaScript today as their first technology, will instead be
getting into Machine Learning based stuff by 2030. Recruiters will be
surprised if you've not been exposed to it in the past year, regardless of
your background.

\- People will continue complaining about agile, product management etc. :)

Stuff I have no idea about, but here it goes:

\- The current world is fairly divided and fragile and changing. It's been a
long time (> 75 years) since there has been a big crisis. By the beginning of
2030, we will start to see the sparks of another crisis. It may either be the
biggest global recession ever, or something worse.

India related:

\- The government in power will continue to be nationalist through this decade
(though not necessarily the current party / leaders), however more secular
than it is right now.

\- There will be at least one startup from India whose product will be used
widely around the world.

\- There will be economic and infrastructural gains, but by the end of the
decade, it will still feel meh.

\- At least one place in India will get hit very, very hard by something
caused due to climate change.

------
nilgate
\- Plant based foods will be ubiquitous and largely replace meats.

\- Electric cars will take a large share of roads, although traditional
combustion engines will still be very common. We will see more electric heavy
industry vehicles (construction, mining, heavy ship freight, perhaps even
airplanes) replace traditional combustion vehicles.

\- Self driving cars will be around more, and work well enough that many
drivers will hardly be driving anymore. The new lack of focus on the road will
create a new set of safety concerns and legal matters.

\- We will see many new weather extremes due to climate change. Record
breaking temperatures and intense storms, especially along the equator. The
sea levels will rise at an increasing rate.

\- World will still be dependent on fossil fuels for its energy source,
although coal will share a much smaller percentage of that then today as dirty
industries move to natural gas. Renewables and nuclear will continue to
increase in the share, but still in the minority compared to fossil fuels.

\- US becomes more isolationist in world policy as it increasingly faces the
inward challenges of multiple nationwide health epidemics that will cripple
the country (drug abuse, rising healthcare costs, aging population,
mental/behavior health illnesses, poor healthcare education, obesity,
diabetes).

\- China will lead the world in wireless technology and data processing
infrastructure. Heavy data processing is begins to be offloaded to public
infrastructure and seen as a public utility.

\- China forcefully takes over the Taiwanese government. The western world
scoffs, there are some protests in major urban areas. But for the most part
everyone moves on.

\- A cheaper form of launching payloads into orbit around the earth will be
introduced, likely a combination of new technologies and a more established
infrastructure for spaceflight, making spaceflight significantly cheaper.

\- Mass surveillance by both government and private industry becomes the norm.

\- Controversial legal regulations will be created to address the dangers of
the court of public opinion and the engineering of social media.

\- AI based virtual companions becomes a new industry to counter balance the
rise of loneliness, depression, and other health problems.

\- Freezing eggs or sperm cells for the purpose of eventual procreation,
especially among aging women, will become a new industry.

\- The end of cable TV, but the beginning of "cable streaming."

More people convert to bokononism to learn the ways of their flat earthed,
astrological antivaxxer forerunners in how to be happy in an increasingly
depressing decade. /s

------
samirillian
It will be become increasingly clear that our mode of production is post-
capitalist as the internet as ad-platform becomes increasingly problematic and
the chimera of network-effects-as-value, an idea both before and past its time
takes hold of the popular imagination. The battle between "capitalism" and
"socialism" will come to the fore, but neither as recognizable versions of
their pre-internet selves.

Okay, bit of a hail mary, but go big or go home right?

------
scanr
Here are mine. Note: I've deliberately tried to be novel for a few of these
which will mean they're less likely to be accurate.

1\. A book written by a machine makes a best seller list

2\. AR goes mainstream towards the end of the decade. Google dominates the
visual identification of things market.

3\. WebAssembly becomes pervasive on the client and the server. Side effect on
the client is that it results in pervasive DRM on the web with ads that are
harder to block.

4\. Earth's temperature rises by 1.5C by 2030.

5\. Widespread and inconsistent / incompatible regulation in multiple
jurisdictions breaks the open web with many web based organisations choosing
to restrict themselves to local markets rather than implement all of them.

6\. PWAs become more popular than apps due to lower cost to build and higher
revenues.

7\. Virtual partners become popular as generated humans break through the
uncanny valley.

8\. Recession in 2020 / 2021, just in time for a new US government.

9\. House prices will stagnate for the whole of the decade as boomers retire.

10\. China will be the dominant world economy by the end of the decade
(measured in GDP).

11\. AI will significantly improve medical outcomes especially in early
detection.

12\. Renewable energy (including nuclear) will power most homes globally
(50%+) due to regulations and cost efficiencies by the end of the decade
(hopeful but it'll certainly trend in that direction).

13\. Increasingly the wealthy will have a curated internet / app ecosystem
that actively protects them from manipulation. The poor will have the
opposite. This will increase populism and continue to contribute to the
wealthy being confounded by it.

14\. Developing software in a remote VM / container will become very popular
(see Visual Studio Code Remote Extensions)

15\. "serverless" i.e. building applications where the host machine is opaque
will dominate software development, although this includes building serverless
applications using containers.

16\. Docker is no longer the most popular container runtime.

17\. Regulation kills bitcoin.

18\. Identity verification becomes a massive industry.

~~~
nirui
> 6\. PWAs become more popular than apps due to lower cost to build and higher
> revenues.

I beg to differ. I think centralized online market service will become so
dominant, there is no need for a small business to build and maintain any kind
of app or website anymore. This is already happening, take look Amazon for
retail, YouTube/Netflix for film/movie and Spotify for music as example. And
the market for this is not saturated, so I'm guess there will be more and more
online markets pop up in the future.

~~~
scanr
Yeah, of my predictions, I'm probably least confident about this one.

As you say it's quite likely that there'll be fewer dominant apps installed on
peoples machines. Distribution is also problematic for PWAs. Even though
Twitter has an excellent PWA, very few people I know have installed it.
There's also less incentive for Google / Apple to encourage the installation
of PWAs over apps.

On the other hand, app development is slow and costly, so there is some
incentive on apps developers to use PWAs if they can get a comparable
experience and distribution. Despite there being no obvious incentive to do
so, Google and Apple do appear to be supporting a good number of the PWA
standards.

------
jaakl
US starts 3rd World War (in a sense) by attacking Iran. This will destroy most
of our economy, with possible nuclear impacts involved. Coincidentially, all
this also reduces our economy and alas global greenhouse pollution more than
Paris and Green Deals can do. We will finally see some hope to avoid total
breakdown of life on earth, which seemed to be inevitable before. Trump will
get Nobel price in climate fix.

------
lazylizard
1\. 1-200m climate refugees each from the Americas, africa and south east
Asia. 500m from south asia.

2\. Automation threatens to displace 1 in 4 workers in developed countries

3\. Wealth gap widens between the automators and the automated..society still
hasn't figured out redistribution or post-scarcity economics

4\. Automated out of their jobs and competing against desperate immigrant
labor , the majority of voters choose socialist and anti-immigrant
governments.

------
713233eb
We'll finally understand the messages what the Book of Revelations hold in the
Bible as they become present days

------
Paperweight
Unikernels will be all the rage

------
bracobama
My 2030 Predictions:

1\. The Non-proliferation Treaty on Nuclear Weapons finally collapses as a
mass exodus of non-nuclear weapon states leaves in favour of the TPNW, forcing
the hand of the the Nuclear Weapon States and their allies to accede into the
legally binding treaty in order to curtail further nuclear proliferation
events.

2\. Trump gets a second term.

3\. 'America first' mentality continues to have repercussions as Sino-American
Cold War escalates. Allies under the nuclear umbrella worry about the
credibility of US security guarantees as fears and anxieties over a
'Thucydides trap' begin to take hold. U.S. reassures its allies but when push
comes to shove, fails to intervene, sending out a signal to those remaining in
the alliance that they lack credible commitments.

4\. South Korea will finally obtain sovereign nuclear weapons capabilities as
the denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula falls flat from continued DPRK
aggression. Japan, despite a historically strong public opinion against this
class of weapon, may eventually do so as well although much of this will
depend on how vulnerable it feels.

5\. Hybrid warfare will continue to define 21st century military strategy,
with attacks on critical infrastructure targets such as power, water, and
sewage systems taking major cities offline for weeks at a time. The lack of
attribution will make retribution difficult and countries will begin to point
fingers at likely adversaries.

6\. Government surveillance becomes omnipresent in most developed societies.
You don't watch the internet, the internet watches you and does so through a
variety of technological mediums you invite into your lives, all in the name
of convenience. Of course this is already happening, but in the next decade it
will be taken to its logical conclusion and the majority of people will begin
to understand the relationship between privacy and consumer-grade technology,
namely the fact that the two are mutually exclusive. Which brings me to my
next point.

7\. Dumb phones will be a lot more popular than they are now. I'm talking
2000-era 3310s. You already see senior intelligence officials carrying around
decades old phones for communication. They don't do this just because they
like playing snake.

8\. Vertical farming of cruciferous vegetables will be commonplace and most
major supermarket chains will begin growing their own to sell to consumers.

------
danielovichdk
USA will bankrupt before 2030

------
cryptoz
By 2030 there will at least one small settlement on Mars, population at least
100 but more likely 1,000.

~~~
Ididntdothis
I am pretty sure this won’t happen. Maybe a manned landing but I think we are
far away from knowing how to sustain a large settlement off earth.

------
CalChris
Security will largely be a solved problem.

Privacy from trackers will be a solved problem.

Intel pivots by simplifying x86, staving off AMD. ARM does fine. Nvidia does
very fine. RISC-V exists.

Google stumbles because ads being inefficient become less relevant.

Facebook becomes the OK Boomer of technology.

Amazon and Walmart dominate.

Battery tech and solar will continue to improve incrementally and a decade is
a lot of time.

EVs will surpass ICEs.

Phones + laptops will not get substantially better.

------
MachineMartin
* 32-bit will still not die. Even in 2038 there will still be 32-bit CPUs chugging away happily - blissfully unaware of 2038-01-19T03:14.

* Donald Trump will have finished his second term. The Americans will be none the wiser and will choose an even worse candidate.

* Self-driving cars have taken over all traffic that has fixed routes in the Western world (e.g busses and trucks).

* The number of people who care about privacy will reach critical mass, so privacy focused products like Librem 5 will actually have a market.

* Lab grown meat will be cheap enough to be served as a curiosity (50 USD/kg), but still too expensive for daily use.

* USB-C will be _the_ dominant connector: We will wonder why we had so many different power supplies. HDMI, VGA, FireWire, eSATA, USB-A+B, 3.5mm jack will only be used by aficionados.

* Drone delivery will be a thing in select areas in OECD, but not world wide.

* A cell phone can fit in your watch and communicate with something similar to Google Glasses, which also has sound. No need to lug around with a huge matchbox.

* Toilets that analyse your stool will be a thing. It will be used in hospitals, and by rich health fanatics.

* Fields only touched by robots will be harvested - not as an experiment but as production.

* Lots of people will be unemployable due to AI and automation. The rich will claim "They are just lazy." They poor will not be desperate enough to start a revolution.

* RISC V or similar open source architecture will have taken the place ARM has today, and will be eating into the lower end of Intel's portfolio.

* Another economic bubble bursts the size of 2008. Nothing was learned from 2008, and the rich will get richer, the poor will pay.

* Chatbot passes the Turing test.

* Muzak will be written by AI and will be good enough. Similar to thispersondoesnotexist.com which is good enough for many purposes.

* IPv4 will still be the dominant IP version.

* Buffer overflows will still be a thing.

* Quantum computers still can not break 1024-bit RSA, but it is getting so close that no one considers RSA secure at any keylength.

* Moore's law is over. If you need more power parallelize your problem and use many servers. Cores will be cheaper, though.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Cool - we've beat some of those. John Deere has 80 million acres under
automatic tillage. Millions of people _are_ unemployable due to automation
(except as starvation-wage service workers). And Moore's law has been
faltering for years.

------
anthony_barker
\- More time is spent on taking care of loved ones

[https://flowingdata.com/2015/12/15/a-day-in-the-life-of-
amer...](https://flowingdata.com/2015/12/15/a-day-in-the-life-of-americans/)

\- Less time commuting (companies get better at managing a distributed work
force)

\- the 50% of people not connected to the internet start to get access

[https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/oct/18/almost-50...](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/oct/18/almost-50-of-
the-world-is-online-what-about-the-other-50)

\- wages are driven down globally by this additional 50% coming online
creating more backlash in democracies.

\- Increasingly countries will use China's great firewall tech to keep out
Western influences and grow local internet competitors

\- high speed internet gets deployed in war zones with drones and we
understand why the US is against Chinese 5G companies.

\- high speed internet (5G etc) means that many jobs that couldn't be off-
shored are near shored for a mixture of tax and cost savings - taxi drivers,
pilots, delivery trucks, fork lifts with a mixture of AI and people

\- cashiers become sales people as stores fight against online sales

\- percent of people working in manufacturing drops to 6.5% from 10.5%

[https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/USAPEFANA](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/USAPEFANA)

\- a group of people add 30% to their life span due to drugs that reproduce
intermittent fasting and other drugs that seem to work on mice.

[https://www.amazon.com/Lifespan-Why-Age_and-Dont-
Have/dp/150...](https://www.amazon.com/Lifespan-Why-Age_and-Dont-
Have/dp/1501191977)

\- China goes to 30% of world GDP and US reacts by going to cold war

[https://www.statista.com/statistics/270439/chinas-share-
of-g...](https://www.statista.com/statistics/270439/chinas-share-of-global-
gross-domestic-product-gdp/)

\- Japan builds up its military in reaction to china

\- Housing manufacturing and education continue to not have productivity
gains.

\- Nuclear fusion is still not any closer to wide scale deployment

\- Cities in Europe and Asia go E-bike friendly while Americans stick to their
cars.

\- The muslim world will become more pro-women's rights based on Saudi
Arabia's lead

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1k0SvAEvM-I&vl=en](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1k0SvAEvM-I&vl=en)

\- Banks will stop touching cash except via ATMs and will convert branches
into sales offices to push their online offerings. Goldman Sachs in reaction
merges with Revolut.

------
ehou
1\. Though automation changed the way many business work, a bigger change of
culture happened due to the now 20-40yo being in charge. Business are both
profitable and sustainable. The way Microsoft changed the last decade will be
an example for others - even the big ones, but certainly not all of them - to
change. Personal growth and personal career paths are more important to
companies, not only for the C-levels/public facing people but on all levels.

2\. Climate change will be accepted, and most people are doing better in terms
of being environment friendly. Eating meat more than 2-3 days a week is what
smoking is now: you're sort of free to do it but it's just not the way.

3\. Due to the retirement of the baby boomers (broad definition: 1945-65)
things have changed, but not that much. Development in elderly care is slowly
taking place - old people still living in their own house do have some home
automation but it's more monitoring than active automation. Care robots are
more present but are still been seen as toys or gadgets and did not replace
humans in care. This will be the problem of the 2030-2040 as care costs have
risen above sustainable levels.

4\. Both GDPR/CCPA and some major privacy f*ckup (probably classified major
because some public figure is involved) caused most companies to be really
caring about the data they take care of. People know what companies do with
their data and have a option to somehow have a paid subscription to be sure
their data is not sold in anyway. (This is not going to happen, sadly. We
still pay with our data, we are still bothered by ads.)

------
nkoren
Looking at the predictions from a decade ago, it's spectacular how many of
them are wrong. Like, probably more than 95% of them are in the "very wrong"
category. That should be a severe cautionary note for this kind of
prognostication among this kind of group.

Nevertheless, here goes:

What won't change (much):

\- We still won't have L5 autonomous cars.

\- We _will_ have L4 in various places, mainly as public transport systems,
and this will essentially evolve out of existing segregated autonomous on-
demand systms, such as the WVU PRT and the Heathrow Pod. Increasing
sophistication of the navigation AIs will make the degree of segregation less
and less over the years, but full automation will still require a significant
element of environmental / infrastructure design, which is what makes it L4.
There will be a lot more such systems, but it will be an evolutionary rather
than a revolutionary change.

\- No AGI, sorry. Not that we'd necessarily recognise it if we had it. There
will still be no effective working definition of "consciousness".

\- Laptops will still suck. Different constituencies will still regard old
Macbooks or Thinkpads as the zenith of laptop desgin, with a nostalgia that
resembles that of Amiga or BeOS fanatics. (And this won't make them wrong.)

\- Linux will still be niche on the desktop. Although enthusiasts will claim
that it doesn't, it'll still suffer from the same useability problems that
have it did in 2020, and 2010, and 2000. "Oh there's some stupid mouse
behaviour which is making your GUI almost unusable? You can change it with
this simple hack of X-windows in the shell."

\- Social media will still suck, and will still be a vector for significant
psyops, both political and commercial, with politically and economically
destabilising effects. Dictatorships will be better at weilding this than
democracies, which will still be on the backfoot.

\- The climate crisis will still be going from bad to worse, unfolding as a
series of localised extreme weather events and population displacements.
Although the sociopolitical response to it will finally be turning the other
direction.

What will change:

\- The majority of vehicles sold will be full-electric.

\- The way people live will be changing. A lot more co-ops, co-living, and
even straight-up communes. This will represent a very small percentage of the
population, but the social effects will be significant.

\- Universal Basic Incomes will have been implemented in several places.

\- There will be dozens of people living on Mars, hundreds on the moon, and
thousands in Low Earth Orbit.

------
kristopolous
The future won't be the present with better stuff.

Instead, the internet will be mass rejected as a point of authoritative
information. Something else is coming, an internet round 2 without all the
bullshit.

Money will still be an insulation against climate change.

Africa will have trendy tourist friendly cities with large economic power
(Kinshasa, Lagos)

This fascism wave will lead to something really awful, probably hastening the
rejection of Internet v.1

Silicon valley will no longer be special and there will be a mass exodus of
real estate capital and a rebuilding of the culture. The media will paint it
as a recession, when really it'll just be prices no longer being stupid
insane. Everyone will actually be doing fine for the first time in decades
there.

Solar will be about $0.01-$0.02/kwh due to Swansons Law, beating every other
power generation by significant margins. There will be common cheap large
scale storage based on mechanical energy or some kind of newtonian physics (as
in non electromechanical). It'll break down into stationary and portable
storage.

The US will have a significant, unambiguously socialist political contingency
spread throughout all layers of government. The third way dems will still be
around, but nobody will be confusing the two any more. There will also be an
openly fascist contingency without any precondition or restraint. They will
openly advocate for genocide and an ethnostate and something like 1/4 of the
public will be totally on board.

The electoral college will be rendered insignificant by a majority of the
states electors having legislation to be committed to the candidate with the
most votes. (see here:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Popular_Vote_Intersta...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Popular_Vote_Interstate_Compact))

A constitutional convention will be called by the same mechanism (ALEC is 85%
of the way there). It will be a complete shitshow. Nothing will get done. It
will collapse and nothing will come of it.

People will start building systems and communities that don't require
significant money and capital, something like the 1871 Paris commune, where
work doesn't really need to be done. The cult of the individual will collapse
and thatcherism will finally die.

GDP will be fundamentally challenged as a mechanism of global financial
bullying and some other metric, not based on economic growth, will take its
place.

All these cybernetic marvels will happen but the human use of human beings
will become more defended than ever. It will be viewed in repulsion, as some
perverted manipulative vice to invade natural spaces with technotrash.

Something will cause the police of a city to go on strike. Crime won't
increase, everyone will be fine. The defund/disarm the police movements might
make some victories

This is because the boomers are drying, the gen xers don't care and the
millenials and zoomers can finally build what they've been wanting

------
rafaele
Hacker News will be orange

------
fb03
my 2c: Hacker News will still be around and going strong _wink_

------
tempestn
I expect things are going to change less than most people think. The past
decade in a number of ways represented less of a change from a technological
perspective than the several leading up to it, and I expect that will most
likely continue. The alternative would be a massive new technology that
changes everything, like AGI, or possibly level 4/5 self driving vehicles, but
I don't expect either of those are coming in the next 10 years. Could be
something else no one sees coming, but I doubt it. So for now I think we're on
the tail end of an S-curve of change that has spanned several decades and
numerous individual technologies.

So, specific predictions:

-fully driverless cars will see some limited use, perhaps with remote monitoring, but will not be ubiquitous.

-electric cars though will become very popular, with most new cars being electric.

-solar and wind installations will continue to grow. We'll probably see some innovation around distribution and metering as a result of electric vehicles and/or renewables, like smart home panels that pause charging when load is high or renewable production is low, or even draw from the electric vehicle to provide supplemental power when necessary. I doubt those things will be common in 10 years, but they'll be at least talked about.

-AI will continue to have more niche applications, but will not result in major societal change or job loss.

-no country will meet the current Paris climate agreement thresholds. However, climate change will widely be recognized as a serious problem. Climate change denial will continue the shift from "doesn't exist" to "not caused by humans", and then to, "even if caused by humans, nothing we can do". However the denial side will carry less weight, and most first world governments will have implemented carbon taxes or other schemes to reduce greenhouse gasses. We will be on course for > 2 degrees of warming though.

-There will be presidents from both parties in the White House after Trump.

Generally I expect where there are large changes, they will be
political/geopolitical, not technological. I expect some change to be driven
by increasing polarization and by the pressures of climate change. Most likely
that will be a further entrenchment and isolationism, but there's a small
chance that there could also be a significant backlash to that trend with
something like the Green New Deal or open borders.

------
kickling
South East Australia and several other places will become uninhabitable
because of fires, drought or floods.

Self driving cars will be the norm, but we still have a steering wheel for
unexpected situations.

Trump will be reelected and start a new war. A big attack will be done on
american soil.

Cannabis legal in almost the entire US and europe (except Sweden and Norway).

~~~
kickling
And batteries will improve significiantly, and charging time of an EV is as
fast as filling your car with gas. This also means longer drone ranges and
better carrying capacity, home delivery by drone and a lot more illegal
activity with drones. This comes with a lot of new regulations.

The worlds countries has become more or less co2 neutral, except for China and
the US, so humanity fails the 2 degrees goal. But we have optimism in moving
to Greenland in the future. The US still wants to buy Greenland.

Greta Thunberg looses relevance as she grows past 20, but she becomes active
in Green Peace or the Green party and studies at Globala Gymnasiet and then at
Stockholm University.

Its more common to take the train than flying on vacation in Europe, you can
even take the train to asia more easily with Chinas new huge railway system.
China owns basically everything.

~~~
kickling
Transparent screens will come, and obviously foldable screens will become
affordable, but i dont think the interest is big enough for it to really take
off

------
taurath
* Reddit goes the way of Digg with a mass user exodus

* Several major candidates will lose an election because of their internet usage history earlier in life

* Much of the inflation that the US hasn't seen over the past decade will come back, in line with a recession. Very few investments will be safe. It'll come at the time, or just before the time a democrat is elected to office, and retroactively blamed on that democrat.

* The evangelical movement collapses under the weight of its own cognitive dissonance, in response to a well organized criticism campaign

* Amazon suffers a major misstep of their own making and loses a significant enough amount of customer trust to affect its growth rate.

* Home prices in San Fransisco and Seattle do not fall. Homelessness is the same or worse in each area by the end of the decade.

* A major new region becomes popular for tech workers to move to, on the back of major corporations moving there rather than startups

* Startups that exist and succeed are more rare, and larger. This decade is the age of the corporate titans, and the small are agile but most cannot compete.

* No major structural reform put to climate change

* Trump re-elected

* VR remains niche

* Worldwide poverty is continuously reduced

* A civil war or conflict takes place in a european country

* As the power changes hands to millenials, countries liberalize the social safety net

------
edpichler
1\. Still no flying cars.

------
ykevinator
Quantum computing on aws

------
hubert1234
1\. More profitable artificial food will replace natural foods, similar to how
canola oil replaced butter for cooking. Vegan 'meat' will be the default,
cheaper option in McDonalds which in turn makes natural food more expensive.

2\. Russia and China will launch a competitive, international currency to
fight the US dollar and China will humiliate the US in a regional conflict.

3\. Most countries in the world will benefit from global warming or see no ill
effects. Climate fear mongering will continue unimpressed by this.

4\. Smartphones will be replaced by smaller optionally wireless computers, the
screen will just be a screen and receive all the computing information from a
detached CPU/GPU/computer you keep in your wallet. Commonly sold desktop
monitors will have a place where you can slide in or connect your personal
wallet computer wirelessly.

5\. As social support systems in Europe start to crumble under the strain of
continued limitless immigration, they will enact openly communist policies
such as a duty to work for all citizens. This will be celebrated across the
world as a progressive action to fight the low economic performance of the EU
compared to China.

------
born_in_2045
* 2022 Google goes the way of FB in terms of press.

* 2023 Apple re-enters the social media market (leveraging iMessage)

* 2023 FB starts placing ads on external websites, eating into Google's market

* 2024 Amazon's commingling strategy and federated approach to "sellers" & "shippers" turns against it, making room for another major player to enter the market by focusing on quality.

* 2024 Comcast stops trying to push their TV service with Internet packages

* 2024 Y-Combinator adopts a syndicate system (similar to Angel List)

* 2025 A universal flu vaccine is universally available

* 2026 Alexa is now seen as the Hyundai of assistants. Google is Mercedes. Siri is Tata.

* 2026 Online ads revolution - a new format of ads, cleaner, more precise/focused, less intrusive (but more efficient) takes over.

* 2027 FB market cap overtakes Google & Apple

* 2027 Google launches a human-like virtual assistant that can handle everything a human can.

* 2028 China walls off even more of the internet.

* Around 2029 a new category of wearables appears. Not mainstream yet, but very promising, turning current interaction paradigms on their head. Google is a major partner, but not a leader of this.

* 2029 WiFi is largely available for free in all public areas (including on a plane).

~~~
gkolli
More info regarding Y-Combinator adopting a syndicate system?

~~~
born_in_2045
the more vague I leave it, the more likely it is to be interpreted as true 10
years from now :)

------
youwillsee
In 2030 people will look back in disbelief that society once thought vaccines
were a safe and sane thing to do. It will be the new smoking, ie. "Can you
believe doctors used to tell patients to vaccinate their children?!"

------
lteqgt
1\. EU becomes the global super power. Western balkan states (Albania, Serbia)
join the EU. Turkey does not join the EU. Poland becomes a powerhouse and
Warsaw quite a global city that attracts global talent and pays super high
salaries. The EU becomes the #1 destination for international students. Spain
becomes a powerhouse too.

2\. Some cities in Latin America and Africa experience quite a major boom that
is the result of good trade relations with the EU.

3\. Spanish starts replacing English as the global lingua franca.

4\. Most tech unicorns are outside the US and some of them do not even care
about the US market.

5\. The major Canadian cities (Vancouver, Montreal, Toronto) become
undesirable, nobody wants to live there and Toronto in 2020 is a crime ridden
city with lots of precarious labour. Canada, in general, experiences quite a
decline and is no longer considered a civilized country.

6\. Privacy regulation: by the end of the decade, most software developers
will have to have some sort of certification in GDPR, PCI etc. in order to be
employable.

7\. CQRS / ES is the software architecture winner. Statically typed FP
languages win. Explainable machine learning models win. Software becomes less
clunky. Users demand minimalistic UIs. On-premise threatens the cloud again
and huge projects to move companies off the cloud.

8\. No recession. Huge shortages of labour (plumbers, electricians, nurses,
doctors etc. ). But the US grows much slower than the rest of the globe.

9\. Tech solutions (e.g., capturing CO2 from air) and political will pauses
global warming to a large extent.

10\. The collapse of US style dating culture and online dating sites such as
Tinder. The way to meet people becomes “through friends”.

11\. Middle class becomes stronger and the rich stagnate. Globally and not in
the US. 32 hour work week is norm if you work for a good company. 36 hour work
week is norm in most civilized countries.

------
hyperpallium
Elon goes to Mars, secedes from the US, is declared Emperor.

------
kalium_xyz
The next AI winter is coming.

Wasm will be a letdown

The microsoft duo will fail later this year

China will remain communistic

------
jandyy
1-US leaves Afghanistan after negotiations with the taliban.

2-Conflict between Us forces and Iranian backed miltas in Iraq leads to a
political settlement that forces the US to leave another middle eastern
country.

3-Insurgent left-wing democratics take control over the party and begin to
purge moderate elements. Resulting in an increased polarization of American
politics.

4-China suffers a major economic collapse that causes an uprising similar to
the occupy movement in the US.

5-Mines all over the world are shut down as increasing regulations make
extraction politically impossible.

6-Borders become increasingly irrelevant as nations give up on attempts to
stop climate refugees.

7-Research on graphene based batteries finally reaches the market, leading to
a massive decrease in energy storage costs.

------
blackoil
1\. Right wing will continue to rise along with radicals across the globe and
will peak in 2nd half of the decade (hopefully without a holocaust or WW).

2\. Facebook, MS, Google, Apple will stay dominant. Though EU, Russia and
India will put more checks in place.

3\. Fake News and Deepfakes will continue to rise with (1), causing an arms
race with detectors.

4\. Even more consolidation across consumer content web.

5\. Electron/RN/* tech will merge web/mobile/desktop apps development into
one.

6\. New development in battery will make electric cars dominant. Nuclear will
have a strong resurgence and China/India will be driver of clean fuel
requirements.

7\. Autonomous cars will be limited to particular community/use cases. Though
Automated Trucks on highway will be popular.

------
vl
Singularity.

------
sudo_bang_bang
Safe:

* Recession will happen that will affect the global economy causing at least a 30% decrease in major world stock indexes.

* China will stumble in a major recession but the Communist Party will maintain power.

* Google, Apple, Facebook, and Microsoft will still be the biggest tech companies by market cap.

* A new company that hasn’t been started yet will be in the top 10 tech companies by market cap.

* The duopoly of cloud computing services will be AWS and Google Cloud. Nearly all Fortune 500 companies will use one or the other.

* Big Tech will not be broken up because of their large value decline during recession, with focus being diverted to prop economy back up.

Bold:

* Breakthrough battery technology will make electric vehicles better for consumers than than their fossil fuel counterparts.

* The breakthrough battery tech will allow a very affordable manned mission to Mars.

* Solar will be the dominant form of energy creation in the United States.

* HIV vaccine available to nearly all healthy adults.

* Netflix will be bought by Disney.

* DeepFake technology will be used to create an entire feature film by a major studio.

* Donald Trump will win the 2020 presidential election despite being unsuccessfully tried during impeachment.

* In the United States, majority of people will eat synthetic meat over animal-based meat.

* San Francisco Bay Area will not be globally in the top 10 areas of funding for new technology startups.

Crazy:

* A state in the United States will successfully secede.

* Glaciation will increase in parts of the world with their albedo effect predicted to offset most of the temperature increase from man-made climate change.

* Major disease epidemic will kill at least 20 million people. Will not be noticed at first but will rapidly kill after long incubation.

* Artificial general intelligence (AGI) will be achieved, accidentally.

* Despite AGI, self-driving cars will not be the majority of vehicles on the road.

------
michal_f
New decade starts with 2021... Just saying

------
ErrantX
Random things I feel are coming...

\- Amazon/Apple/Netflix dominate sports coverage (pushing out e.g. Sky in the
UK).

\- The rise in right wing/conservative power peaks in around the mid 2020s,
probably with a smallish 1st world country electing an extremist government.

\- Overall politics becomes even more partisan, led by media organisations.
The biggest media spenders will get elected. (This is basically true already).

\- Electric cars will be widely expected to be ubiquitous but will not quite
make it any 2030.

\- SpaceX will land something on Mars, but not humans.

\- Someone (probably either China or India) will begin landing lots of
hardware on the moon.

\- 5G and ridiculously low-cost chips mean lots of home automation startups;
I'm maybe betting on a major new company coming from this area.

\- Security consciousness peaks and tails off, next generation accept
surveillance culture

\- LGBT will still be marginalised; as with politics perspectives will become
even more partisan.

\- African nations will have a greater role in world affairs; economically and
politically. Arab nations will swing toward conservative democracy. Asian
nations will continue to grow economically. USA will be recognised as a
declining world power in 2030.

\- Europe will have a standing Army

\- There will be a major war in Asia, but not Korea. It will probably also be
a China/US proxy war - and I am least convinced by this prediction but: the US
will lose.

\- VR will still just be a toy/gaming device.

\- most games consoles will start following the Wii's dual mode approach

\- Folding screen phones will die off quickly

\- There will be at least one major financial disaster (other than pensions).

\- Crypto currency will be on the decline.

\- Oh, as it seems popular... we probably don't have fully autonomous cars but
the tech starts to become mainstream as a driver aide and in the second half
of the decade it becomes widely adopted in the transport industry (I predict
major disruption to transport/delivery industries in the 2030s; I.e automated
Amazon deliveries)

------
Vermeulen
\- People will still talk about the ending of Moore's Law, while it still
actually continues throughout the decade

\- Facebook will be the first to market with a consumer friendly successful AR
device. But Apple and Google will be more successful, due to their tie in with
mobile operating systems. First successful consumer AR headsets will be phone
accessories like Apple Watch \- AR gaming, maybe connected to Desktop PCs,
will be successful once a company makes a AR headset with good input (allowing
for BeatSaber in AR)

\- VR/AR entertainment will be larger than game console industry. Mobile games
still massively larger than all others. \- Console industry and
PlayStation/Xbox devices will decline, as anything single screen based can be
streamed for the same experience \- Google will continue to develop and invest
in Stadia, slowly increasing its market share

\- Valve will finally make 'Steam Machines' running Linux a reality, selling
them as primarily for VR (with included headset).

\- WebAssembly becomes the main way to deliver all apps - native and browser
based. Because of this difference between operating systems becomes less
important. Google transitions Android to Fuchsia on some new devices \- Rust
will continue to continue to rise in popularity as the main language for
systems / server / game development

\- SpaceX's Starlink works, helping to bring total internet access of the
world up to 95%. Other LEO satellites launch mid decade from an alliance of
companies to compete. SpaceX's Starship reaches Mars - might transport people
depending on space's health risk to humans \- Starlink /Loon / Wifi access
disrupt mobile carriers

\- Man made climate change will still be debated the same - with minor change
in public perception towards believing in it. Geoengineering will have some
success and be seen as a viable solution at the end of the decade

Cryptocurrency will be a larger component of the world financial systems, but
will still not take off in any way with the general public. Still a niche
store of value. By the end of the decade decentralized block chain companies
will begin to take off

Instagram will make more revenue for Facebook than the Facebook app

Driverless taxi services are mainstream in major cities by the end of decade

Cloud: AWS will remain 1, Azure 2, Google a more distant 3rd.

Deep learning tools will be a more common part of IDEs and productivity tools.
Accessible Deep learning tools for amateur creators to create visual effects
equal to blockbuster movies. Tech like 'De-aging' will be basically free to
add to any video

Europe continues to decline. China has a major recession. The US stays at its
relative position

AI is solving difficult problems (such as math proofs), with humans then
needing to interpret and understand the proof afterwards (many different
published papers interpreting the results)

------
Diaznash
Africa 2020 - 2029 predictions The last 10 years have seen great changes in
Africa with a lot of them being a direct cause of tech adoption and more
people looking for efficient ways to do business and improve quality of life.
Looking back, they look subtle and not as drastic as we would imagine but I
think the next 10yrs is when greater changes are going to happen.

Technology and Privacy \- Rise of quality internet speeds. We have had slow
jumps from 3g to 4g but the jump to 5g will be the first meaningful change in
relation to internet speeds. It will be like jumping from 2g straight to 5g.
This is dependent on telcos companies realising more people want good
services. \- Airtel exiting a few African countries. At least for Kenya, am
calling it on Airtel quitting the market and we will have new entrants who
will either buy airtel or new telcos will enter the scene. \- Online
e-commerce stores like Jumia will struggle. For Jumia specifically, I see them
exiting or being bought with another company. \- Increase in logistics
companies will benefit more from intra-trade. \- Apple will make its first big
push in Africa. Having almost hit saturation point in china and India, it will
be time for them to push into the African market launching official stores,
introducing hackathons and pushing MacOs into the scene through promoting
local made apps/content. \- Open source will be adopted more. Moving away from
walled gardens like chrome in favour of firefox and even Linux gaining more
users. A result of mistrust with current state of privacy. \- Twitter will
pivot, die or be bought \- An African social media company will displace
Facebook in Africa just like in Russia and China. If not, most countries will
have their own thing going. \- Self driving cars won’t enter the African
scene. Maybe the next decade. Major infrastructure investments still need to
be done to catchup. This will also affect other autonomous things like drones.
\- The decade of African unicorns (private companies worth a billion dollars)
\- Intentional companies like uber, glovo, amazon, KFC, etc will see a decline
as people start adopting local/African centric companies. \- Fin tech startups
are a bubble that will burst and die down this decade. \- More foreigners will
continue launching in Africa with massive financial backing but will have to
move entire operations within the continent. \- More African companies will
let employees work from home \- \- Surveillance in Africa will take off.
Street cameras, DNA, online, tracking of phone calls and chats. This will be
pushed more by China and human rights problems will still be prevalent. \-
Africa will have the biggest cyber security risks with even more people
adopting tech. \- Blockchain will finally become useful as governments adopt
it to increase transparency and efficiency. \- One stable coin/ crypto
currency will gain adoption for regional and intentional transfers displacing
banks and mobile money. \- Mobile money will still be huge but push from banks
will mean more people will be banking and using mobile banking apps for
transfers with service like Pesalink in Kenya gaining a lot of traction. Banks
partnering might develop the tool for the point above this. \- The dot com
generation (born 1980 onwards according to me) will lead push in funding local
startups with African venture capital companies starting up.

Politics and economy \- All dictators will fall \- Younger presidents will be
elected (below 60yrs) in more counties \- Rwanda will be in top 3 biggest
economies in Africa by the end of the decade \- Urban rural migration will
reverse with more developments in outside towns \- Like the rest of the world,
Artificial intelligence use like deep fakes and fake news will wreck havoc and
continue to be a big problem in politics especially during elections. \-
Airplane ticket prices will become affordable especially intentional to other
African counties. \- Moving around Africa will be flawless with more countries
doing away with visas with East Africa becoming the single biggest market.
This will face stiff competition with west African countries moving to single
currency. I don’t think East Africa will push for single currency anytime
soon. \- A few African countries will sink into recession as they struggle to
payback China. Infrastructure growth will slow down and we might see the
return of the West into Africa as they try to gain favour with new projects \-
We will see less Made in China and more Made in (insert African country) \-
More international companies will transfer their ‘low level’ work force like
companies into Africa Ethiopia as a leading example.

Religion & culture \- More Africans will shun religion with traditional and
indigenous tribes being on their death bed. This might also lead to
radicalised and extremist groups continuing to cause terrorism but eventually
it will die down maybe in the next decade \- Islam will be the only religion
with an increase in followers by the end of the decade \- FGM will be illegal
in the entire continent \- Same as early child marriages.

Energy and climate change \- Increase in energy demands means alternative
green energy will be main focus for African countries to keep up with energy
demands. We will even see more data centres being setup in more African
counties to serve more localised content. \- I wont rule out African countries
adopting old energy sources like coal. General thinking is we have had the
least impact in effects of climate change. Other nations got rich through coal
and oil. Why not us? I dont support the argument but it can’t be ruled out. \-
A new push for nuclear energy and at least 1 country joining the nuclear arms
race. \- Plastic bags will be banned in the entire continent.

Tourism & entertainment \- With climate change destroying more national parks,
African countries will have to find new ways to sustain their economies away
from tourism which might mean rise of theme/amusement parks. Maybe Disney ️ \-
We will see more african artists breaking into the intentional scene and
having the first African artist with a song with over a billion views in
YouTube. \- African made movies will enter the international scene doing world
premieres. \- E-sports will be huge with growing global trends.

------
cmehdy
1\. While neural network research continues at a somewhat steady pace
(slightly increased by the influx of new grads influenced by the last decade's
glow around AI), neural nets become very small building blocks for task-design
(by that I mean that all current small advances with neural nets can be
integrated in a bigger-picture kind of design software to quickly prototype
higher-level concepts such as modelling certain subsets of the brain, such as
many of the Vs in the visual cortex)

2\. Surveillance increases throughout the world (in numbers of cameras,
privacy-invading devices and techniques, changes in legislation, improvements
in AI), as well as counter-measures to AI-powered tools (wearables/clothes
with specifically crafted noise to deceive detection algorithms, randomize
gait, etc). Very little is won by people on the legislation front despite
protests, since tracking ties in so well with advertising that there is
enormous financial leverage and lobbying working on it.

3\. SpaceX puts rich people on space trips mostly in orbit around the earth &
spacewalks, maybe on a moon trip

4\. VCs overall bet on remote work, ecology, as well as more upfront
sustainable business models than in the previous decade

5\. EU learns (a bit late) to cope with migrant crisis and improve its
immigration (in part due to a more diverse aging population), albeit at the
cost of perhaps losing a couple Eastern-European members.

6\. Still, the improvements don't compare quite as much with Canada, the
population of which increases at the highest rate in western countries thanks
to immigration (including a lot of skilled workers), its increasingly better
weather (one of the only relatively lucky countries facing climate change),
and its bridge between US-UK-EU via new agreements (with UK and perhaps EU).

6\. Decentralized networks become mainstream for specific fields (not sure
which), prompting an evolving dialogue about the future of the internet

7\. A new form of betting-investment mimics the bitcoin craze of a few years
ago, mixed with a patreon/kickstarter/gofundme-type structure (something that
makes it easy for the layman to invest in exchange for perks or financial
promises that supposedly beat the market at short term)

8\. Either a non-white or a non-male US president is elected at least once

9\. FDA-approved research around drugs that were traditionally shunned by
older populations (thanks to the war on drugs) proves fruitful for very
specific needs (certain types of depression, PTSD, BPD, insomnia, etc), thus
progressively bringing them into mainstream at a pace only slightly higher
than what happened with cannabis. Drugs involved are mostly psilocybin,
ketamine and mdma.

10\. A bit farfetched but why not: one astronomical event scares the bejesus
out of the world, leading to substantial improvements in the following years.
(Asteroid passing far too close without being noticed -> sharp increase in
NASA and ESA budgets.. or Solar flare destroying power grids and electronics
over an entire continent -> huge investments in shielding, or in alternative
power sources perhaps even for individuals - depending on where the event
happens)

------
danShumway
I don't normally try to predict out 10 years, but I'll throw a few out, with
(importantly) the corresponding probabilities I'd assign off the top of my
head.

\----------------

Safe predictions

\----------------

1\. Deep Fakes will _NOT_ substantially alter public discourse or cause a
widespread erosion of public trust. (0.78)

To be sure, there will definitely be a lot of hand wringing, particularly
among older generations, but younger generations will quickly adjust the same
way they adjusted to Photoshop. For the most part, nothing will change.

2\. Machine Learning will become widely regarded as a dead end for real AI
progress. (0.65)

This is already a non-niche opinion, but by the start of 2030, it will be the
consensus of almost everyone in the field, and current claims about massive
progress from systems like GPT-2 will be _widely_ seen as hopelessly naive in
hindsight.

3\. Chrome will still be the dominant browser. (0.7)

No other browser will have passed Chrome in market share. This doesn't mean
they won't be making progress, just that 10 years is not enough time for
anyone to catch up.

4\. Javascript will still be the dominant language on the web. (0.95)

WASM will open up a lot of interesting opportunities and make a lot of cool
technologies possible. Most web devs will ignore it, and most web coding will
still be done in Javascript. Sorry, Bernhardt.

5\. PCs will still be around, people will still buy laptops. (0.9)

The mass migration to tablets and obsoletion of PCs that people have been
talking about forever will still not have happened. The PC's place as a non-
niche, common consumer device will be reinforced by the continued rise of
convertible laptops, which will make tablets less distinct and less attractive
on metrics other than cost.

\-----------------

Risky predictions

\-----------------

6\. Krita (specifically Krita) will become reasonably competitive with
programs like Clip Studio. (0.35)

Krita will occupy the same space as Blender, in which it will be regarded by
the general public as a similarly viable, serious contender with professional
programs.

7\. Matrix will become a defacto standard in the Open Source & security
community over platforms like Signal, Wire, etc... (0.3)

Interoperability and more open clients will cause a snowball effect. Platforms
like Signal will still have better security, but that won't matter. Everyone
will recommend that you use Matrix purely because it works with everything,
and will have good enough security for most things.

8\. Apple will swallow its pride and make a convertible Macbook with a
touchscreen. (0.4)

The argument that consumers widely don't want touchscreens on Laptops will
become impossible to defend. There will be a Macbook that has one, and it will
probably be a convertible. The iOS and Mac OS merger may also happen, which
will make iPads into a paired-down version of the Macbook, rather than a
completely separate product.

\---------------------

Out-there predictions

\---------------------

9\. Mastodon will become a 'serious' Twitter competitor among the general
public. (0.15)

Mastodon will not only still be around, and will not only still be usable for
niche communities, it will be seen in the general, non-techy public as a
reasonable alternative to Twitter, and Twitter will be forced to respond to
it, particularly where younger generations are concerned.

10\. Eating meat will be a political indicator. (0.15)

Currently, I can make a reasonable prediction that if you don't eat meat, you
lean Democratic, but enough Democrats eat meat that I can't really make a
prediction in the opposite direction. By 2030 I'll be able to -- if you _do_
eat meat, I'll be able to make a reasonable prediction that you probably lean
Republican.

------
knbknb
Off the top of my head, starting from some course notes on "Digital
Transformation" :

Big Data - "I wish I had more data literacy" will be considered desirable by
more people of the educated population. Although many people would like to
have more (coding and data analysis) skills, often it will be wishful thinking
like "Next year I'll be losing weight and get fitter".

Shift to the Cloud - This will continue slowly but steadily through the next
10 years. For IT pros, some classic sysadmin skills - such as patching cables,
administering RAID devices, physically ordering PC components and configuring
PC operating systems- will become obsolete (because it gets also more
complicated. I'm looking at you Windows 10). These skills need to replaced
with a "cloud literacy skillset". The tech giants will be pushing their cloud
based offerings (because it's all pay-per use or subscription based)

Internet of Things - This will slowly also but steadily continue, as more
wireless devices are released into the public space (LoRaWAN). Consequently
IPv6 will become more mainstream. Many IoT devices will have many capabilities
and see forms of integration, just like smartphones are powerful multitools
today.

Innovative Manufacturing - 5G local grids, 3D printing and biotech innovations
(tissue growth?) will become more mainstream in all parts of the globe where
there is still a middle class.

Cyber Security - In most respects it will get worse, because nobody is able to
understand modern processors and microcontrollers anymore. Even the smallest
devices will have powerful CPUs in them because it's cheaper than secure
special-purpose SoCs. Protecting Your real online identity will be super-
important.

Artificial Intelligence - Spectacular applications and discoveries will
continue to make national news, as will creepy misuse cases such as instant
Face Recognition and deep-fakes.

Blockchain technologies - will become mainstream, as a mechanism to ensure
authenticity of digital assets of any kind (e.g. "Live footage" videos). Many
people will use it but few will understand it. Cryptocurrencies will find more
widespread acceptance, as some central banks adopt them, tech giants promote
them, and they can also be used for private banking.

Public health crisis - it continues as society ages. The opioid crisis,
obesity and diabetes epidemics, and antibiotics resistance increasingly take
their toll. Might also happen during the 2030s. The healthcare market will
become more important and see some bizarre developments.

Long term global environmental problems - they will lead to economic collapse
in many parts of the globe and to continental-scale dystopia (in Africa,
Near/Middle East, Australia).

The 2020s will be completely unlike the 2010-2020 years.

------
faebi
My predictions of things that probably happen till 2030:

1\. Level 5 self-driving cars will be available.

1.a. Humans will be blamed for self-driving and news like this will be common:
"Another kid died because X turned off the self-driving mode. Why?"

1.b. Insurance companies will see the business for self-driving and solve most
legal problems.

1.c. Most cars won't be self-driving yet.

1.d. Trucks and logistics will see major shifts in fast time.

1.e. Political targets will die in self-driving accidents.

1.f. This will be the change with the most positive impact on the world
economy.

2\. One major western economy will be hit extremely hard by a days/week long
outage on their power or internet because of an easy cyber attack on their
insecure infrastructure.

3\. The wage-gap will be even bigger in the USA. The super-rich will be
completely in power.

4\. Major rich and/or political people will be the target of a never seen
before data-breach. Laws regarding privacy will change across the west.

5\. I assume an new economic crisis. But maybe the world is to complex now for
one big crisis across all industries.

6\. People in Europe won't accept the rising prices for healthcare and for
housing/ground anymore.

6.a. The prices of healthcare will rise anyway because of new medical
possibilities.

6.b. Housing will be automated but this won't affect renting prices enough.

7\. Aging will be seen as a disease and the first treatments will start to
appear.

8\. New contraceptives for men will shape the young male generation like
nothing before.

9\. The near-east will start to be irrelevant again because of the
electrification of cars.

10\. Africa won't change a lot except for places where China invests.

11\. China will suppress any revolution with ease and will help other
countries to do the same.

12\. The public internet will start to split into multiple enormous silos like
in China now. As a European, I might won't be able to access HN anymore. Only
the biggest companies can navigate this regulation mess.

13\. SpaceX will be first world-wide ISP and it will be enormous.

14\. Europe, USA, China and India will be equally powerful. The USA will have
the hardest time to deal with this new situation.

15\. The Sovereign Wealth fund of Norway will get even better. Norway will let
any western economy look like crap. Why inherit dept from your parents when
you can get wealth and dividends. People in the Europe will start demanding
the same as Norway has.

------
stereolambda
Ah what the heck, may record mine for posterity as well. Most things rather
bleak, still hope for some positives surprising me.

Tech:

1\. Industrialization and commodification of deep learning.

2\. No AGI. Substantial progress in understanding human nervous system though.

3\. The the tech landscape solidifies the split between privacy-conscious and
pricey 'ware and the mass market 'ware paid for with surveillance.

4\. Network pollution caused by 5G and/or similar. Average person will have
their home littered with random appliance transmitters they have no awareness
about.

5\. Actually controlling what your computers do will be a more esoteric and
in-demand skill. CS departments will correct towards the pre-1980s mode when
you were expected to actually learn most of the stuff at the university.

6\. The push for tech regulation will sunset the unicorn era. Tech giants
start to look more like telco giants, which still means people work for them
for big money and less luster.

Geopolitics:

1\. China will be an ideological superpower, Cold War or Age of Imperialism
style, with a sizeable sphere of influence on most of continents, and many
ideological adherents to the "safety and order by total surveillance" brand of
totalitarianism in the West. There will be again two recognizable world
systems, with one centered in the US (or possibly EU, if many things change)
and the other in China. This can include new centers of manufacturing linked
to the former.

2\. There will be little organized response of the Western world to this,
barring significant new popular movements in the US/EU. Non-US NATO countries
will be mostly left to their own devices, with some fear of criticizing China
by private citizens.

3\. Russia will be moving towards becoming a client state of China, possibly
with subtle hints of warlord decentralization.

4\. The populist camp in the West, depending on the country, will be either
flirting with China or evolve towards a kind of McCarthyism (some hints of
that in the GOP nowadays). The establishment camp will be battered by
unpopular but kinda necessary policies around pension reform, climate change
etc. It's possible that a new camp based on the likes of Greens and Pirates,
or something unquestionably leftist will gain viability.

5\. Overall, there will be a global rethinking of nation state with stress on
the "cyber" sovereignty. More world fragmentation in terms of tech, government
policy.

6\. On the other hand, political positions will be more global and
homogenized, and English-speaking.

7\. Climate change will incur a heavy cost, catastrophic in specific places,
with little global response, more blame-shifting and elaborate denial.

8\. With the increasing role of governments there will be visible progress in
global regulation of finance.

------
FooHentai
1\. The impacts of climate change are felt not as a bang but as a cacophony of
whimpers - severe weather events wipe billions from local economies in
vulnerable areas, protracted recoveries and financial mismanagement in the
wake of such disasters are the norm and not the exception as are ‘soft exits’
where there’s no real recovery at all and the area is left to rot with media
being expertly manipulates into falling silent. With the right eye, most of
the front page of any given newspaper will become issues easily linked to the
impacts of climate change. Reactions to this will be paradoxical - increased
development of vulnerable areas (Miami, flood plains, hurricane alleys) and
employ harmful techniques that act to deepen the problem in future (concrete,
fossil-fuel-dependent movement of material over long distances). The
collective consciousnesses awareness of the locked-in and second-order effects
of. Linate change will slowly widen, taking into account things like the
30-year lag, clathrate gun, albedo, and an acute awareness of the CO2 PPM
measurements of their locale.

2\. Developed nations decline thanks significantly to repeated election of
divisive, ineffective politicians and the neutering, budget cutting and
general reduction of the public service that executes on an increasingly
constrained vision with greater focus on media perception over results. Which
ever side prevails in any particular election will cheer loudly yet their
champion will prove just as ineffective as their opponent was imagined to be.
This applies to the USA and Britain for sure but likely also many other
democracies.

3\. The middle class squeeze will continue and the bottom-of-the-hill
ambulances in the form of social services, health and mental care will
continue their steady march to privatisation, fuelled by the class divide that
sees the uppers not rely on such things and so be easily drawn to the raw
profit of liquidating it. There will be increasing calls for UBI while the
ongoing failure to sustainably fund partial basic income, the pension, will
progress.

4\. Alternative living arrangements such as tiny houses, van dwelling,
intentional communities, Airbnb and even straightforward lodging will be
increasingly punished/regulated in paradoxical complement to the wider issues
of eroding social services and climate change. Telecommuting/remote work will
continue to be a niche, enviously studied by office-dwelling dreamers tracking
the lives of a small number of success stories carving their niche (and also
revenues) in the blogosphere.

5\. We will see increased calls for intensified urbanisation and migration to
tackle the obvious increasing poverty divide between nations/regions and
provide a path to renewed GDP growth. This will have the net effect of
furthering political divides, increasing per-capital emissions, and draining
the skills base of developing nations.

6\. The imagined bunkers which we would all retreat into as a means of
survival from the world will not eventuate in a literal sense except where
some billionaire crafts an elaborate folly that we all get to bray over in our
news feed. However, bunkers will come to exist in less literal ways -
households will continue to shrink, more people living alone with pets and no
kids. Social circles will also shrink and the next generation of minds will be
crafted by the distant yet immediate judgment of their peers and yet they will
rarely meet in person and the expenditure of personal energy in such an
endeavour (or indeed any endeavour at all) will become vanishingly rare. Our
diets will be made up of increasingly single-serve, processed substances
delivered directly to us in single-use packaging.

You know after typing all this out I’ve realised it’s just as much a summation
of the past decade as a projection of the next one. Here’s to another ten
years of this, then, I guess. Where’s my scythe?

------
victorpascu
Predictions are fun! Here's hoping I come back to read this in 2030.

1\. There will be a breakthrough in VR gaming. Kits with similar features to
today's most expensive will start going on offer for prices lower than or
comparable to consoles, and new high-end kits will offer full motion tracking
without needing treadmills or the like. VR cafes, similar to the Internet
cafes of old, will become a mainstream choice for entertainment, especially
for teenagers and young adults. Half-Life: Alyx will be a major contributor in
establishing industry conventions that other developers will build upon.

2\. Piracy will drastically increase for video content following the
fragmentation of streaming services. A subscription to have access to all
streaming services will appear, and we'll have completed the loop back to
cable television.

3\. Electronic voting will be adopted in a few more countries. One will have
an election hacked, resulting in a different party being elected than the one
people actually voted for. A major scandal following that will halt the trend.

4\. Web development will continue to remain highly fragmented. There will be
fewer and fewer individuals that understand all the layers of applications due
to continually exploding complexity. Containerization will be taught as a core
competency in any development course. Firefox will gain 10% of market share,
but Chromium-based browsers will remain king. JS will lose market share but
will remain at the top.

5\. There will be a rising trend in using neural networks to prepare APIs and
interfaces for the most common app types, and it's going to be advertised as
magic. It will result in a decrease in entry-level freelancing jobs, and a
decrease in the revenue of companies based on providing no-code websites -
unless they're the ones that offer the service.

6\. A new standard for designing apps will appear from one of the tech giants
and be adopted into the mainstream after 2 or 3 years, similar to Material.

7\. There will be a massive push in many major cities to discourage personal
vehicle ownership, proposing the use of public transportation or
bikes/electric scooters instead. Part of the push will be in decommissioning
lanes, the other in taxes.

8\. Gen Z will turn out as a generation of extremes. To the surprise of many,
tech illiteracy will be a serious problem.

9\. There's going to be a global scare due to a superbug, i.e. a virus that is
resistant to antibiotics. It may get as far as having border lockdowns.

10\. China will continue its rise to power, and individual freedoms will
continue to decrease. On a related note, Hong Kong will be subdued in a subtle
manner, and a history rewrite will be attempted.

11\. There will be an economic recession within three years. Many companies
will feel the effects on their bottom line from decreased sales and will try
to automate entry-level positions in response.

12\. Mirroring what another poster said in this thread, deepfakes will become
so commonplace that only lived experiences will remain fully credible; and
yes, there will be an industry based around trying to sell content as being
fully unedited.

13\. Open offices will finally start fading out, remote work will become more
mainstream. Despite experiments in several countries, the 8-hour workday will
remain the norm.

14\. Again mirroring other posters in this thread, crypto won't have a massive
breakout, though it will continue to rise in popularity. Investors will start
wincing when they hear about crypto startups, the already established ones
will start seeing some mainstream use.

15\. And the one I'm most sure about: we'll still be playing videos using VLC
in 2030.

------
tekkk
1\. Developer tools become more and more integrated, solutions become
mainstream where everything is automated with your whole stack (DNS/domain,
CI, Git repos, Scrum board, analytics, app/database etc) created in one click
(already happening, I know). AWS buys Gitlab or Atlassian.

2\. GCP fails on its goal in becoming as large as AWS/Azure

3\. Data Science becomes as commonplace in software development as Agile
methods, Git etc with easier to use tools (which require no actual knowledge
how the math works)

4\. In the developed countries electric vehicles achieve approximately 50%
market share

5\. Some great advancements in battery technology, which only still result to
about 50% better energy density than as of now

6\. Some new social media (a la Snapchat) rises, possibly based on VR or AR

7\. VR & AR games become more mainstream, AR particularly with couple hit-
games (perhaps similar to board games?)

8\. No fusion power, and not that much progress in it

And my political predictions:

1\. Africa becomes the new "China", a lot of manufacturing is transferred
there

2\. Africa also sees a steep increase in GDP in some countries which receive
these new investments (eg Nigeria, Kenya, Ethiopia perhaps)

3\. China rises in political power but falls short on becoming a true
superpower, mainly due to lack of soft power (Chinese culture will stay as
isolated as it's now). Also while becoming the absolute best in few key
industries (electronical devices mainly), won't achieve similar success in
other areas (software, cars)

4\. The rest of the Balkans join EU (with maybe the exception of Albania),
people continue complaining about EU but still nobody else other than Britain
leaves the union

5\. EU deepens its military co-operation, NATO decreases in importance mostly
because of USA's erratic behaviour

6\. A major proxy war is fought in Middle-East, yet again. Iran contests
Saudi-Arabia's dominance. Saudi-Arabia fails to transition from oil to other
industries

7\. Global warming will create the strongest and the most devastating
hurricane yet to hit US. Deniers will still fail to see any correlation
between them

8\. Global warming will also create mass starvation and desertification in
Africa causing mass-migrations and thus pressure on the neighbouring countries
and especially EU, with again populists getting votes with their anti-
immigration rhetoric

9\. Populists world-wide will gain a stronger foothold, even more having prime
ministers in various EU countries (not just in Eastern Europe)

A bit conservative predictions, I know. But it's still only 10 years so any
bolder predictions will probably fall short

------
joddystreet
Field: Software -

Around the start of the decade -

\- Nearly every old SAAS company would become a platform, offering marketplace
and hosting for custom-built solutions. \- Rise of very narrowly focussed
software companies. (superhuman for X trend - to me this means - software with
an extremely narrow set of features, with a focus on being fast). \- Reduced
time to market for software products, followed by a decline in the quality of
software (performance, security, speed of building features). \- A rise in a
number of open-source full-fledged-products. \- Rise of NoCode, would
facilitate the Rise of micro-SAAS.

\------------------------------------------------------------

Around the middle of the decade -

\- Rise of paid Open Source developers. \- Rise of IT dept. in the
organizations. \- Data engineering would be a part of IT. \- More
organizations would turn to inhouse development. \- Rise of FAAS (Feature as a
Service) on the top of the SAAS and Open Source, would be facilitated by a
small set of teams, serving the Enterprise market. \- Every IDE would offer
ML-based code-completion. This would be adopted quite quickly by the
companies, in hopes that tech-debt would be paid. \- Experienced software
engineers would consolidate behind the core-tech companies or churn out of the
industry.

\------------------------------------------------------------

Around the end of the decade -

\- CS (subject) would just become AI/ML and would follow the path of core
engineering degrees, where having a post-grad degree is no longer optional.
Would be offered as a combined UG+PG degree. The curriculum would be more or
less the same, only the name change would happen for the UG. Universities
would struggle to attract candidates in the CS stream as the popularity of
lambda school and other boot camps soars. \- CS (subject) would be merged with
other degrees to offer combined degrees. The curriculum would include the
first two years of CS - programming, database, data structure, data
engineering, software engineering and some IT subjects around DevOps. \- Rise
of industry, function-specific NoCode apps/services. \- Postgres-Rust -
release of Postgres, rewritten in Rust (in general - nGinx, Python, not all,
but one of the major tech component)

\- Day 0 for the Sofware industry. It bottoms out, before rising up again in
the next decade. Mythical man-months would be the bible for the new s/w
industry. \- Day 0 for the distributed internet, distributed apps.

\- A hardware company, bigger than Intel at its peak. \- First truly
distributed organization - the start of an experiment.

\------------------------------------------------------------

Random Predictions

\- Nationalist sentiments are on the rise in India, this might force consumer-
facing companies to take some drastic measures, such as - Walmart and Amazon
to either merge or leave India. \- Amazon would peak. \- Gold rates would be
all-time high. \- Mental health issues would be on a rise. \- Cloud kitchens/
delivery only restaurants would be the norm. \- Ownership would start moving
towards digital (digital money, space in VR land, etc). \- Expect
breakthroughs in quantum computing and the internet. \- I hope for some
progress in self-configurable robots. \- The sharing economy would grow.

============================================================

------
smattiso
1.) Piracy effectively kills independent movies and books. \-- Outside of
showstopper Marvel, Star Wars, Avenger-esque media, most movies lose money or
are rolled up into subscription services. \-- However other showstopper type
franchises arise as people tire of the same old Marvel universe crap.

2.) Most magazines go out of business.

3.) Because of 1-2 maybe we actually start to do something about piracy and
enforce laws?

4.) Autonomous cars only work on the freeway and use mostly commodity parts
(cheap LIDAR, cameras). Level 5 driving is abandoned.

5.) AMZN and MSFT grow. GOOG shrinks or stays the same.

6.) FB shrinks by 50%. SNAP, TikTok, FutureSocialNetwork all grow, however a
large set of young people abandon social media all together.

7.) Related to 6: AAPL releases iMessage for Android, puts some security
settings in there, adds bitmoji, face filters, etc, and kills 50% of all
social networks overnight. Twitter is still the go to place to listen to
celebrities.

8.) VR is abandoned or is a niche product.

9.) Tech bubble bursts. 300k programmer salaries are gone. Lots of unemployed
coders out there. People with generic CS degrees are a dime a dozen.

10.) Hard sciences rule. People with Masters+ in Material Science,
Biomedicine, Aeronautics, Mechatronics/Robotics are king.

11.) People that know how to setup data processing pipelines to facilitate #10
are still valuable. As are those who know how to build the systems that robots
rely to navigate and manage their work. Specialize or die.

12.) Recession. Reduction in prices of housing, but consolidation of the
housing market into the hands of the elites who no longer want anything to do
with VC.

13.) Many IT, agricultural, warehousing, retail, grocery, and trucking jobs
are lost. IT takes the biggest hit.

14.) Machine Learning is tapped out. No AGI. Insights from Big Data aren't
what they are cracked up to be. ML helps discover patterns for drug discovery,
helps robots to orient in space and see surroundings, but the logic is still
driven by humans.

15.) Crypto goes to 0.

16.) Species loss and human sprawl continues.

17.) "Peak software startup" reached in 2018. Next startups are in medicine,
energy, space, environmentalism. This is good. Bad for coders though.

More positive thoughts:

18.) Incredible advances in medical diagnostics. Routine screening (for
wealthy people) includes full body MRIs and ML detection of cancer. A Theranos
style blood test is invented. Many cancers, if caught early, and maybe
alzheimers are manageable medically.

19.) Crispr is still immature and not widely used.

20.) Plastics are slowly being phased out.

------
photon_lines
1\. A major earthquake / the ‘big one’ will hit California.

2\. A major correction will happen in 2020, causing a larger depression than
the one we saw in 2008. The corporate debt bubble will initiate the
correction, with Softbank as well as other financial institutions taking a
huge hit / collapsing due to risky investments relating to maximizing growth /
revenue without paying attention to net income. The Canadian and Australian
real estate bubbles will also burst, although these corrections may happen in
2021 rather than 2020. A new approach to setting interest rates will be
assessed by the Federal Reserve in either 2021 or 2022. Cryptocurrencies will
be the ‘new gold’ as the market buys crypto to try to counteract inflation in
2020 / 2021.

3\. Climate change will continue causing global temperatures to rise,
initiating major flooding and fires around the world, as well as adding power
to newborn tropical storms. This will fuel a huge investment in renewable
energy / energy storage companies and this growth will continue to accelerate
by the end of the decade.

4\. Full autonomous driving won’t be completely delivered, although each car
will come with features which allows drivers to take a break from driving on
long stretches of highway routes approved for autonomous driving. This will
initiate a massive wave of layoffs of truck drivers, as companies start
building branches near traffic routes approved for full autonomy and laying
off workers to try to cut costs.

5\. Cashier-less registers will become prominent. A security guard will stand
at each exit checking and ensuring that self-checkout goes smoothly, with most
stores only having one cashier on hand for anyone who needs assistance or to
assist with scanning / placing items on the conveyor belt.

6\. Electric cars will continue taking a large market share from regular
vehicles, with Tesla playing a huge role in building the infrastructure for
re-charging stations in North America.

7\. Elon Musk’s starlink will start delivering satellite based internet around
the world, taking major market share from existing telecom companies.

8\. Advanced generalized artificial intelligence will not be completely
established, although humanity will take major steps toward creating one as
new approaches to tackling ‘deep’ learning start taking hold. Prolog type
interpreting engines and tree based / CORELS based engines which attempt to
infer rules will be built underneath neural networks, delivering more
generalized functionality and creating new capabilities for automation.

9\. Uber will become bankrupt within 3-5 years, losing out to Lyft / other
entrants. Google will lose market share in the search space, although this
will be offset by gains in the cloud computing (fueled by its quantum
computing breakthroughs), self-driving, and AI/ML space. Apple and Amazon will
take major hits, fueled by their lack of customer focus and a shift in
maximizing shareholder value rather than focusing on the customer experience.
Microsoft will take a hit during the next correction, although they’ll
continue to flourish under Satya Nadella.

10\. Parallel computing / Erlang will become much more popular by 2029; along
with logic programming / Prolog which will accelerate in popularity starting
from 2025, fueled by new breakthroughs and approaches to ML / AI.

------
krosaen
Optimistic:

1) At least a couple of cities will have managed to deploy a successful
autonomous shuttle fleet that fulfills uber/lyft like real time request but
with the benefit of density that riding in a shuttle / bus / van provides.
Dedicated lanes that only allow these sorts of vehicles will help make this a
success and will ensure that no matter how far away level 5 still is, it
actually does work without a safety driver for the geofenced region of the
city. In these examples, the autonomous shuttle system will be the main form
of mass-transit and will be convenient enough that the same percentage of
people that co car-less in NYC will do so in smaller less dense cities where
these have been deployed.

2) Meat will largely have replaced by plant based or lab grown for most fast
food experiences. You will still prefer the real thing when going to a nicer
restaurant but happy to eat a plant based burger when on the road or at an
airport.

3) Similarly, a synthetic form of coffee will be the norm at fast food places
and gas stations. Higher end coffee shops will offer both. Aficionados will
still prefer the real thing but most people will be fine with the smooth taste
of e.g atomo (and maybe it's even them who win this market!)

4) Robotic manipulation will have progressed enough to achieve "careful
farming" at scale - just like a medium size organic farm that is weeded by
hand, but by robots. This will also be the basis of popular services that will
come and tend your vegetable garden for you.

5) Social and cultural norms to communicating online have begun to materialize
that help us collectively make sense of the world and communicate more
effectively without the constant freaking out and negative personal attacks.
We've learned to systematically ignore trolls while tolerating earnest
unpopular assertions.

6) There will be several successful open source projects that maintain AI
models for common tasks such as object detection / human skeleton pose
estimation in images and videos, speech transcription, voice commands etc.
These will enable open source photo management solutions that match the
convenience of google / apple's offerings, which will be used by many geeks,
and this will put pressure on the big tech companies to offer true privacy,
much in the way apple has begun to and google has shown steps with its e.g
offline voice transcription app.

7) camera based 3d reconstruction will become commoditized enabling open
street maps or another open mapping platform will be reasonable to use in
place of google maps with the help of a community of people willing to share
video feeds from dash / bike / helmet cams, including live updates to things
like traffic, construction, new business openings / closing etc.

Pessimistic:

1) AR still isn't good enough for mass market use - it feels a little
uncomfortable and distracting to wear for anything but professional use. There
are an increasing number of jobs where AR headsets have become the norm.

2) blockchain never found a mass market in a truly decentralized / trustless
manner, but has been adopted privately by banks to make international
transactions easier

3) There still won't be an easy way to build end to end general purpose user
facing applications without writing code - despite at least a few more noble
attempts ala WithEve

4) We still will not have managed to curb global warming even after largely
adopting electrification and plant based diets due to the material demands of
a growing richer population and an inability to collectively enforce the truly
radical changes required

5) Despite the ubiquity of learning resources the job market will remain about
as meritocratic as it is today, with many, but by no means all, of the best
jobs won by a combination of skill and connections rather than largely by
skill

Crazy:

1) Hippy co-ops of open source technologists will emerge - sort of like the
Amish but only use open source hardware and software. Similar to what Neil
Stephenson depicted in Anathem with concents but not quite as monastic or
centralized. It will be a collective of households taking a pledge and helping
each other out. People will participate out of a feel they have to to avoid
surveillance and retain control of their lives. Many open source projects will
be lead by these communities. copy-left open source licenses will be in vogue
again.

2) Robots that can survive in the wild (e.g a solar powered autonomous drone)
that will live for years even after losing touch with the original human(s)
that deployed them

------
wyre
Reminder that longbets.org exists if you like thinking about this stuff.

Apple will continue to alienate their traditional consumers, but will maintain
relevant through aggressive release cycles, new tech, and ecosystem lockin.

Electric cars will gain significant market share of new vehicles, but won't
cross 50% of consumer cars.

Driverless cars will exist in a small sector of use cases.

Rick and Morty becomes this generation's South Park.

Gen Z will have less kids as they enter adulthood.

China's growth as a world power will let them get away with more human rights
abuses.

A big recession/depression will start caused from student loan debt, an aging
population, automation, stagnating wages, increasing rents, increasing wealth
inequality, and climate change.

A well-thought out UBI and tax reform plan will be proposed and gain populist
appeal.

There will be more large scale populist protests worldwide.

An antitrust case will be started against Google.

Public transit becomes much, much better

Fake meat increases to grow in popularity as veganism and vegetarianism
increases in younger populations.

Some places will place a tax on red meat

There will be another high profile death ruled as a suicide that creates
conspiracy theories.

Automation enters the market before proper legislation happens.

AI and deepfakes become heavily abused before becoming regulated, but the
damage had already been done.

In general, legislation will happen too late.

Amazon will find a way to compete more directly with Google and Facebook. The
internet becomes a worse off place because of it.

Adobe will release a cloud computing platform for their software.

Linux gains significant, but not competitive, market share as cloud based
computing and postmarketOS become more consumer friendly.

Scientists will discover the secret to the universe is actually 43.

Cryptocurrency won't gain significant relevance

Climate change will continue to get worse and the market will continue to
prevent dramatic change to happen.

Most people will still be complacent like they are today.

Cannabis will be legalized medicinally nationwide, but will remain illegal on
the state level.

Ketamine treatment becomes easier to obtain and has better results vs placebo
than other antidepressants.

Art continues to get worse

A republican presidential candidate will run on a platform "saving the
children" that is only going to make the future worse but the present better.

Flavored vape juice will become legal again.

A high profile tech celebrity (Bezos, Gates, Musk, or a new startup probably)
will win a Nobel Prize. Some HN'ers won't be happy about it.

Nuclear doesn't gain traction but still remains a pipe dream for a lot of
people.

Natural disasters are going to cause massive problems, death, and some
violence.

Netflix becomes close to being irrelevant but somehow stays competitive.

------
yingw787
Ooooooh I wanna add mine!

1\. [WILL BET $100 with one person] Energy management (e.g. battery research,
energy infrastructure development) becomes a far bigger concern. The forcing
functions of high population, increased well-being, and a world that cannot
sustain that well-being with current techniques will mean new types of energy
reserves will need to be found, tapped, and converted into material wealth.
Whatever country develops a strategic advantage in this field will win the
21st century, just as the U.S. won the 20th century through the Texas oil boom
(with a little help from 2 world wars).

2\. [LIKELY] A harder world will mean the increased rise and stay of
authoritarianism and totalitarianism despite attempts to check it. The 1990s,
with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the rise of the U.S. as the sole
hyperpower was an abnormal state, and the 2020s will see the world finishing a
decades-long readjustment to a truly multilateral world, with independent
military pacts and spheres of influence by 2030.

3\. [LIKELY] The United States' brightest days will still be ahead of it. The
U.S. dollar will remain the world's reserve currency, and the U.S. market will
still be the world's largest, unified, open commercial market, with a more-or-
less natural balance of producers and consumers. There may be a recession or
even depression, increased political polarization, and maybe even a major war
between great powers, but tight federal policing over states, the lack of any
militarily strong neighbors, resource availability, strong communications, and
simple inertia will mean no serious discussion of systemic weaknesses on the
scale of decolonization or secession like those held in the U.K.

4\. [STRETCH, and I'll bet $50 with one person] The first JavaScript hardware
stack will become commercially available. JavaScript becomes the new x86. Due
to Moore's Law flatlining, as well as increased cloud dominance and serious
work done behind a protocol, more and more companies will want JavaScript
portability with high performance. The first company to embrace this wretched
reality and deliver a JavaScript hardware stack that performs as well as a
Chromebook may find demand to be higher than expected.

5\. [LIKELY] Industrial IoT becomes synonymous with big data. Blob storage
tasks like streaming media will be too fractured with proprietary technology
to build a tooling ecosystem to get shared gains, and other tech like VR will
still need to create the market, and sell to skeptical consumers with steadily
decreasing median purchasing power. Enterprise remains a solid market, and
more devices will get wired in the name of convenience over security and more
analytics will be required out of every connected device.

6\. [LIKELY] The Linux desktop finally becomes a thing. Please.

7\. [HOPEFULLY] I'll be married to somebody I love and have kids :)

------
heavyset_go
Predictions:

\- Due to more control systems being networked, and processes automated, there
will be a bug or hack that results in a disaster scenario where people are
seriously hurt and die.

\- Similar to other nations in the 2010's, the US will make use of an internet
'kill switch' to stem leaks, dissent or unrest. This might mean turning off
access to a particular resource on the internet or web access altogether for a
large region.

\- Decentralized solutions to cloud-hosted services will be productized and
shipped to consumers. Today's edge computing, home automation hubs, etc will
combine with a Synology-type product that lets you add storage, modules, etc
and run apps for your home and personal network. This will contrast with PCs
that are general purpose and still too complex for the average person to put
together, and today's Synology products that are typically geared towards data
hoarding and require a bit of knowledge to use.

\- The mobile operating system options will broaden, and a viable option for
open software enthusiasts will open up.

\- The glut of capital in the consumer space will dry up as that market holds
less and less purchasing power. Most people will look back on the 2010's and
their many investor subsidized 'X-as-a-Service' services comparatively fondly
to their present economy that has all but abandoned them.

\- The problem of "I can't get good internet speeds indoors" won't be solved
for another decade, and if it is, a weird point-to-point outdoor antenna
solution for buildings will be involved.

\- The fact that the US relies on cheap foreign labor will come to a head as
underdeveloped countries develop. More companies will be found to have foreign
slave labor somewhere in their supply chain, and they will all claim ignorance
when it happens.

\- The bulk of developers will still be paid to write HTML + CSS + JS and it
will still be a bad experience for everyone involved.

\- Outside of the major metro areas, local news will be replaced by
centralized services that just push out localized paid-to-publish content and
ad fluff. Local governments will become much more of the good ol' boy networks
that they already are today.

\- At least one country will make people get chips implanted, whether they're
immigrants, refugees or their own citizens.

\- The Rent-a-Center model of renting goods beyond housing and vehicles
(though renting of both will increase) will become more popular and not
associated with RaC specifically.

\- Embryonic gene editing won't catch on except for very specific indications
and diseases, and rich people will rely on genetic tests for embryonic
selection prior to implantation.

------
PaulRobinson
\- EVTOL will start to grow from the current nothing, but will not be a
revolutionary transport mechanism by 2030. People will be investing in it and
trying to make it work though, but even the bullish EVTOL investors like Uber
will be struggling to make it work as globally as expected.

\- I think autonomous cars will be much further along, but only in certain
parts of the World - more likely to see them in Monaco than in Mumbai or
Manchester, not for economic reasons but because of road and typical weather
conditions.

\- Most "liberal democracies" will slide to the right for a prolonged period
of time. There is no appetite for a move to the left, as much as many of us
think it's "obvious" that people will eventually see through right-wing
messaging or will die off naturally.

\- The USSR will be back in all but name. It arguably already is, but by 2030
we'll know what a post-Putin World might look like, and it will not involve
more democracy in Russia. The majority of Russians will be fine with this.

\- India in the '20s will be like China in the '10s, but greener.

\- China itself will try to go big on green tech, but will struggle to
economically justify it until consumers show they're prepared to pay for it
(which they never have to date).

\- I am quite bearish on the EU post-Brexit. I think France, Germany, Austria,
Italy, Greece, Spain and Portugal will all face a rise in anti-EU sentiment
amongst voters.

\- Meanwhile the UK will be a strange mix of striving for a new Industrial
Revolution with a tax and political environment that reminds people of
Singapore.

\- Most software engineers will spend a bigger proportion of their time taking
off the shelf ML/AI tools and plugging them together and facing a business
problem. I think a "Ruby on Rails of ML/AI" is quite likely.

\- I think the companies that have spent the '10s trading on personal data
(Facebook, Google, etc.) will struggle with that business model as the
audience becomes more aware and careful with their private data.

\- Bitcoin is going to muddle along, but even if most of the problems with it
(transaction rate, power usage, etc.), get fixed then most people are now so
sceptical of crypto coins, they will all struggle to get public mind share.

\- Meat consumption will be way, way down. Maybe below 3/4 what it is today,
driven by environmentalism, animal rights awareness and a growing landscape of
decent competitors.

\- At least one major metro or municipal area will have gone carbon neutral,
and at least one country will be on target to be entirely carbon neutral by
2035.

------
suyash
Trump will win the elections again this year and continue as President.

------
joaofiliperocha
hoping that Donald Trump don't make more mess .... oh wait ... shit, World War
3 is coming

------
_aleph2c_
Predictions:

1\. CIA becomes obsolete, they will not be able to keep their secrets and they
have no asymmetric advantage in killing other country leaders while protecting
their own leadership from being killed in retaliation. (mutually assured
destruction on a small scale)

2\. Garbage dump mining startups will have a capital hey-day (story about
"bitcoin ladened trash-PC recovered" blows up in the headlines)

3\. UFO stories become more and more prevalent in the news. Non-Newtonian
aircraft presented by US space-force.

4\. Quiet surveillance on the rise with sudden opportunities appearing for
movement-leaders; security services disband-through-kindness rather than
through cohesion.

5\. Wealth becomes impossible to hide, oligarchs, corrupt politicians exposed
through a series of leaks.

6\. The internet is fragmented, but Elon Musk creates a network of networks
which allows the American's to continue its colonization of all information
systems.

7\. Uni-gate, dept burdened millennials and post-millennials align politically
and go after the universities/officials who have bankrupted their futures.

8\. Meme-force established. Information cascades are monitored and foreign
influencers are shut down or even forcibly stopped.

9\. Google over-steps, internal anti-trust emails exposed, the search monopoly
is broken and other search engines come online

10\. Backlash against Chinese funded foreign nationals in western STEM
programs.

11\. First brain hack and thought probe occurs via a brain-to-computer
interface mixed with an AI system.

12\. Telepathy RFC introduced

13\. Rene Girard's memetic theory gains in popularity as post-modernism
continues to fall.

14\. First massive state sponsored bank account attack wipes out hundreds of
millions of electronic records; creating chaos in the western financial
system. Crypto surges.

15\. "Identity politics" based political arrests start to occur due to
thought-crimes.

16\. Small scale micro-voting systems innovate how small groups make
decisions. (voting nerdom becomes a thing, democracy disrupted in a good way)

17\. First asteroid mined

18\. Mental health task-force (Chinese like system) established and funded to
identify people who are competent enough to harm the whole (frequency of mass
shootings reduced)

19\. More political parties entirely bypass traditional (captured) media and
talk directly to their base (Trump style political approach catches on)

20\. Re-invention of the university system outside of the United States (Maybe
from the African renaissance)

21\. Factory farms are out-competed by lean and ethical agricultural systems.
Ag-gag laws are unenforceable because drone surveillance become so
inexpensive.

22\. Mark Zuckerberg becomes president of the United States.

------
rahulchhabra07
1\. State of AGI - No AGI happens but AI bots with multiple pre-learnt skills
would begin being available for popular consumption

2\. Self Driving Cars - Almost all cars will be self-driven.

3\. FAANG - Facebook will face Government action, will cease to be the biggest
social network, will change market and be a major player there. Some non-US
company is the biggest social network. Google will no longer be top player in
any major market, but will continue being a huge company. Amazon and Netflix
continue innovating and improving. Apple is replaced by some other most
innovative consumer hardware company. Microsoft is still one of the top
companies of the decade. [Obviously subject to non-occurance of major
leadership changes; MS would have shrunk in the last decade if not for that.]

4\. Social Networks: Centralized and private social networks co-exist. Data
interoperability is possible. The market for Social Network stops increasing
by the end of the decade.

5\. Politics: Allegiance towards national governments is heavily reduced.
People are more active in their local communities.

6\. Religion: If 5 happens, organised central religion loses importance, but
subcultures with eccentric practices and beliefs emerge throughout the world.

7\. Recession: No major recession happens.

8\. Space Exploration: Manned flights to other planets possible. Too
expensive. Interplanetary civilization is still far-fetched.

9\. VR: Headsets become ubiquitous. Developer ecosystem for VR is at the
onset. Huge opportunities ahead. No existing major player/hardware company is
able to make a successful headset in-house. An independent company reimagines
hardware and software, ships well built and cheap hardware, and owns the
market for a while. Followed by other companies shipping similar hardware.

10\. Decentralization: Distrust in central government, currency, religions,
news corps, social networks, banks will be at an all time high.
Decentralization will be the popularly accepted and still debated by
conservatives.

11\. Education: College education stays, ends up being reinvented. Archaic
colleges start losing relevance.

12\. Startups: Building new solutions in existing systems is a hard problem.
Startups appear to get easy and ubiquitous, but the ease of doing a startups
is supposed to remain constant throughout history and future.

13\. Environment: Companies and governments will have to take more action
because of public outrage. The situation doesn't improve much.

14\. Remote Work: Most companies allow for remote gigs. Apart from more 'hip'
companies emerging, major companies remain conservative about remote work.
Tools like Slack, Asana, Notion would become giants.

15\. Cryptocurrency: Cryptocurrency enters consumer use. Multiple currencies
compete initially; winner takes all. Social Crediting a major feature of the
winner.

16\. Deepfakes: Applications on it become popularly available. People realize
it's just another fad like anonymous social networks.

17\. Airpods and Audio: Airpods lead the headset market, big companies happen
in audio space. 2-hour non-interactive podcasts don't work, some other format
becomes the standard for the industry.

18\. US, China and India hold the top three spots for largest economies.

------
graycat
(1) Britain will exit from the EU, and there will be more such exits.

(2) The major countries will make big and somewhat successful efforts to
increase the birth rates.

(3) Internet content, especially video, will grow quickly in volume and
variety with a lot of quite high quality.

(4) The one size fits all mainstream media will change or shrink, likely
shrink, as new media with great variety will explode.

(5) Small team, inexpensive, but innovative, entertaining, and often quite
popular video story telling will grow quickly. The better funded effort will
make a lot of use of computer generated images, e.g., extrapolation of and big
steps up from the movie _Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow_.

(6) Trump will win in 2020, dominate the Republican party, and do at least
some good recruiting promising _players_ for the future. Also in 2020 the
Trump Republicans will win the House. Due to the Republican victories, the
Democrat party will be lost wandering in a desert at least for Trump's second
term. But then some Democrats will get serious and rebuild the party. By 2030
we will have two strong political parties both going for the center of the
road voters. Some of the news media, on the Internet, will report the news
objectively and with considerable depth and, thus, greatly help US government.

(7) We will have some big surprises in astrophysics.

(8) We will have some big surprises in exploration of our solar system,
especially asteroids.

(9) We will have some big surprises in progress in curing diseases, maybe even
mostly cure cancer.

(10) The economists, the Fed, etc. are getting enough understanding of how to
get full employment, rapid growth, low interest rates, and low taxes. The
growth in the economy will will reach a level which pays off the national debt
quickly.

(11) Home schooling via high quality materials on the Internet, as Web pages,
PDF files, and video clips will grow quickly as will corresponding testing and
certification. Tens of thousands of families will have their 12 year old
children through current college STEM field materials. Generally the Internet
will do much better in instruction for skills, crafts, professional
development, etc.

(12) The US will start deploying nukes for electric power again, sometimes for
the grid and other times, with small nukes, for just local housing or plants.

(13) A major fraction of Internet traffic will go via satellite, especially in
poor or sparsely populated areas.

(14) There will be at least one moon base with humans there for months at a
time.

(15) The James Web telescope will yield astounding results.

(16) The Mideast oil states will grow quickly in sophistication and
development.

(17) Supersonic passenger planes will return.

(18) Automobile manufacturing will be much more highly automated with some
cars with prices under $10,000.

(19) The Internet will enable significant flows from the most crowded areas to
less crowded.

(20) There will be a lot of one day and same day deliveries for consumer
shopping, including for refrigerated and frozen items.

(21) There will be a lot of retail selling direct from the factory, in the US
or other countries. So, some item that costs $10 now may sell for $2 --
generally prices will fall. I.e., quite broadly the _middleman_ will get
_disintermediated_.

(22) New house will get a lot cheaper: (A) The move to rural land will lower
the costs of lots. Such lots will use water wells and septic systems and,
thus, lower costs of utilities. Internet access can be via satellite and,
thus, from anywhere, e.g., some house in the woods, a boat on a lake, a cabin
on a mountain top. Houses can be _manufactured_ and just delivered to a site
and be ready to move in in two days or so. Otherwise, there will be larger
manufactured components for just Lego style plug together houses.

(23) Medical research will make good or better progress in control of obesity.

(24) Warehousing will become nearly fully automated.

(25) Automation in manufacturing will expand rapidly.

(26) New materials, e.g., carbon fiber, Kevlar, plastics, adhesives, etc. will
grow quickly for cars, buildings, etc.

(27) There will be much more fossil fuel extraction from the continental
shelves of the continents, especially in Asia.

(28) Solar power with batteries and fossil fueled backup generators will
become much more popular due to more rural housing that, finally, needs no
connections for electric power, telephone, Internet, water, sewer, or anything
else, thus greatly lowering the costs of rural housing. Such rural housing
will also drive more home schooling based on the Internet. Small communities,
of say, a dozen homes on some 100 acres of land will grow up and maybe have
their own small nuke for electric power, including for home HVAC.

(29) Generally cost of living will go down significantly due to some of the
above -- buying direct from factories, much cheaper housing, cheaper cars,
more automated manufacturing, due to home schooling, no more school taxes and,
thus, much cheaper local taxes, due to rural living, much less in government
services, e.g., snow plowing, traffic lights, road and sewer construction,
and, thus, much lower taxes.

(30) Due to (29), etc., a much higher birth rate.

(31) Due to the information via the Internet, much better informed voters and
much better politics and government.

(32) Also heavily due to the Internet, much cheaper alternatives to
traditional college.

(33) The US will solidly stop the flows of illegal drugs into the US, and
Mexico will make a lot of progress recovering from a narco state.

(34) The US will make good progress toward astoundingly capable unmanned jet
fighter planes.

(35) CRISPR techniques will make astounding progress in plant and animal
_breeding_.

(36) Generally a lot of prices will get pushed down due to lower prices for
oil and natural gas from fracking, continental shelf drilling, and ANWR
drilling, higher agricultural productivity from better seeds, feeds,
equipment, and computer based information, more automation in manufacturing,
direct selling from factories to end users, more efficient order processing,
warehousing, and shipping, generally more computing and automation. But the
low interest rates are causing lots of capital investment, low unemployment,
and higher wages. Higher interest rates would risk depression from prices
falling from the improved efficiencies and higher unemployment; so interest
rates need to stay low to avoid recession due to falling prices.

------
cocoggu
Politics:

\- Trump will get reelected, but the next US president will be a democrat.

\- In Europe, although the last 10 years were led by the rise of extreme right
and conservatives, socialists and ecological parties will take the lead in
most countries.

\- China will keep being very conservative and totalitarian and most people
will just accept it. As the economy keep slowing down there will be more
dissents, but there will be no civil war in this decade.

\- China won’t be able to fix its global lack of soft power, except in Africa,
and the belt and road initiative won’t be a success.

\- I’m going to be bold and say that Xi won’t be reelected in 2022, however he
will stay close to the power in the shadow and his successor will follow the
same tracks.

\- Hong-Kong will keep having it’s own system like now. There will be more
protests against incoming pro-Beijing bills.

Environment/Energy:

\- There will be only few consequences due to global warming in this decade :
more forest fires, a few more species will disappear, but no massive sea-level
rise, no big population move, no infrastructures or agricultural lands in
danger.

\- There will be much less skepticism about global warming and climate change,
but some people will embrace it and even try to accelerate it, mostly for
profit.

\- There will still be plenty of oil reserves, but, as the demand lower, and
the extraction becomes harder, prices will greatly increase in the end of the
decade, accelerating the rise of electric and fuel cells vehicles.

\- The public opinion will increasingly support nuclear energy, both fission
and fusion

\- There will be no breakthrough in fusion in this decade, but major
advancements like the completion of ITER

\- However, photovoltaic panels will keep becoming more efficient and
profitable, greatly increasing their rise.

\- The rise of air travel will be mitigated by the rise of rail, especially in
China.

\- China will keep moving to renewables at a slow/moderate pace in the first
half of the decade, but foreign policies like the EU border carbon tax will
force them to accelerate.

Technology:

\- There will be growing concern about people’s privacy, even in China (where
nobody cares now). There will be many software/devices sold to help protect
privacy (like some kind of masks or special clothing to avoid facial
recognition)

\- Supersonic commercial flights will appear again in the second half of the
decade, and people will very slowly adopt them as they become cheaper and more
convenient.

\- US and… Africa will mostly use their phones to pay commodities by the end
of the decade, many people in Europe will be reluctant.

\- China will launch its own cryptocurrency and it will be greatly adopted,
but only in China. Cash won’t disappear anywhere in the world though.

\- No human will walk on Mars in this decade.

\- Space-ISP like Starlink will be a niche market, eventually failing.

\- Gene-editing experiments on humans will keep being publicly blamed and
governments won’t encourage them (even China)

\- There will be many level 4 autonomous cars on our roads in 2030, but not
level 5.

\- We won’t have incredible I-Robot kind of AI, but the one existing will be
powerful enough to depreciate several human jobs and will require political
changes.

Misc:

\- Fully remote jobs will keep increasing and more people will prefer living
in mid-size cities or in the countryside

\- Population in Europe will start decreasing

\- These 2 predictions will lead to a decrease of the real estate market in
big European cities.

Many things about China, because I’m living there (although I’m french). I
tried to not be too safe and kind of specific because I like to play. I hope
many of these predictions won’t come true.

------
darzu
* side-effect free programming (aka functional) will continue to take off; most new languages will embrace read-only by default

* React will still be very popular

* Typescript will be 2x as popular as today

* Rust will grow and be regarded as the "right" way to do anything performant but sadly C++ will still hold the majority

* Formal verification will still be mostly a research thing, but maybe a couple prominent tools will be used by a few specific fields

* Programmer wages will be slightly lower than today as the field is flooded with talent, but total payout to all programmers will be larger than today (the field will grow, ~2-10x)

* Scripting will be important to a much larger portion of jobs

* Excel will still be king of data for most businesses

* IoT will not take off, but usage in industrial applications will be much larger

* HCI will be in the same place: touch screens for phones & tablets, keyboards, touchpads & mice for laptops & PCs

* Software will continue to increase in complexity for no real gain, eating any gains in hardware spee. iPhone 11s will run iOS slowly (but still be supported).

* Stadia will be dead after ~5 years and the MSFT equivalent never really launched

* Gaming will basically be in the same place, but high-budget games will forgo high graphics in favor of good gameplay on a wide range of devices (think minecraft & BotW)

* Phones will be basically identical to today, but hopefully at least Apple makes one that is small again and can be used with one hand

* Bluetooth will still exist and stuck, but Apple devices will work well together. Nothing better will exist.

* More electric cars but still not the majority

* Climate change debate will be at basically the same place, a few more countries 100% green, but most not. Death due to climate related issues will increase 2-10x but it won't be enough to persuade most countries to take serious action. Still no carbon accountability between nations, and carbon taxes won't be a thing

* Related to above, immigration and land-value changes due to climate change will be just taking off

* Anti-immigration will win politically and immigration from poorer to richer countries will be 1/2-1/10th the size of today.

* Germany is going to be in a recession, sadly. Due to declining demand for their specialized manufacturing, esp. in auto industry.

* Village bakeries and butchers in EU will be 1/4th of what they are today

* There won't be a major world war, but tensions will be worse than today

* Homelessness will still be a major issue.

* There will be no tech-bubble bursting. Software will continue to eat the world.

* Automation will have led to much more job loss

* Healthcare in the USA will be better but still much worse than most of the developed world

* Political polarization will be the same or worse; still first-past-the-post voting; private money still will win elections; still two parties in USA

* Facebook won't grow as fast as the other tech companies but it'll still be bigger than today

* A lot more people (proportionally) living in vans & RVs

* Capitalism will still be the norm and wealth & income will be even more concentrated

* The average person investing in index funds will be gaining ~4% per year in 2029, even though the "economy" will still be growing, somehow almost all the gains will be captured by the wealthiest

* China will be in a much stronger position than today, with roughly the same level of oppression. A few other countries will have bought China's oppression tech.

* The tensions in the middle east won't be any better, but won't be catastrophically worse

* 0-1 nukes will be detonated in a populated area

* Solar will still be growing rapidly but still far behind fossil fuels

* The Witcher will end after 5 seasons (books content ends midway through 3)

* Internet prices and access in the USA will be only slightly better, same with phone plans

* Some world leader will have been assassinated by a drone carrying a pipe bomb

* Average marital age will be >30 in USA for men and women

* Trump wins 2020, democrats 2024-2032

* At least one other corruption scandal with Trump that goes nowhere

* Disenfranchisement in USA is ~1.5x worse

* "AI" will still be making some progress but no singularity, no fully self driving cars, nothing super revolutionary

* quantum computers won't be having a business impact yet

* bike shares, scooter shares, and car shares won't take off

* No meaningful progress on passenger trains in USA

* Windows update will still suck

* Apple will still have the best experience but won't keep up with MSFT & Google & Amazon in growth

* Big three will be MSFT & Amazon & Google in that order

* Netflix won't be considered a tech company

* DIY will be booming, as well as off-grid living

* Snow sports will be a lot more expensive as climate change robs snowy days and larger population crowds the mountains

* Data leaks will decline but still happen and no significant accountability will happen

* News and journalism will be more or less the same, but there will be a few more good options out there that you can pay money for

* It'll be easier to point to data like actual tax spending in debates with friends instead of just "all the money goes to welfare", "no it all goes to the military", "n-uh", "yu-huh"

------
oramit
Long time lurker. Decided to post so I could look back with a chuckle in 10
years. Here are some 20's predictions split up into different categories.

Technology:

\- The web will continue to eat everything. Local applications outside of
gaming/office work all but die, replaced by web apps, wasm payloads, and
electron apps.

\- Self Driving cars continue to be "just around the corner"

\- Smartphones reached a design peak in the 10's and we will be surprised that
they don't radically change in the 20's

\- Electric vehicle sales eclipse ICE

\- Lab grown meat finally happens (released at similar to meat prices) but is
a complete flop because it's not "real"

\- Slow and steady battery tech improvements are going to unleash a ton of
innovation in this decade we can't anticipate yet.

Culture:

\- Pot is legalized federally and a general wave of decrim for other
substances like psilocybin/lsd goes mainstream.

\- A president or serious presidential candidate will have their nudes leaked
and it will be a huge deal for about a week and then nobody will care. They go
on to win the election :p

\- Privacy becomes even more dead than it is now. Private cameras and audio
assistants are already ubiquitous; imagine that but 10x. All us nerds will
continue complaining and the general public won't care.

\- Boomers begin retiring en-masse but they have not saved enough. Expect lots
of stories about medical bankruptcy and boomers having to take minimum wage
jobs to stay afloat. I also expect the "lazy millenial in the basement" trope
to completely reverse and become "millenials helping boomers age in place"

Business:

\- The news industry continues to be a mess. Local papers that are struggling
now all go under leaving only the very large "Papers of Record" left. TV news
declines as everyone shifts to online.

\- Streaming video becomes a very big deal. I expect a new platform to ascend
and for all new "News" and "Entertainment" personalities to pop up. Think Joe
Rogan but 10x. Presidential Candidates will have to go on these shows to be
taken seriously.

\- Of the faang stocks I expect Apple and Netflix to do poorly this coming
decade. Apple has little innovation left in it and Netflix has a ton of
competition. Facebook and Google I expect to be solid businesses still but not
innovative. Amazon will continue to dominate to the point that anti-trust is
seriously considered.

\- I expect a recession to hit in the next 3 years. It's going to really hurt
Boomers who are trying to catch up on underfunded 401ks. It will be a short
recession though because any stock correction of note will be aggressively
countered by fed policy and government spending. There will be no serious
consideration given to austerity. Inflation will finally be unleashed by this
process.

Global:

\- Closed internets become common. The Great Firewall or similar techniques
will be adopted in many countries to stifle dissent but also as a means to
stop ubiquitous hacking.

\- Africa becomes the new global growth hot spot - it already has been
happening but this is the decade everyone realizes it and rushes in like they
did to China.

\- Kim Jong-un will still run NK and still be shooting off rockets every 6
months or so to get attention.

\- Global warming effects will really set in and be obvious to everyone. The
talking points on this will completely shift from denial to fatalism ("well
its already a little damaged so why not more?"). Nothing continues to get done
though because of the need for coordinated global action in a new decade of
nationalism.

------
chansiky
Economic/Political/Geological:

\- US reelects Trump in 2020. Climbing gyms, lately increasing in popularity
also become popular in Mexico.

\- global warming causes endangerment and extinction of many species, but
traditional oriental medicines extinct the rhinos.

\- China, due for a recession now, does not go into a recession despite the
real estate/housing bubble because Xi and his government continue to find more
ways to manipulate their economy. Consequently, the Shen Yun poster factory
expands into money printing.

\- Avian migratory patterns shift significantly due to global warming, except
flightless birds which begin deevolution into dinosaurs.

\- Boomer retirement causes US GDP growth decline. Zoomers are to blame for
being unproductive.

\- The education bubble bursts. Millenials degree now worth nothing.

Tech:

\- Deep fakes used to create fake statements by Donald Trump. Trump denies
fabricated statements, and proceeds to create his own.

\- Boston Dynamic robots find gainful employment and enter the workforce, but
not doing something people can already do because human labor is too cheap.

\- Bitcoin never takes off, but the price climbs erratically whilst its most
significant contribution to the world: crypto mining greenhouse gases, double.

\- 5g is implemented by all major telecommunication companies promising new
technological capabilities, but its primary use remains dopamine injections
and advertisement.

\- wasm causes a mass migration of desktop preferred applications to the web.
Despite the existence of wasm, Reddit gets slower and buggier.

\- Javascript continues domination of the web. Hipster developers now prefer
declarative programming over functional. React Declarations now lets you write
directly in HTML.

\- Uber introduces Uber Flight - innovating both flying cars and driverless
cars. Uber still not profitable.

\- Adam Neuman starts a shared-restroom company in New York. Masayoshi Son
can't get enough of We Sh*t.

\- First VR(or AR) based esports that requires physical movements enter
mainstream gaming. Pro gamers in korea now indistinguishable from kpop.

\- VR hand controllers continue to evolve making current designs look like the
N64 controller.

\- VR/AR finds commercial use outside of the gaming industry, but VR gaming
still leads the market with Cubicle Simulator.

\- AI used heavily in cgi, computer graphics, and animation industries.
Animators now work for more hours and less pay.

\- Online dating becomes even easier, swiping becomes too 2010's. Loneliness
increases even further.

\- Elon gets first man on mars, Elon bores tunnels and builds a base on mars.
Elon builds solar panels to power base on mars. Elon establishes neuralink to
mars. Elon is in endgame now.

Medical:

\- Zoomers suffer from unprecedented myopia epidemic, root cause discovered -
heavy screen use to blame. Fix of more natural daylight is never taken nor
implemented. Luxotica remains in control of the eyewear industry.

\- Despite all medical and technological advancements, eating your vegetables,
exercise, fresh air, natural daylight, and contact with friends remains the
best way to stay healthy.

Cultural:

\- Basketball rules change due to the prevalence of 3 pointers.

\- Disney remakes a remake. Disney also remakes Pocahontas using cgi, which is
just Avatar with native americans.

\- New form of rapping created even more incomprehensible than mumble rap.

------
DylanBohlender
In the spirit of the year number itself, here are 20 predictions made in early
2020.

1\. The US stops subsidizing the global order, pulling back substantially from
international involvement. Its continued international presence is primarily
felt through alliances, but its military more openly acts like a mercenary
force. Global geopolitics reverts to the mean, and a series of wars between
now-unshackled regional powers in other areas of the world follows.

2\. The US builds a military presence on another celestial body.

3\. The US and UK ink a trade agreement after Brexit. The agreement is
comparable to Lend-Lease in its blatant favoritism for the American side. The
Brits take it anyway because it protects them from an economic depression.

4\. The US intervenes in Canadian and Mexican politics/internal affairs.

5\. China's Communist Party collapses. Capital flight and a demographic
inversion (reaping what was sown by the One-Child Policy) produces a nation
that cannot stand up to the survival pressures of a more-disorderly world.
Unable to continue subsidizing its aging population, the current central
planners lose their grip on power and something new replaces their influence.

6\. The European Union fractures. Germany rearms itself.

7\. Renewable energy turns out to be overhyped almost everywhere - except
Texas, which leads the world in renewable energy production.

8\. The US federal government legalizes at least one current Schedule I
substance.

9\. Medicine, law, and real estate are disrupted by technology in the way
taxis and hotels were in the 10's. Medtech, lawtech, and proptech become
popular buzzwords. Retired/aging Baby Boomers invest their money heavily in
these sectors during the decade, fueling a new wave of startups in each field.

10\. Investigative journalism exposes something horrifying a big tech company
did (think something comparable to Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle"), and that
exposure galvanizes public opinion in favor of substantially increasing
regulations on tech companies. SaaS margins go down across the board as a
result.

11\. MMT becomes the prevailing ideology for economists, who use it to justify
continued quantitative easing. Goldbugs and bitcoiners continue rooting for
the collapse of fiat money, and central banks aren't really questioned outside
the political fringes until the end of the decade.

12\. AI research - another AI winter. No major advances of the state of the
art.

13\. AI application - we invent many more ways to apply neural networks, and
solve many practical problems previously thought unsolvable.

14\. The political gyre widens in the US, as the factions continue to live in
their own alternate versions of reality. A major crisis shatters this
polarization, eventually leading to a renewed American nationalism and civic
pride as old institutions are destroyed and new ones are built in their place.

15\. Cryptography becomes the only "trustworthy" way to verify digital
information in a world of deepfakes. A big public blockchain gets a new lease
on life as a public identity management system.

16\. The first consumer-grade quantum computing hardware is launched, with a
minimum of 8 qubits.

17\. There is an IOT confidence crisis. When people realize their smart
devices power botnets, a de-teching consumer movement brings purely mechanical
devices "with no computer attached" back into vogue.

18\. There is significant pollution cleanup in the oceans. Unfortunately, it's
not driven by climate altruism - it's driven by a desire to harvest and reuse
plastics, because oil is too expensive for much of the rest of the world to
consider making them from scratch.

19\. Genetic engineering cures cancer, diabetes, Alzheimer's, or some other
major disease. The ethics of genetic engineering thus enters the public
consciousness and debate - and the tone of that debate is just as divisive as
the abortion debate.

20\. We discover some sort of physical anomaly which violates the Standard
Model. A flurry of new activity in physics follows.

I wish you all continued success and happiness in the coming decade!

------
p0la
* Cellular is replaced by global satellite coverage. Every single person has a smartphone with 24/7 unlimited high speed internet, with 100% geographical coverage globally.

* Satellite Internet censorship is managed by international bodies, and authoritarian countries can’t control it as tightly as today.

* Internet global culture continues to grow (through memes, social networks, games, blogs, news sites, etc..) and an internet language starts to emerge

* Wealth distribution across rich and poor continue to worsen, and we are basically back to seignorialism

* 30+ countries and startups have rovers / unmanned stations on the moon (or concrete plans to get there short term) and the Outer Space Treaty is being actively challenged as the main obstacle to sustainable investment in space conquest

* Environmentalism has grown massively and 90%+ of people globally cite environment in their top 3 concerns

* Yet we don’t know what to do to protect the environment, politicians are pushing for random stuff (like plastic straw interdiction). The lack of strong fact based recommendations means environmental protection is organised more like a religion, and environmental issues are very hard to reason about

* Well being for all and inclusion issues are not solved. Major institutions, universities, companies, open-source projects are paralised by those issues, up to the point where some of those institutions disappear

* Student debt bubble explodes. As with the subprimes, no banker go to prison, and the only consequence is merger between big players in the Banking / Asset Management industries. Finance is becoming more and more an oligopoly.

* Cars are totally banned from most city centers in Europe and Asia. e-cargo bikes are the main mode of transport globally.

* Parcel delivery are heavily taxed by environmental laws. Amazon goes bankrupt. Alibaba buys AWS, which now stands for Alibaba Web Services.

* Planes are heavily taxed, and it becomes hard to travel across the world

* Labour laws and classic employment contract are now seen as a way for the ultra rich to enslave people. People are now fighting for the freedom to work as freelancers.

* Apple watch and other wearable are still useless. Air-pods are still not a platform. The exception is smart glasses that start to appear in the second half of the decade

* Security on the internet is a major issue. 2FA is required by law, and companies must certify their backend by 3rd parties according to ISO certification (as it’s the case for most physical goods)

* Inequalities between developed and developing countries continue to decrease fast. This, + environmental laws on imported pollution, means it’s now better to manufacture locally. Factories are back in the US and in Europe.

* Crypto currencies are not a thing.

* Bitcoin still exists and is worth $100k+ but is still extremely volatile and is not used in real life.

* Cash is not accepted in most shop anymore

* Banking is global. Illegal activities, fraud and tax evasion becomes more and more difficult as all transactions are tracked and reconciled. In particular, credit card fraud on the internet is almost no longer a thing.

* Intelligence agencies have won the first war of privacy (i.e. they have backdoors in ISP, WhatsApp, FB, etc.). From now on, this war starts again every 5 years with new services trying to resist. Some try to operate from space.

* Ederly care is an unsolved problem globally. Scandal about mistreated ederly people appear every other week.

* Political debate in Europe is no longer about right or left wing, it’s National vs European, with the first European parties winning significant national elections by 2025

* Still no nuclear fusion

* Still no shortage of petrol

* A new scripting language appears, focusing on making network API calls easy and building GUIs. In particular, everything function call is by default asynchronous, so nothing special has to be done to call external APIs vs local code, and the standard lib will include a very powerful UI framework. Kids will use it as a toy (as with the early days of web), then it will replace spreadsheets, then ultimately it will replace HTML/CSS/JS first through WASM then through native implementation in browsers.

------
tfehring
1\. Public pensions in the US will start cutting benefits and/or getting tax
increases to avoid bankruptcy. Which of these is done will vary by state/city;
both will lead to drawn-out legal battles. Social Security's reserve won't
quite be depleted, but people will be talking more seriously about how to
address it. Democrat politicians will be mixed between cutting benefits and
increasing payroll taxes; Republican politicians will support just rolling
over the deficit into the general fund, further increasing the national debt.

2\. The US won't be formally at war, but it will be engaged in one or more
significant, costly occupations or proxy wars based on questionable pretenses
(a la WMDs in Iraq) despite public opposition. DRC is my best guess as to the
location.

3\. The IRR of commercial solar and wind installations will be over 30%
annualized. However, natural gas will continue to be the single largest energy
source in the US, and new coal plants will still be constructed due mostly to
special-interest-driven subsidies. Nuclear fusion still won't be viable, and
fission still won't be adopted at any significant scale in the US.

4\. China's GDP will exceed the US's, though not on a per-capita basis. It
will continue to indoctrinate its citizens and perpetrate human rights
violations comparable to Nazi Germany (though not at the same scale), and the
Western world will continue to generally not care. Hong Kong will not gain
sovereignty and will mostly lose its autonomy.

5\. Negligible measures will have been taken to address climate change,
including in the US. Warming continues to outpace even the most aggressive
projections. The National Flood Insurance Program will consistently have
shortfalls in the tens of billions per year, effectively subsidizing coastal
properties in Florida just as it does today.

6\. US health insurance will continue to be dominated by employer-provided
coverage. There will be a public option, but few care providers will accept it
because it reimburses at a lower rate than private insurance, and it will only
be used by "gig economy" workers, or whatever that sector evolves into.
Spending per capita will be about double that of the rest of the Western
world.

7\. Amazon will be forced to spin off AWS; this will be big news at the time
but mostly won't have much effect. Each will be a trillion-dollar company.
Amazon Retail will finally figure out how to automate "boring" everyday
purchases including groceries. (For posterity: currently they only have
Subscribe And Save, which is great if you know exactly how long it takes you
to use a tube of toothpaste.)

8\. Microsoft will open-source the Windows kernel. Azure will be larger than
AWS despite a generally inferior product suite. People will still be writing
VBA for the Azure version of Excel.

9\. Facebook will still be ubiquitous, but young people won't even bother
adding their friends on it anymore, since they only use it to keep up with
extended family. Instagram will go the way of MySpace. Facebook will own the
most popular dating app for a year or two, though that whole space will be a
revolving door.

10\. GCP will be shuttered, since Google still won't figure out how to sell to
enterprise. Meanwhile, they'll use data from one or more genetic testing
companies to figure out the exact genes that determine susceptibility to
different forms of advertising. Also, they'll release another messaging app.

11\. Netflix will be far less valuable and less ubiquitous than it is today,
to the point that its inclusion in "FAANG" will seem anachronistic. Apple will
still make the best mobile devices, but it will undermine its position as a
status symbol due to the introduction of cheaper devices.

12\. SF's housing issues will only get worse. Saudi-backed VC funding for US
startups will dry up, and while capital will still be available, it will no
longer make financial sense for most startups to start in the Bay Area. The
only new startups in SF will be started by, and exclusively hire, former
employees of FAANG + unicorns. (More generally, programmers' salaries will
become even more bimodal, and the relationship between coding ability and
salary will become even more tenuous.) For other startups, there won't be a
new centralized startup hub (though Austin will probably be the closest), and
this decentralization will lead to increases in bootstrapping and remote work.

13\. Urban and inner-ring suburban housing in desirable US cities will
continue to get more expensive, and housing elsewhere will continue to get
cheaper, since new college grads will increasingly need to move to these
cities to find decent jobs. (Empty nesters mostly won't downsize to condos,
although there will be an uptick in news articles presenting anecdotes about
the ones who do.) Urban taxpayers will increasingly subsidize infrastructure
for rural communities as this happens, though they'll continue to mostly not
notice or care. Most, though not all, of these cities will have implemented
good housing policy by 2030, but new construction still won't keep up with
demand, and the lack of construction in the 2010s will have a lasting impact
on the availability of housing in the 2nd and 3rd price quintiles.

14\. Wealth inequality in the US will continue to increase. The US will
implement a wealth tax, but it will have so many exemptions (housing, trusts,
holdings in certain corporate entities) that the only beneficiaries are tax
lawyers. Low-income people will only ever see a tiny fraction of their
paychecks, as landlords and utility companies will require that employers pay
them directly.

15\. Despite continued subsidies for the meat and dairy industries, cheap fast
food (e.g., whatever replaces the McDouble) will be plant-based by 2030. We
still won't have a good lab-grown steak, but most staples will have readily
available plant-based replacements, some of which will be better than the real
thing. Vegans will still only make up a couple percent of adults in the US
(and ~10% of yuppies), but the median American will only eat real meat 2-3
meals a week.

16\. Python will finally get good tooling for EDA and become the de facto
standard for data science. R will be viewed in industry the same way SAS is
viewed today, though it will continue to see use in academia.

17\. Non-tech companies will rightly give up on building out ML teams in-house
for basic/standard problems, outsourcing that work to platforms like Sagemaker
instead. They will continue to hire people with the job title Data Scientist,
who will mostly be responsible for conveying to management a combination of
pretty graphs and basic statistical reasoning.

18\. Document databases will mostly disappear. They'll be replaced in part by
JSONB-style columns in relational databases, but more importantly, better
tooling will make schema changes (and integration with application code) for
relational databases much less painful, and keeping the schema in the database
will be widely accepted as a Good Thing.

19\. Home Internet service will be uncommon, except for geeks and people in
rural areas - most will pay for mobile network access on a per-device basis,
including for computers. People will occasionally reminisce about the funny
SSID names they came up with back when wi-fi was a thing.

20\. The current state of the art in ML is a dead end when it comes to
achieving AGI, and we are approaching another AI winter, though this will
still be controversial in 2030. It's still good enough to achieve autonomous
cars that outperform human drivers, though they'll still be niche.

21\. Quantum computing will make significant progress, though it won't have
any practical applications yet. Many cryptocurrencies based on quantum
cryptography will be developed; these won't see significant adoption as
mediums of exchange, though they'll create a new generation of crypto
millionaires in much the same way as last time. Today's cryptocurrencies will
fade into irrelevance over time, and Libra will never materialize.

------
jtolmar
Computer technologies:

\- Autonomous cars are mixed into regular cab/rideshare traffic, with percent
of fleet varying from city to city depending on weather, consistency of
markings, construction, and so on. The world is not fundamentally changed, but
long cab rides are now cheaper, contributing to a further decline in car
ownership.

\- Deep learning has two-ish major new advances that keep the AI hype going
for a while, but then it peters out. One of these advances is in style
transfer and/or ML-assisted rendering, and it's very cool.

\- Nothing happens with cryptocurrency or blockchains. At least one
blockchain-enthusiast reading this in 2030 thinks I'm wrong because they have
a sufficiently incorrect and overly broad idea of what a blockchain is.

\- VR doesn't take off, but has consistent enthusiasts and occasional arcade
hits (insofar as an arcade game can be a hit). Maybe next time.

\- AR doesn't take off.

\- Rust is an increasingly important part of drivers, operating systems,
shared libraries, and web servers that don't serve HTML. People also use it
for applications, games, and web servers that do serve HTML, but in that
domain it's more on the level of language with lots of fans like Scala or
Haskell than it is a major workhorse language. (Alternatively: somebody embeds
a scripting language in Rust macros or something like that and Rust is
technically everywhere.)

Biotechnology:

\- Gene replacement therapy is routine for certain conditions. Magazine
columnists are sure this means eugenics any day now.

\- Meat substitutes are mainstream. Major drivers are activism, economic
factors due to climate change, the success of Impossible Foods, and somebody
figuring out how to market seitan.

Big name tech companies:

\- Google's position is increasingly derived from inertia and install-base
rather than technical prowess. They have no new major product lines. It's cool
to hate Google.

\- Facebook the social network is a ghost town. Facebook the company owns four
of the five largest social networks. It's cool to hate Facebook, both the
company and the network.

\- Apple is incapable of introducing substantial innovations, but their public
image remains innovative and stylish as they continue to transition to
technology as high end fashion brand.

\- Amazon has employed violence in a strike-breaking activity.

\- Twitter is still growing, slowly, somehow.

Tech culture:

\- At least one of the hottest tech companies uses an alternative ownership
model, such as a worker owned co-op.

\- There's a minor open source renaissance, leading to compelling open source
options for phone OS and cloud stacks. This does not affect normal people, but
use is widespread among developers.

Geopolitics:

\- Global CO2 emissions have halved. Climate change continues.

\- Socialist and fascist movements are increasingly common, starting from the
equator out.

\- A new strain of drug-resistant bacteria becomes a major problem for
hospitals. It's not a global pandemic, but it does significantly reduce
patient outcomes.

\- China is fine (Even if the 2030 thread probably predicts it'll fall apart).
As its internal infrastructure matures, China depends less on western
countries and more on its investments in Africa.

\- The next global recession hits after a major economy passes a large
infrastructure/spending bill, improving bonds as an investment. All stock and
housing prices drop. The worst hit are precious metals, cryptocurrency, and
low-margin VC-backed startups.

Traditional predictions:

\- No flying cars.

\- You can buy a hovering skateboard, but they're not as good as the wheeled
kind. Onewheels or their successors are cheap enough for cool people to buy
them, and thus are now cool. Powered rollerblades are available too, where
they're not banned.

------
tansey
Here goes nothing:

\- bio startups rise, ag tech startups rise, food startups rise-- everything
to do with engineering life.

\- second and third tier cities rise in the US while first tier cities ebb.
Places like Austin see continued growth, while cities like Baltimore and
Cincinnati begin to really revitalize as local market become more important
than global markets.

\- mobility increases as people are less tied to their jobs/families

\- Google slows on the innovation front. FB is increasingly weak as social
networking just isn't as profitable anymore. Amazon keeps churning away.
Netflix wins best picture at the Oscars.

\- AI progress slows. The ML community fragments again. Neurips is no longer
where the best ML researchers publish.

\- At least one climate protest with over 5M people involved nationally,
calling on Congress to act now

\- China, mired in internal political upheaval, faces a lost decade. They will
either no longer be one of the two biggest economies or they will be on a
clear trend down but third place is a long way to fall

\- twice as many people consider themselves vegetarian or vegan. Foods for
this demographic have gotten much better and more diverse. Consumption of meat
is still high, but the trend in 2030 will be clear: the meat industry is
shrinking rapidly in the US and Canada. Other nations will lag here, meaning
almost all of the innovation will happen in North America

\- NYC will have built only two new subway stations

\- a third political party will gain at least 5 seats in the House

\- there will be a recession. Likely due to housing again. As the boomers die
out, their millennial children inherit their suburban homes. Unfortunately
they don't want to live in the suburbs and selling the house would pay off
their student loan debt. But who is going to buy all these houses?

\- political divide in the US heals, but it's not pretty and it all feels
chaotic. Political parties weaken in favor of some new form of factions.

\- CS undergrad enrollment declines but CS course requirements pervade nearly
every STEM field. The common wisdom will now be that interdisciplinary jobs,
not vanilla software engineer, are the growth sector, especially in
bio/medicine/food/agriculture.

\- Medicare age lowered to 50 as a transition toward single payer that will
take another decade

\- the world has missed its chance to avoid global warming. The schism in the
debate will now be about what to do. Radical positions (open borders for mass
refugees, a trillion dollar climate change R&D bill) will become more
mainstream.

\- Cities all over the US will be calling for federal infrastructure to build
new train and tran systems, obviating the market demand for autonomous taxis.
Uber and Lyft go under. Long haul autonomous vehicles are at 10% of all
interstate traffic

\- a common political point will be about how the US needs to stop subsidizing
corn. As crops becomes more important in this decade (ag tech, rise of
vegetarianism, climate change) it will be clear that corn is an over
investment but political inertia will not let things change this decade.

\- A dominant Canadian tech company will arise that rivals Google/FB or is at
least rising rapidly

\- towards the end of the decade, robotics is starting to reach the early-
success stage. This will have impacts on all sectors as co-working spaces pop
up with access to reprogrammable devices that can prototype commercial
products. Think: Roomba for X. 2030 is still early days for this, but there's
buzz, articles about robo-spaces Wired, etc.

------
kick
1\. Self-administering gene therapy will become a more prominent, though still
underground, thing. I know a few people who have already. Exciting!

2\. Self-administered gene therapy will quickly be made illegal in at least
one U.S. state.

3\. Mainstream technology will continue being very boring and decades behind
research and what hobbyists are doing unless intervention happens (think
CARDIAC on a wider scale and a more broad dive through the dumpster of
technology).

4\. We're going to see a Linux operating system that's actually pleasant to
use. Not just a window manager, not just a desktop environment, but an
operating system. It probably won't go mainstream, but it's going to be there.
It may use GNU tools, it might not. It'll probably have its own suite of
programs.

5\. Systems software research is going to return, even if it's not going to be
as widely honored as Plan 9. I think one thing we're going to see is at least
one person pursuing making a complete system in a minimal amount of code:
think FoNC, but probably smaller.

6\. IRC will still be in daily use by at least a few thousand people.

7\. Rust won't take over the world.

8\. Bryan Cantrill is going to be a lot richer yet still virtually unknown.

9\. illumos is going to see a minor resurgence, a bit like what Plan 9 has
experienced, yet a bit more commercial.

10\. YCombinator will probably get better now that the leadership has changed
in a positive direction. (Reasoning: very soon after the most recent change in
leadership, they stopped bending to China. This makes a person hope that the
trend to not maximize profits at all costs continues.)

11\. The surveillance state will intensify.

12\. It won't intensify in a way that causes meaningful action on behalf of
legislators. (I'd love to be proven wrong in this.)

13\. Paul Graham will probably come out of his self-induced exile/pseudo-
retirement. My bet is that it will come before his kids are fully grown,
though thoroughly after his essays finish the decline in quality we've seen
since 2012 or so. (Not sure if essays will return to former quality when this
happens.)

14\. The political climate will be much different. I'm not sure whether this
will lead to meaningful change in how elections are executed.

15\. VR and AR will not meaningfully catch up to the MR research of 2005 for
some time.

16\. One of the acquisitions that happens in the 2020s is going to hurt.
"Oracle buys Sun" level of hurt, but worse.

17\. Adolescents will continue to be infantilized.

18\. IBM will still maintain compatibility with OS/360.

19\. IoT devices will be breached _en masse_ after it hits a critical point.

20\. The amount of vulnerable routers in America is going to hit a breaking
point. (With a bit of luck, this will be used for good, not evil. Possibly
distributed Tor relays?)

21\. Political tracking is going to become far more prominent, and far
creepier. With how much data you can get by going into virtually any
government office in America with $50, it seems inevitable. Might be under the
radar, though.

22\. HN will not look meaningfully different when accessed via
news.ycombinator.com on a conventional web browser. Maybe if we're lucky we'll
see higher resolution arrows (or SVGs...pleaaaaaaaaaase, 'dang?), but I don't
think we can count on that.

23\. The increase in cost of consumer goods because of the recent punishments
on Chinese imports will make the lives of poor American consumers tangibly
worse.

24\. APL might not see a comeback, but it's going to be a lot easier to learn
soon.

25\. Taxes on sugar-filled goods will be demonstrated to have an actual,
tangible impact on the average weight.

26\. We will not see as large of an increased (percentage-wise, not byte-wise)
in storage capabilities for your average consumer until _at least_ 2028,
probably not until after the decade is over, though.

27\. Xerox will buy, merge with, or be bought by H.P.

28\. Tech journalism will continue to get worse.

29\. There still won't be a language that's as easy to learn as FORTRAN was in
the 1960s.

30\. Copyright terms will be extended again.

31\. We're going to see the first deaths of notable HN users that aren't by
suicide. I'm pretty sure there are multiple people on /leaders that are older
than 60.

32\. 1999's ThinkPads will still be humming just fine by 2029, though they'll
probably need their batteries replaced.

33\. We're going to see the return of _real_ hardware companies.

34\. A Linux distribution will ship with nice default fonts rather than the
poor ones that are shipped commonly now.

35\. TAoCP will never see itself finished, sadly.

36\. Linus will continue getting increasingly conservative in what he allows
into the source tree. (He'll probably step back before it gets too bad, but I
don't feel confident to make a prediction on whether or not that will be in
the 2020s.)

37\. Struck with the realization that 2020+ _N_ seconds is closer to 2050 than
1990, we're going to see at least a few notable tech founders very visibly and
noisily adopt religion.

38\. 'idlewords will continue his metamorphosis into a gonzo journalist.

39\. It will be magnificent.

40\. OpenBSD will see an increase in adoption because of its history of sane
choices and solid reputation for noticing security catastrophes before they
happen.

41\. C will still be prevalent.

42\. Unfortunately, Python will still be top dog in the ML space.

43\. Interpreted languages will experience a renaissance.

44\. 1366x768 is still going to be in the top-10 resolutions globally barring
the event that VR displays become prominent.

45\. Algorithmically-generated music is going to become cheap to generate,
Spotify and YouTube will get in on it, and weight recommendations for all but
the most niche listeners to whatever their algorithms are putting out.

46\. 9front will still actively get improvements.

47\. Electronic mail will still be used frequently, and the ecosystem will
decay even further.

48\. Traditional companies will become tech companies to an even greater
extent as they notice their revenue peaking, and if there's any chance of a
research operating system becoming a global phenomenon again, it will be
because of this. (I think that revenue has a chance of aggressively hitting
and falling from its peak because of falling birth rates in countries with
currency that's worth anything.)

49\. In the event of venture capitalists becoming more conservative, stack
will begin to matter again as the absurdly high cost of the cloud becomes more
meaningful. (Whether this manifests as a resurgence in efficient languages or
a resurgence in dedicated hardware I'm not sure of.)

50\. Unless Maciej gets hit by a bus (back up your bookmarks!), Pinboard will
continue its brutal and unending conquest of tech.

------
ravenstine
\- Technology further consolidates. Regulations designed to keep us "safe"
make it impossible or impractical for the garage-based startup of yesteryear.

\- Apple remains big but gradually loses its influence.

\- As many people here are saying "offline" will be a thing. But in contrast,
there will also be more people who will 100% buy into plugging-in to the
Matrix in any way possible. The MSM will find ways to portray offliners as
kooks because offliners don't contribute to the voluntary surveillance
apparatus. We already see this treatment of people who are self-reliant(i.e.
if you prepare or live off the grid then you're a nutcase who is obsessed with
doomsday and is possibly dangerous)

\- The tech bubble will pop and lots of developer jobs will go away. We only
need so many CRUD apps.

\- Population continues to decline because there are too many good
alternatives to risky activities like sex and having families.

\- As more boomers and early X-ers retire or die off, more white-collar jobs
will become fully or mostly remote.

\- "Side hustles" will become a greater thing than it currently is. More
people will want out of wage slavery and find ways to make money on their own
or start their own businesses. But establishment goverments love employment
because it's a reliable tax stream and keeps people dependent on the supply
chain. Just like with offliners, we will start to hear a narrative that trying
to make your own success is somehow unsavory.

\- The field of psychology will see some reform and we will see significant
advances in the ways that we treat neurological disorders.

\- Hardware will become even more closed and impossible to repair or modify.
Fewer hardware will be cross-compatible. If you want everything to be
connected to your smart home, then you'll have to exclusively buy Google
devices, or Samsung, or Amazon.

\- Universities face decline and a reform by the end of the decade. Because
most of a university's overhead can be done away with using technology and the
internet, there will be very little reason to gatekeep people out of top
institutions.

\- Soda industry declines because enough people will wise up to the sugar
menace. Today's nutritionists will be gradually replaced with ones that
actually understand that a calorie isn't simply a calorie.

\- Humankind will have not landed on Mars.

\- The internet will become more fractured, with different nations deciding to
wall themselves off.

\- China's social credit system will be emulated in the United States. Don't
worry, it will keep us _saaaaaaffffe_.

\- Companies like Google expand to a point where they begin to resemble proto-
governments.

\- LinkedIn becomes less relevant and a challenger approaches.

\- JavaScript will still be around in 2030 but have optional type-annotations.

\- People continue to back away from atheism and nihilism, and will find ways
to go back to religion or find spirituality. Science will be even more cherry-
picked than it is now.

\- The distal effects of negative interest rates and the bursting of the
corporate debt bubble will trigger an economic adjustment. This will create an
opportunity for industries to replace more jobs with automation, and this
economy will create civil unrest. Those in the top 5% will be mostly
unaffected.

\- Most big Linux distros will still use X.org.

\- Hollywood becomes more bland because the global market will matter far more
than those in United States and Europe, meaning that movies will be pure
spectacle with no nuance or themes that will rock the boat.

\- Basic healthcare becomes revolutionized and streamlined. Imagine CVS
Minute-Clinics, but far more ubiquitous and advanced, with nurses who use
computers with AI to diagnose symptoms and consult with doctors remotely.

------
JDiculous
\- Remote work will become the norm (especially in software engineering),
along with contracting/freelancing (the "gig economy"). Subletting (eg. on
AirBnB) will become the norm as the younger generation shuns home ownership
and even 1 year rental contracts in favor of short-term and month-to-month.
Being a "digital nomad" will become more mainstream as the young escape the
corporate rat race and overpriced overcongested cities for greener pastures.
Digital nomads will further flock to all the remaining cheap cost of living
cities/countries just like they've already done to places like Bali.

\- "No-code" tools will become the norm for app development. Developers won't
be hand-coding much HTML/CSS anymore, WYSIWYG editors will have evolved to a
point where they are acceptable and standard practice.

\- Most web application development will be done with dead simple full-stack
Javascript frameworks that automate all the repetitive CRUD operations (eg. in
the spirit of feathersjs or meteorjs). No more separate frontend state
management systems like Redux, state management will automatically integrate
with and fetch from the backend (eg. like apollo GraphQL, but simpler to use).
No more wrestling with 100 different JS libraries, webpack configs, routers,
state management libraries, etc to set up a basic hello world website -
frameworks with the simplicity of something like Next.js will be the standard.

\- Politically the hot topic of the decade will be wealth inequality.
Universal Basic Income will be implemented in some countries, and maybe some
form of a job guarantee. The U.S. will finally get universal healthcare,
partial cancellation of student loan debt, and other progressive policies as
wealth inequality and the anger of poor people reaches its tipping point and
the older generation holding back progressive policies retire from politics
and die out. Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) will become more mainstream as
people realize that debt denominated in one's own currency is not the same
thing as household debt. Land value tax and Georgism will enter the debate.

\- Self-driving trucks and cars will be normal

\- Drone delivery will be normal

\- AI passes the Turing Test

\- We'll see an increasing movement against materialism, unfettered
capitalism, "flex culture", and competition, and more of a movement towards
cooperation, empathy, compassion, solving poverty, and living a life of
meaning. Tech millionaires in San Francisco will finally think "ok what the
hell has this city become? Why are there homeless people and human feces
everywhere? Time to clean this damn place up." Right now being rich is
considered cool even if you're an airhead who only films stupid vlogs flexing
your Gucci merch. In 2030, people will care less about how much money you have
and more about what you're actually contributing to humanity.

------
rland
My long list of predictions! Writing this was fun, I'm going to have to
remember to look at this comment in 10 years!

Politics:

US political situation will be _significantly_ less stable/more autocratic
than today. People will lose most of their faith that the government is fair.
Mainstream news will be completely non-trustworthy. In general, companies will
consolidate. No meaningful anti-trust action will be taken. The biggest
companies will become pseudo-government entities. Facebook (surveillance) and
Disney (media/propaganda) will the most notable new entrants. A socialist
candidate with a lot of momentum in the US will get buried in an obviously
corrupt/illegal way. Nothing will be done. Situation in North Korea will be
the same.

Economy:

Areas of the southeastern US will be uninsurable and hit by extreme hurricanes
yearly, causing a slow internal migration as people move away and are not
replaced. The poor will be left behind, and we'll have multiple Katrina-like
natural disasters. Trade between countries will decrease. Especially trade
between US/China. No progress on an international climate change agreement.
Little progress on emissions -- most progress will come bottom-up from ICE
cars being phased out. Latter '20s will see a new robust pro-nuclear movement.
New nuke plants will be planned (not completed) by 2030. A minor resurgence of
manufacturing in the US.

Tech:

ML/AI:

No self driving cars, even by 2030. Freeway lanekeeping will be robust,
though, and an option on economy cars by 2026. ML will hit the wall. It'll
turn out that even a boatload of data will not help solve most big problems
that are being attempted now. Research will pivot to hybrid methods. By
extension, people will completely stop talking about "AI." It'll be somewhat
embarrassing to talk about the singularity, or general purpose AI.

Transportation:

SpaceX will succeed, launching things into space will be 1/10/kg the current
cost to LEO. Battery tech will be better (not revolutionary, just a bit
better). We'll have autonomous last-mile drone delivery in large urban areas
by ~2026. The drones will be electric and resemble a plane/helicopter hybrid.
Planes for people will still need dino jet fuel, though. Drone delivery will
make delivered food yet cheaper. Some new developments in hip big cities will
do away with full kitchens. More electric than ICE cars will be sold by 2025.
Gas stations won't be dead yet, but there'll be talk of how to phase out ICE
cars in 2030.

FAANG:

Amazon will stagnate, multiple meaningful competitors will pop up in the
online retail space. Ride share companies (uber/lyft) will go bust in the mid
'20s. They'll restructure with a small fraction of the valuation they have
now. Google will stagnate. Facebook will compete far more with Google than
they do now, and they will largely win, with facebook ads not on facebook.
Microsoft will have significant success in VR, web services, and consumer
hardware. Facebook will continue to be relevant. Any new competitor in the
social media space (there will be a few) will be acquired/crushed. People will
talk about FB having too much power, but nothing will be done because they'll
have such strong ties to government.

Apple:

The iPhone will still be a big money-maker, but Apple will see tremendous
success in the '20s from the health space. Its market cap will 1.5x or 2x from
selling health-related devices and services -- mostly the apple watch, but
some more wearable health devices, too. I'll be wild and say Apple will launch
a hospital + health insurance operation. It'll be expensive but the service
will be impeccable and it'll sync with all your apps and devices. Wearing an
apple watch will be mandatory to keep a subscription.

Health:

Alzheimer's will not be cured, nor will we get close. The big medical advance
will be wearable/sensor technology. Innovation will come from medical device
startups, not incumbents, who will play fast and loose with medical device
rules. The FDA will struggle to keep up, and regulations on medical devices
will be loosened. Type 1 Diabetes will be functionally cured, via insulin pump
and glucose monitoring. Tiny, accurate, implantable (subcutaneous) glucose
sensors will last for months/years, charged wirelessly. Fast acting insulin
will be cheap, $40-$60 for a month's supply, instead of the $300 that it is
now... (alright, this is wishful thinking)

Misc:

A Bitcoin will be <$100 by 2030. Oil will reach $200/barrel by the late '20s.
Skeumorphic design will be THE hot thing. The big fashion of the later '20s
will be earth-toned & naturalistic -- like the 70s. It'll be embarassing to be
a fan of Kanye West, although he'll continue making music. HN will be exactly
the same. Same design, same commenter snark. ;)

------
cmdshiftf4
A lot of optimism in this thread. Here's some pessimism, although I don't
think it'll all be accomplished in the next 10 years I think some will be well
on their way to be.

Non-tech: \- Remote work will become normalized. Initially it will be praised
as the great revival of rural North America. North American corporates will
invest heavily in knowledge-work related education in developing countries and
emerging companies there. By the end of the century, most knowledge work on
offer by "North American" companies will be fulfilled by people not living
there, undercutting the local labour market drastically. Most tech jobs will
have lost their sheen entirely.

\- Automation, especially around transport, logistics and retail, will
decimate the labor market. A person driving a Truck/Bus/Subway/Train/Freight
ships or working packing & shipping Amazon/Walmart/etc. boxes, or working at
retail stores, will be virtually unheard of. We'll be lucky if they're
replaced at a 10:1 ratio with bot operators.

\- Due to the above, the rich will get richer than we can even perceive now.
The middle class will evaporate.

\- China, India, Saudi Arabia and their allies will become more powerful
politically, economically, technologically and especially militarily, most
especially in both cyber and nuclear warfare.

\- The above will lead to an even more dramatic rise in nationalism and the
rejection of globalism in the West. The UK will be seen to have come out
unscathed by leaving the EU which will cause a crisis for the EU as more
states fight federalization, reject directives and propose to leave
themselves. The unrest and uncertainty will drive the Euro through the floor.

\- Trump will be re-elected. The following government will be headed by a
Democrat embracing nationalism and vowing to put American's first by taxing
"the rich", implementing UBI, healthcare, creating government jobs, etc.

\- There will be at least one massive economic crisis in North America, likely
the overvaluation of stocks through indexes held by massive pension funds
causing a "re-evaluation" of many stocks we're currently taking for granted.
Europe will go through far worse as mentioned above.

\- There will be at least 1 major cyber security related incident that will
affect a country in a way that will change the nature of national access to
the internet forever.

\- Jeffrey Epstein still won't have killed himself.

Tech:

\- Rejection of petroleum based products in the name of battling climate
change will drive up the costs of consumer goods. Stagnating or falling income
will cause people to buy less goods. Working longer for less pay will give
people less free time. Consumption will therefore instead be turned toward
services, especially services that promise to give you back time by automating
household chores, providing day-to-day needs such as food and mind-numbing
entertainment, especially in VR which I expect to be gamified to be as
addictive and escapist as possible.

\- I expect there will be little autonomous vehicles everywhere. Peace and
quiet in our skies will no longer be a thing. Our sidewalks will have a lane
full of autonomous delivery bots.

\- Coupled with the above, electric vehicles will become the norm. However,
they won't be owned by consumers unless you're very rich. They'll be be
predominantly available as fleets used via subscription to access. Initially
it'll seem glamorous but as with the airline industry, longer term we will be
compelled to share the vehicle with other riders, sat on materials that cannot
stain, with targeted ads for other services played throughout the duration of
the trip.

\- AI will prosper but not general AI, mostly very well crafted advanced
automation and mostly developed in the non-West.

\- DevOps will move to just Dev as Ops becomes almost entirely automated.

\- One cloud provider will prevail, the others will be relegated to being
niche afterthoughts or disregarded altogether.

\- Med-tech will become normalized and people will end up expected to wear at
least one device that is continually monitoring and reporting on their health.
That data will of course be packaged and sold to be used against them by
advertisers for, again, various services we'll be told we "need".

\- Privacy and the expectation of privacy will be gone forever. The
governments will launch their full scale attack on encryption under the guise
of protecting children or terrorism, others will take advantage of the
backdoors created in it, and those seen to be trying to protect their privacy
will be seen as people with suspicion and therefore subject to further
monitoring.

\- Spurred by the above, cryptocurrencies will enjoy a brief revival as some
try to move money privately but will ultimately be cracked down on and
controlled as a "threat".

Prove me wrong 2020's!

Edit: Just scheduled an email to myself with this link for 01/01/2030\. It'll
be incredible to read it.

------
echelon
===== Biology =====

\- A major, non-amyloid, non-tau hypothesis for Alzheimer's. Because the old
guard supporting these dogmas is falling out of vogue.

\- Really great advances made with CRISPR and immunotherapy, especially with
respect to cancer treatment. The immune system already targets cancer or
disease-state cells, but perhaps we can give it a little nudge?

\- Human cloning. It isn't at all infeasible, just politically/morally
questionable. Someone will do it.

\- Insurance companies get ahold of biometric and DNA data. They're salivating
for it. Google's purchase of Fitbit is scary. 23andme's recent sale of data is
also troubling.

===== Politics / Global / Society =====

\- Democracy begins to fade. Trump's war on the media is the canary in the
coal mine. Social platforms erode our critical thinking and ability to see
through the miasma. The success of China's surveillance state and the fact
that they can succeed without democracy sends the wrong message to the rest of
the world.

\- Diversity increases in Hollywood, high-paying jobs, and political
candidates. Racism and sexism begin to wane.

\- Millennials and GenZ (Zoomers? Zoomies? :P) come to the political
forefront. GenZ is more politically active than GenX or the Millennials. There
may be some cross-generational war with some younger candidates campaigning on
cutting social security, pensions, and benefits.

\- As more young people move to cities, housing prices in all major cities
will skyrocket. They're already steep, but this trend will continue. Housing
prices in the suburbs will collapse as boomers retire/downsize and nobody
wants to live there.

\- People spend even more time on screens.

===== Economics =====

\- We won't have a recession at the same level of the 2008 recession.

\- China has a recession.

\- Cryptocurrency is dead, no thanks to government regulation and crackdown.
Bitcoin is $0.01.

\- We become a cashless society.

===== Energy / Transportation =====

\- Elon Musk becomes even wealthier. Tesla catches on like wildfire with
lower-cost models, and they dominate the EV market with their healthy lead.
But the real story is SpaceX leap frogging defense contractors and becoming
the world's gateway to space. Starlink, if successful, might spawn a new era
of connectivity.

\- Yet, gasoline still remains the dominant fuel for automotive
transportation. EVs are still in the minority.

\- Trains come back in vogue as a hipster option for Millennial travel.

\- Nuclear still isn't being built out in the US beyond a few scattered
projects (eg. Vogtle).

===== Deep Learning / Hardware =====

\- While deep learning isn't as big as proponents made it out to be, but we
don't face another AI winter. There will be huge applications in media
(Hollywood will be a big customer), process optimization, computer vision, and
other areas. We'll even see it creep into consumer products.

\- Creative tools are greatly enhanced with deep learning and other techniques
(computer vision, better models), leading to a creative explosion.

\- No self-driving cars. Yet. Weather, inconsistent roads, bad drivers... It's
a hard problem.

\- Moore's law holds / is beaten. Deep learning is the driver.

\- Embedded devices languished for awhile (IOT), but are finally going to be
hella cool and novel. Wearables, biometrics. But they remain a huge exploit
vector.

===== Cloud =====

\- Anger at managed cloud computing lock-in sets in. We might see a swing back
to the data center.

\- Edge computing is a huge thing. Despite Google Stadia failing, companies
vie to run video games in the cloud.

===== Web / Social Media =====

\- The web dies and is replaced by more garbage like AMP, walled gardens like
Facebook, Slack, and (now) Reddit. Chrome has removed URLs. RSS is dead. Lots
of people are very angry at Google.

\- Lots of federation / distributed projects to try to fight back. None of
them really take hold since they're not backed with the same staffing or scale
as the incumbents.

\- In what remains of the web, Rust/ASM has replaced Javascript.

\- New privacy laws lead to adtech backlash. The masses don't care, but
politicians, lawyers, and those in tech do and now have leverage.

\- Facebook (the site) is full of older conservatives and has gone the way of
MySpace.

\- A few new social media sites come out, gain traction, and don't sell out to
Zuckerberg.

\- Twitter eats itself and loses engagement. It still doesn't have a viable
alternative.

\- Reddit becomes absolutely awful and starts to look more like Facebook or
Digg than the site we used to use. They have succeeded in monstrous growth at
the expense of the community. This leads to a very successful IPO.
Unfortunately, nothing really replaces it.

===== Tech =====

\- Antitrust cases brought against Amazon, Apple, Google, and/or Facebook.
None of them are broken up. Only slaps on the wrist.

\- Microsoft thrives, Google dives.

\- Slack gets disrupted. It's just chat.

\- Rust becomes the most popular programming language and sees deployment
everywhere: OSes, servers, games, web apps, embedded, ... the ecosystem
explodes.

\- Tech shifts away from SF. It's too expensive. Look to the southeast:
Austin, Atlanta, Charlotte. Also distributed workforce growth by leaps and
bounds.

\- Death to the open office floor plan.

===== Entertainment =====

\- Disney and Netflix get disrupted by a new form of media. They may still be
players, but classical filmmaking is old-world thinking. Look at what teens
watch these days. They want to be both involved and passive, creative and
destructive. Twitch, YouTube, Fortnite are good examples. Tech eats Hollywood.

\- More radical/experimental new forms of video games. Games that let you play
alongside celebrity streamers. Interesting MMOs and new concepts like battle
royale.

\- More cool stuff like Twitch Plays Pokemon (did that happen this decade?)

===== Misc =====

\- We're going to see really cool (and really scary) applications for drones.
People will use them to commit theft and vandalism (spray paint? knocking out
windows?), and maybe even kill people.

\- Still no answer on P vs NP.

\- Still no discovery of life on Mars (or elsewhere).

\- Singularity isn't happening.

===== Personal =====

\- I'll get to use Rust professionally.

\- I'll finally launch a startup.

------
ossworkerrights
Pretty concerned about how the EU will evolve. There is little introspection
post brexit, and it appears to be just as rigid and clueless as before the
vote.

On a positive note, I really really hope electric cars will become more
accessible - both for consumers and for manufacturers (i.e.: small companies
will get access to batteries and be able to build EVs themselves).

------
elfexec
1\. I'll go against the herd and say China won't collapse but continue to grow
and in 2030 China will be the largest economy in nominal GDP terms by a
significant margin. Also, Sino-American trade will be at its highest ever in
2030.

2\. India will grow and easily overtake Japan to be the 3rd largest economy
(nominal GDP) in the world.

3\. Vietnam and ASEAN will be the fastest growing economies ( country and
region ).

3\. VR will become mainstream.

4\. Man will set foot on Mars.

5\. No general AI.

6\. No fusion.

7\. Magnus Carlsen will be the first human player to achieve a 3000 rating.

8\. Greater accumulation and conconcentration of wealth, growing income
inequality, further decline in poverty, further drop in fertility rates and
more mass surveillance around the world.

~~~
pretendscholar
>Also, Sino-American trade will be at its highest ever in 2030.

By percentage of gdp or just total volume?

------
archivist1
\- 2021: surprising and positive-themed social/election event, probably India

\- 2023: Non-terrestrial (or non homo-sapiens intelligent) life confirmed.

\- 2023: Space/solar-system tourism or mass publicity of human space missions.

\- 2024: First commercial autonomous human-like bipedal standalone android

\- 2025: Geo-volvanic/tectonic/oceanic disaster on same order of magnitude as
Indian ocean tsunami but not as severe.

\- 2027: "Pseudo" AGI system. You can talk and interact with it and it has all
the answers but it's still not quite "all there".

\- 2029: A lot of people die and infrastructure damaged in war
act/atmospheric/solar event.

------
botwriter
1\. Brexit happens the UK becomes Singapore on the Thames. Net contributors to
the EU (Germany, Holland, France, etc.) populous's become increasingly
eurosceptic. Another country leaves the EU (Probably Holland) and the EU
crumbles.

2\. Countries increasingly venture into building their own microchips; the
world wakes up that letting China build most of the world's chips is a
terrible idea on a national security standpoint.

3\. Trump wins the 2020 election, Democrats implode. Democrats move further to
the left. Republicans have another celebrity/ popular candidate and win the
2024 election. The democrat's open borders policies and sanctuary cities screw
over the democrats as Hispanics and naturally catholic and conservative.

4\. LGBTQ+ movement recognises paedophilia as an oppressed minority. Outrage
ensues they lose all support from the public and the LGB section forms their
own evolution that gains popular support.

5\. The links between US media funding and China get leaked. Massive scandal
but mainstream media still somehow survive it.

6\. Myanmar (Burma) shocks most people to become the next industrial
powerhouse (China). Most of the world suspects it will be Vietnam, but it
won't.

7\. The full extent of Chinas gold reserves is known. Dwarfing US Gold
reserves depending how this emerges it will be seen as an act of war and 2nd
cold war will heat up. Gold prices soar to unprecidented levels RMB soars and
(again depending on how the world finds out) the Chinese push for RMB to be
the defacto global currency.

8\. The rise of Private Intelligence Agencys is more widley known. A high
profile fuck up will happen and at least one nation state will have egg on
their face.

9\. The Chinese leader Xi Jinping gets assasinated. More than likely by
someone in the Chinese Miliatry with links to dissedents in ethier Hong Kong,
Taiwan or Tibet. Massive internal power vaccum happens. The 'success' of his
assasination sees a rash of other asian leaders getting bumped off including
North Koreas leader.

10\. China invades Taiwan. First cyber war takes place. US thinks twice about
a full blown war with mainland China and instead opts for intelligence lead /
cyber capabilities to topple the chinese Government.

11\. Chinese government may fall due to economic downturns in China, belt and
road isn't enough. Massive recession in most of south east asia and certain
parts of africa also.

12\. Media will write articles in 2030 on trying to work out who exactly was
botwriter and how were his predictions so close.

~~~
botwriter
I've just been downvoted wonder if it's because of the china stuff :D

------
droithomme
Trump wins. World peace. Climate problems solved. Historical stock market
highs. Various nations divided by globalist agenda reunify. Medicine and
education cost problems on the road to recovery.

 _PS didn 't vote for him._

------
cardigan
\- SpaceX will land a human on Mars and create some super great marketing
material. This will strongly galvanize interest in space. Many ambitious
people will be interested in space projects or startups

\- deep learning will continue to amaze people in being able to solve problems
considered not well suited to it. Some of these applications will seem crazy
in retrospect

\- folks at OpenAI or Google will get something crazy to happen with a huge
amount of compute. It won't feel like AGI but it'll make AGI seem way less
insane

\- theorem proving with deep learning will start to work

\- material science using lots of compute and deep learning will start to work

\- deep learning will be applied to fuzzing (finding vulnerabilities in
software) and this will be a big thing by the end of the decade

\- there will be some large scale multiagent AI projects aiming to learn
intelligence through just big simulations of civilization but they will not
have interesting results. Definitely happens at OpenAI and possibly elsewhere.
They really expect this to work but it won't

\- Apple releases an AR headset. Oculus turns into an AR effort instead of VR.
The VR wars turn into the AR wars. Lots of money pumped into it. Unclear if it
actually becomes the next mass platform, but there's a small chance

\- crypto people will find success approaching incentive design problems in
more traditional avenues like large organizations and charter cities. Most
crypto projects will be dead in the water, including Ethereum, but there will
be diehard enthusiasts who stick to it. The money will dry up, forcing others
out. Cryptocurrency, like BTC, will still be a big thing on the internet

\- teleop robots. Globalization of physical labor starts to happen. It will
seem like an emerging trend by the end of the decade

\- self driving cars will be seen to be largely a fad, with lots of wasted
money

\- there's a chance the olivine beach climate change project gets a huge
amount of traction

\- student loans and for profit colleges in the United States have some kind
of reckoning. People stop believing in college: more people all over the world
think like Lambda School and the software industry

\- senior software engineer salaries in the Bay Area continue to climb

\- Silicon Valley stops being so obsessed with China. It's more obvious that
Chinese innovation is heavily lagging behind

\- defense technology starts to capture the attention of more of Silicon
Valley and the innovative class. Anti-defense stance stops being the default.
Tech bro patriotism: more people think like Anduril. This leads to some really
crazy defense capabilities of the US. E.g, auto targeting killer drones

\- Social media usage per person goes down, for high income people

\- YC is no longer cool at the end of the decade, but hacker news still is.

\- lifestyle software businesses continue to be seen a lot more positively in
the industry: more software engineers think like patio11/csallen/levelsio.
Starting a small software business becomes more of a viable career path and
seen as more responsible and mature than the VC unicorn path.

\- meat alternatives grow faster than anyone expected them to

\- Tesla is the most valuable car company but still hasn't figured out full
self driving

\- sci-fi reading and blog post style writing will be a major status symbol in
the tech industry

\- Bay Area will be less dominant in interesting tech startups than it is
today, because of immigration and housing. The next place will be the internet
or somewhere open to outsiders like Estonia, not China

\- Donald Trump will do something too shocking and it will actually end his
career. Society will learn an antibody to his populism, but it might be a long
time after he's president. Will happen by the end of the decade though

\- deep learning is a very centralizing technology. Even bigger tech companies
will be started where the value they create is their machine learning network
effect. They might not be as big as 1T by the end of the decade but they'll
get there in another 10 years

\- more power shifts from government to private enterprise

\- tech companies remain underrated and continue to grow and have way bigger
market caps

\- VR porn ends up driving adoption of the current set of VR hardware. Funny
but FB executives won't be happy about this and that'll make them look to AR.

\- Facebook social VR with strangers doesn't work. But FB social VR with your
real life friends might work and be really popular. This would be the main
application of VR, if any : then it'll morph into AR

\- religion continues its decline. New internet ideologies continue to
proliferate. Some of them will be pretty weird yet have a lot of impact, like
the alt-right did this decade

\- the penny is abolished in the United States

\- US inflation is a lot higher than it has been in the past; US treasury
bonds not seen as super safe anymore

\- if there's a recession, it won't affect the economy as uniformly as
historical recessions (overall hit may still be really big, but higher
percentage of people will end up well off). More variety in the economy and
people's lives where it's not as correlated

\- tech companies funding more and more media/content (like Netflix/Amazon,
but also upstarts). Traditional media gets eaten by tech-enabled companies

\- everyone worldwide has a lot less sex

\- marijuana and psylicobin legalized federally in the US; stigma against
drugs on the decline globally (related to decline in religion + rise of
internet ideologies)

\- more local manufacturing. Specialized manufacturing countries/cities stop
making as much sense. Let going to China to make your hardware thing; you'll
just do it wherever.

\- the US will be more obsessed with Africa than China (may take 25y instead
of 10y; caused by population dynamics)

\- 10-30% more happens in 2020s than 2010s; accelerating progress but it's not
very noticeable yet

\- Stripe becomes a gigantic company Because of that, the SaaS economy goes
global: microSaaS is the new doctor/lawyer/engineer, especially in India and
Africa

------
swalsh
I'm pretty gloomy on the future, so most of my predictions are how a world
reacts to the upcoming challenges we face.

1\. Distributed Internet - A combination of tech companies that have become
too large, and government overreach result in an encrypted and distributed
internet. The large companies of the past are not gone, but are slowing
becoming irrelevant. Teens, and Gen-Z (zoomers?) will most likely be the first
to start adopting. Boomers, and older millennials will be slower to adapt. The
large companies are also facing a 2 sided battle as they also battle
Washington.

2\. World un-united - In the post Trump world, the US no longer operates the
infrastructure required for the post-ww2 united world we've been used to. This
means countries will have to significantly increase their military spending,
and more problematically, they will have to find new markets to export to
(since most countries lack a large millennial generation to sell to.) The
strong social spending European countries have become used to will start to
dry up. The result will be the continuation in more authoritarian populist
strong man leaders. As recession, and lack of social spending, combined with
increased military spending start to increase, the 2020's will look a lot more
like 1930's. Germany will be particularly hard hit.

3\. The US starts to become more aware of the Rural/City divide. In the early
part of the decade, issues such as gun control will result in increased
tension as "Red America" rises up against "Blue America" realizing it has no
political power left, and "Blue America" is using it's power to change the
things it cares about. Initially these disputes are isolated geographically to
a few areas. Likely Virginia, and Washington/Oregon. But it might expand into
something bigger... which in my opinion is one of the biggest wildcards of the
future.

4\. An over leveraged China will stumble, It will be plauged with trade
issues, and demographic issues.

5\. Software Engineering will split, highly skilled engineers will make more
than ever before, but there will be a very large base of newly minted "lower
skilled" software devs that make a lot less money.

6\. Despite the conversation about immigration probably only gaining in steam,
the economic relationship between Mexico and US will only become stronger.

------
georgeburdell
* Science: We discover what Dark Matter is and it is not new physics

* Technology: Semiconductor industry renaissance as Moore’s Law fails and more effort goes into alternative devices.

* Politics: Trump will announce a health issue and resign, possibly to save face. Pressure on China fades, causing the Uyghur situation to become Holocaust-level.

* Economics: Housing prices will be flat in the U.S. or decrease, after adjusting for inflation in 2029. There will not be a crash.

* Culture: Zoos where animals are largely in enclosures will be commonly seen as animal abuse

------
xenospn
\- At least one country will declare animals "Non Human Persons" and outlaw
non plant-based foods.

\- Cryptocurrency will join other tech fads in the history books.

\- Big corps (Apple/MS/Disney) will have their own political representation
and will try to amend the constitution in their favor.

\- More and better electric cars, still no L5 autonomy in sight.

\- Japan will declare a population emergency and start a national project to
develop artificial Japanese babies through cloning.

\- The US will outlaw firearms completely after a major right wing revolt that
will cause thousands of casualties, possibly following Trump losing and
calling for an uprising.

\- A safe alternative to smoking/vaping is introduced by one of the fastest
growing startups in history.

------
Aqua
1\. Donald Trump wins next elections.

2\. Climate change turns out to be less severe than anticipated(by most) at
the beginning of the decade.

3\. Netflix faces more competition and struggles to maintain its position,
potentially losing its significance and dropping out of FAANG

4\. Significant advancements in fusion technology, but still no commercial
solutions.

5\. Bitcoin is worth more than 100k$

6\. There is a global recession, but it's nowhere as severe as the last one.

7\. VR and AR technology matures and becomes widespread.

8\. UK struggles for the first few years after Brexit, but in the second half
of the decade it prospers with GDP growth significantly outpacing that of
Germany and France.

9\. The EU struggles to keep up with the American and Chinese competition due
to extreme regulations and bureaucracy.

10\. Humans still didn't make it to Mars.

------
adamnemecek
I'm hoping analog photonic cOmputation will take off.

------
jmcgough
Perhaps not very optimistic but:

1\. Climate change is ignored by the US and China (who combined make up half
of emissions). It snowballs until it becomes irreversible and catastrophic.

2\. Countries lurch from natural disaster to natural disaster, incapable of
focusing on more than short-term aid for its panicked citizens.

3\. Large groups of people become climate refugees as their towns/cities
become uninhabitable from flooding, fires, disease, etc. Some desperately try
to get entry into 1st world countries.

4\. Amongst xenophobia and desperation to do something about seemingly endless
natural disasters, we see a rise of countries lead by strong dictator-types,
who promise that they will fix our problems where others have failed.

5\. Hard clamp down on immigration. Human rights violations, genocide, world
war.

6\. Still no level 4/5 autonomous vehicles.

~~~
zamadatix
How long do you think a decade is?

------
gonational
1\. A +$1,000 consumer robot, humanoid or otherwise (and no, a self-driving
vacuum cleaner doesn’t count), becomes as mainstream as drones

2\. China’s economy collapses and they are at war with multiple countries

3\. A new kind of drug, primarily consumed in vape, form will sweep the nation
- some will call it “Myst”

4\. Air taxis (self-flying) become moderately common in urban areas

5\. A major “terror” attack involving a swarm of remote-controlled devices
will cause regulatory panic for weeks

6\. Politicians will tell lies

7\. The average global temperature will be lower than the prior decade, and
Carbon Dioxide will stop being blamed for climate change

8\. Cross-network gaming will, mistakenly, further commoditize game systems,
resulting in a new surge in PC gaming

9\. Minimum wage will increase to $96/hr for the 3,500 people still earning
minimum wage - all others will have been replaced by robots and computers that
complain less and get more done

10\. Donald Trump will be reelected with 68MM popular votes and over 300
electoral votes, even though he technically looses electorally, because of a
multi-state pact to cast electoral votes based on the winner of the popular
vote

11\. People will set up traps for self-driving cars (think Wile E. Coyote on
the Road Runner)

12\. We will still not have ever sent man to the moon

13\. A kind of standing bed will become popular

14\. Gen Z will surpass Millennials in total hours worked

15\. Brexit... still waiting (though nominally done)

16\. Queen Elizabeth II will no longer be queen

17\. Ace of Base will reunite

18\. Cigarette sales will be halved, in US per-capita terms

19\. Saying the word Israel on internet will become illegal

20\. Grocery shortages, including in the USA... majorly; the problem of the
decade

------
throwno
1\. No one on mars

2\. Climate change has no significant impact, but whenever there's a hurricane
climate change zealots tell everyone to repent because the end is near

3\. Nikki Haley is the Republican nominee, but loses to a white male Democrat

4\. Quantum Computing still irrelevant

5\. Africa has its first major globally dominant tech company, but most of the
employees are from India

6\. AR is everywhere, but no one calls it AR

7\. Veganism loses its appeal as aging vegans look increasingly frail

8\. Pitchfork gives BNR and a 8+ rating to a reissue of a Skrillex album it
panned in the 2000s.

------
baybal2
Chinar:

2022 — the last of political opposition to Xi makes its bid for power, it
fails with some noise, and we see a compromise establishment for the rest of
Xi's life

2022 — the last of political opposition to Xi makes its bid for power, it
fails miserably, and Xi secures claim to absolute power, and reigns Brezhnev
style to his last breath

EU:

Coming of Trump alike in Germany, or Austria is not unlikely.

If it comes to that, EU may well be under mortal threat

Russia:

Some orchestrated "transition" to some high profile mayor like Sobanin
happens, but nothing really changes.

Alternative? Military insurrection by officers being tired of being sent to
god forsaken places on whims of mafia boys.

USA:

Really no idea — your country has been defying common sense for 2 decades
straight. Understanding America is beyond me.

~~~
Koshkin
Yes - well into the XXi century.

------
jcbrand
1\. The next recession triggers a massive financial crisis (due to
unsustainable debt and currency creation in 2010s) followed by a loss of
confidence in central banks as various fiat currencies are destroyed in
response.

2\. As a result of #1, the dollar loses its reserve currency status, probably
in favour of a basket of currencies like IMF SDR.

3\. To restore confidence, states will be forced to peg their new currencies
to something that can't be created at will, probably gold, but perhaps also
Bitcoin or another cryptocurrency.

4\. Environmental collapse continues, causing mass migrations adding further
fuel to nationalist and fascist movements.

5\. Localisation becomes fashionable as globalisation gets blamed for many of
the world's ills.

------
hilbert42
2000 was the millennium for those who could not count.

2001 was the millennium for those of us who could.

2020 is the decade for those who still cannot count.

Therefore, I will wait until next year for the third decade of the 21st
Century to come around before I make my predictions.

...And such a simple counting error on Hacker News too. Oh dear, oh dear! What
next?

__

EVEN MORE ERRORS:

"2020's version of
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1025681"](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1025681")

...And I would add that _" 2020's"_ should not have an apostrophe (it does not
need it, its use here shows ignorance and adds nothing but confusion)! [It is
no wonder that so much of the world's code is buggy when programmers cannot
get the most basic and simplest syntax correct. Right, it's logically
incorrect to add an apostrophe here.]

~~~
username90
Don't you know that we start counting from 0?

~~~
hilbert42
I've yet to see a calendar publisher (or anyone) call the 1900s the 19th
Century, similarly 2000s the 20th Century. QED.

~~~
username90
That is a thing in the English language, in eg Sweden we do the sensible thing
and call the 1900s "nittonhundratalet". The English way is stupid, it is like
saying that the current year 2020 should be called "The 2021th year" just to
confuse people. I mean it is technically correct, but it is a dumb way to
speak.

~~~
hilbert42
Perhaps so, but over 400 million people speak English as a native language
whereas I'd guess those who spoke Swedish at most would be only 10% of that
number.

That said, as a native English speaker, I'm not defending the goddam language
it's such a mess you'd reckon it'd been through a blender. About the only
thing going for English (other than its ubiquity) is that there is essentially
one indefinite article to remember (unlike all the different and nefarious
genders of many other languages).

On the matter of counting, irrespective of what you say, unlike the ancient
Romans, we have all inherited a number system that includes zero—and that zero
is added on the tenth digit (not the eleventh). If you wish to count or do
mathematics in a different system other than in our common base-10 one then
you have every right to do so. However, I, like most other people, have taken
the easy way out and adopted the counting system that puts this "0" thing on
the 'last' [already-repeating] number before the counting system repeats.
(Right, I agree with you, it is strange but I can't think of an alternative
other than to kick out the "0" and go back to the Ancient Roman way of doing
things. Reckon though it'd be pretty clumsy. I reckon I'd truly struggle to do
say vector calculus or square root by the long method in Roman numerals. I
just shudder at the thought.

But as they say it's horses for courses, I signed off my recent Christmas
cards in Roman numerals as I always do, last year just past being MMXIX.

You may have invented a better system but I'm damn sure it'll take a lot of
convincing others to change the world's most common numbering system (despite
its quirky faults—that, of course, is if you actually view them as faults).
:-)

------
misiti3780
In no particular order (mine are more US focused because I am an American)

\- Electric car prices will continue to go down, there will be more electric
cars than gas cars in 2030

\- Bitcoin and blockchain products will turn out to be basically useless.
there will be no huge blockchain successes in the next 10 years. bitcoin
mining will need to stop because of climate change

\- there will be more "brexit" type events in the next 10 years, to the point
that the EU does not exist

\- Donald Trump will (unfortunately) be elected again in 2020

\- Polarization in the United States will continue to get worse for a variety
of difference reasons

\- Malaria will be eradicated

\- The university tuitions in the US will be significantly less than they are
now because of less demand, with students electing to use free/cheaper online
resources instead.

\- The percentage of people they say they are Christian in the US will be
significantly less than it is now.

\- The world will see the first trillionaire

\- The US healthcare system will function similar to the UK's system

\- Spaced repetition systems will become more ubiquitous in all levels of
education (there may be a billion dollar company in this space, it works!)

\- javascript will continue to dominate client-side development

~~~
senordevnyc
1\. More electric cars might be sold in 2030 than gas (a little skeptical),
but there will still be more gas cars on road.

2\. Bitcoin will still be around. Prices will be higher than today. There will
be more mining than today.

3\. There may be one or two more, but they’ll be disastrous and not repeated.

4\. 50/50, but not too late. Get involved!

5\. True.

6\. Doubtful. See polio.

7\. No way. Tuition will be higher than ever. More students will be getting
degrees in person than ever before.

8\. Hopefully! Almost certainly true.

9\. Doubtful on trillionaire unless they’re head of state. Maybe by 2040.

10\. If only, but seriously doubt it. The senate being biased towards
conservative rural voters in an age of increasing urbanization will make this
almost impossible. Also the Supreme Court will still be leaning right.

11\. No. Flash cards and SRS have been around for decades. People don’t care
enough to use them and there’s nothing that’s not commodity here.

12\. Fuck, probably true. Hopefully mostly TypeScript by then at least.

~~~
iso947
Given last months UK elections I see it more likely that UK health care
changes towards the US

