
Ask HN: Predictions on what will be the most surprising technology in 10 years? - sstanie
I often read articles talking about the next big thing in the short term (2-4 years), but thinking about the Bill Gates 2-year-10-year quote* has me wondering about 10 years from now:
Will the most surprising thing be an expansion of an already rising technology? (AI, blockchain, biotech, nanotech, AR,...)<p>Or will it be something most people have never heard of yet?
Thoughts&#x2F; predictions?<p>* &quot;We always overestimate the change that will occur in the next two years and underestimate the change that will occur in the next ten.&quot;
======
hyperpallium
First, the negatives:

    
    
       Another AI winter
       Another VR winter
       Another hype-cycle of home automation
       Another hype-cycle of growing teeth
    

There _will_ be tech progress, but behind the scenes, doing the same things as
before, just better. As prosaic as more modular manufactured goods, in the
sense of prefab home construction, automobile components, FPGA's for
electronic goods. Some may revolutionize the value-chain in an industry - but
you won't see it unless you're in it.

Fundamentally new tech takes 20-30 years to come to market - especially if it
really does change things (government regulatory regimes, infrastructure, how
we live).

Now Moore's Law isn't giving us shallow victories any more, there is
opportunity for deeper changes, that properly absorb and apply its past
advances.

Right now, we are undergoing a re-orientation of our political systems, in the
sense of how democracy operates without a traditional press; the continuing
march of multi-nationals being more powerful than sovereign states; the hyper-
concentration of wealth (due to the means of production no longer being land,
nor labour, but technology). Social systems are a kind of "technology".

The central question of this technological change will be: why do the hyper-
wealthy need people?

The most surprising technology will be new mathematics - not TB machine
proofs, but quite simple and basic ones, akin to the positional number system,
algebra, calculus. They will analyse complex systems, like Navier-Stokes fluid
dynamics; the operation of deep learning networks; internet and traffic
congestion; and cortical organization. They won't give magical results, but
they will offer a new point of view, that some will experience as magical.

~~~
bsenftner
> The central question of this technological change will be: why do the hyper-
> wealthy need people?

This is what concerns me. They already apply their wealth and organizations to
treating the general public as a farm they cultivate. They shape the
educational, tax, media, and legal structure in their favor quite successfully
today. With the technological advancements in media development and their hold
over education policy, tomorrow has a terrifying forecast unless some
educational miracle of critical thought occurs.

------
jraines
Genetic / biotech stuff, driven by CRISPR. All the ones you mentioned, except
nanotech maybe, are pretty locked in to create massive changes. I think the
bio stuff will be the most "surprising", not least because it's harder to to
write believable breathless hype about it. Not to say there won't be plenty of
attempts, but I feel like the public is a little more inoculated against wild
health/medical claims than "killer AI" or "$100k bitcoin", which is both a
good thing and more likely to create surprise when a few of them turn out to
be true.

AR a really close second, but I think people will be a little bit more ready
for it given prevalence in sci-fi and experience of rapid computer & graphics
progress in our lifetime. So it's easier to "expect" a world of Pokemon Go on
steroids in your AR glasses than it is, say, one where a boutique offshore
firm is offering to give your baby the ability to see into the infrared
spectrum or something.

------
kichik
Solar power, wireless service, remote working and transportation advances
might change where we live. You can have a house powered by the sun without an
electric grid, connect to LTE+++ with 100gbps, work remotely, and have food
automatically delivered with self-driving trucks or drones. You could live
anywhere you'd want.

~~~
Tylerosaurus
I like the way you think. That would be my dream. Time to start investing in
property out in the middle of nowhere.

~~~
kichik
With the way population is growing, owning land anywhere (that's not going to
be swallowed by the sea) sounds like a good idea to me. If you have some
disposable income and don't mind a possibly long wait (and the taxes too), I'd
say go for it.

~~~
JshWright
What do you mean by 'the way population is growing'? The global population
growth rate has been slowing significantly over the past century (it's roughly
half of what it was in the 60's). The growth rate in developed countries is
pretty much universally <1% (and in many cases, negative).

Yeah, we're going to see continued growth in developing nations, but those
rates will slow as well as those nations... develop.

~~~
kichik
I was referring to the sheer number of people being born. Even if the growth
rate is declining, it's still a lot of ever growing number of people looking
for housing.

~~~
JshWright
The sheer number of people being born also has to be compared to the sheer
number of people dying. The growth curve is leveling off quickly, and there is
still a lot of space left.

~~~
kichik
You have bigger fish to fry if growth goes negative. If you think that's going
to be the case soon in your country, maybe retirement homes would be a wiser
investment.

------
jimangel
I heard something recently about how terrible we are at predicting the future
inherently.

I can't find the source, but I heard on a manager tools podcast that ~50 years
ago they surveyed professionals about the future of flight. There was a ton of
predictions about crazy concepts, but the winner was "bigger planes going more
places"

This is also kind of a fun read:
[https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Incorrect_predictions](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Incorrect_predictions)

------
WaltPurvis
Re the Gates quote: Unless you're Ray Kurzweil, in which case you always
overestimate the change that will occur in the next two years and wildly,
ludicrously overestimate the change that will occur in the next ten.

I'm old enough to have lived through the Drexlerian nanotechnology mania, and
the Kurzweilian exponentialism mania, so I've learned to be extremely
skeptical about anyone predicting earth-shattering advances in _any_ field of
technology in a mere decade's time. (The Singularity is _not_ just over the
horizon. Stop. You're _not_ going to live for a thousand years or upload your
mind to a computer. Just _stop_.)

My prediction is 2027 will be almost indistinguishable from 2017, _if_ we're
lucky, i.e., barring nuclear war or some CRISPR-crafted super-virus. However,
if I had to choose a technology surprise for ten years from now it would
involve being unlucky, i.e., the Loss of Everything Good due to an
overwhelming tide of cyberterrorists and cybercriminals. I think few people
(including me) fully appreciate how much destruction and chaos could be
wrought, and how difficult it could be to protect our vital systems, so in
that sense it would catch a lot of people by surprise.

The _optimistic_ technology outlook for 2027 is petabyte thumb drives, 16K
televisions, 8G wireless, cheaper solar cells, and marginally better medical
scanners. It's a pretty uninspiring list, and none of it is surprising.

That's my hope. Please let there be _no_ surprising technology in 10 years.
Because the chances of a good surprise are vastly outweighed by the odds of
bad ones.

~~~
Aron
Hey, are you gonna drink that half-empty beer or can I have it?

------
aquadrop
Well, it's like guessing which number is least likely to be guessed in the
same game. If you could predict it right, it's probably not that surprising :)

~~~
ChuckMcM
Sadly this is all too true. By their nature, surprises are unexpected. That
said, I would be surprised if we had an operating fusion power plant, a
workable age reversing treatment, or a recreational space station.

10 years ago in 2007 I would have been surprised if we had a car that could
drive itself, or a way to edit fairly specific genes.

~~~
oAlbe
> a workable age reversing treatment

Is that really a thing though? I keep hearing about it, articles saying that
the first human to reach 300 years of age is already born etc. But is all this
true? Of all things mentioned so far (AI, VR, AR, fusion power..), this is the
one I have the hardest time imagining. Going from ~90 to 300 in 10 years is a
huge leap compared to even the ~40 to 90 years leap of 200 years ago and
today.

Do you have some trustworthy reading material on the subject?

~~~
ChuckMcM
Remember, the theme "unexpected and surprising" :-) I would be surprised if we
got there in 10 years.

That said, the reasoning on aging/health goes like this:

    
    
       * We understand cells at a chemical level.
       * We can dump out DNA and RNA
       * We understand some of the enzyme reactions involved in cellular biology.
    

When those become;

    
    
       * We understand cells at a chemical and functional level.
       * We can change DNA and RNA precisely of our choosing
       * We understand all of the enzyme reactions involved in cellular biology.
    

Then we would be in a position to tell our cells to do what ever we want.
Fight cancer, sure program a t-cell that can identify it and kill it. Cure a
cold? sequence the rhino virus and flood the immune system to target all cells
with that signature for death. Auto-immune disease? Turn off the triggers that
are generating the immune response. Etc, etc.

We cannot do all these things today but we're working on being able to. Just
as we cannot maintain a stable fusion reaction with net energy output but
we're working on it.

------
namlem
Some sort of inexpensive, portable neuro-imaging device could be huge. It
would allow us to interact with technology almost seamlessly, and solve a lot
of problems. If it becomes ubiquitous, it also solves almost all out security
problems. Brain-based biometrics that work by measuring your brain activity
while you look at a particular image. Unlike other biometrics, it's easily
cancelable and extremely secure. You can change your "password" by selecting a
different image.

It would also grant us the ability to much more effectively monitor our mental
state. I bet it could be extremely helpful in combating anxiety and promoting
mindfulness.

------
Snowdax
VR. Next two years are going to be pretty stagnant. The resolutions, etc. just
are still enthusiast tier.

But 10 years time? We could be seeing the beginning of the end of TVs,
smartphones, cinema, social media, etc. as we know it today. VR arcade
warehouses popping up in many places. Perhaps even starting to impact the
layouts of newly architected houses to have less walls, focus more on wide
one-story dwellings (but stacked on top of each other) and more open space to
roam wide in virtual reality.

------
uptown
Surveillance will not only be pervasive (it already is) but normalized on a
global scale. Read up on China's "Social Credit System" for a glimpse of where
we're headed.

~~~
ash663
A system like the one you mentioned not only encourages surveillance but also
paves way for more corruption at the top level (assuming the government goes
ahead with rating businesses as well). I sincerely hope this system is
abolished before other countries begin implementing it as well.

------
borplk
One of my predictions is that the AI pendulum will swing again at the other
direction and people will wake up again to the reality that AI is far from
achieving the romanticised stuff that the so called experts and book authors
want the public to believe.

We will see gradual incremental improvement in specialised AIs for things like
voice, face and character recognition. We will see an increased usage of AI
and AI based technologies to improve efficiency and assist the humans in
decision making. But it will not put nearly as many people out of jobs as some
people suggest.

~~~
eldavido
Yes and no.

I agree the effects on number of jobs will be smaller than people are
predicting. It won't be mass unemployment.

On the other hand, people need to realize how sensitive the job market really
is. Typical unemployment in the US is 4-5% in the last 10 years. If 1% of the
workforce is put out of work by new technology, something I feel is _very_
likely, that's a 20% increase in unemployment. If it gets much larger, even
maybe 8-9%, there could absolutely be mass riots and outrage.

The point is, job markets are like marriage/dating markets. They aren't
smooth, they're something almost everyone wants, so even tiny little changes
(like NYC's surplus of women) have dramatic, nonlinear effects. I don't think
people appreciate what a "butterfly effect" this will have if, say, 10-20% of
truckers (the most popular occupation in many states) are put out of work.
That's an instant, large-scale political event.

EDIT Source: [https://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2015/unemployment-rate-
and-u-6-...](https://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2015/unemployment-rate-
and-u-6-measure-in-january-2015.htm)

~~~
borplk
Yes I agree that it is sensitive.

The part that annoys me is this backdrop of "machines are going to be doing
everything and no one is going to have anything to do".

When in reality it's going to be an assistant next to the existing people,
increasing efficiency. Like farming tools for a farmer, or auto-pilot for a
pilot, or robo-equipment for a surgeon.

I often hear from non-programmers and non-technical people who somehow seem
convinced that AI is some kind of dark magic that is going to kick in at some
point and everything is going to be magically solved by it.

------
sevensor
New materials. The search space in materials science is so impossibly huge
that it's an endless source of surprises. The last ceramics hype cycle was
about 20 years ago, so we're due for another one. Maybe room-temperature
ceramic superconductors?

~~~
bllguo
I'm biased as I studied MSE but I think this is the best one. All the other
answers - electric cars, AI, robotics, etc. - are already dominating
headlines; they aren't surprising. A new material could be very surprising.
This is a common saying in materials science - notice how the major ages of
human development (bronze age, iron age, even arguably the silicon age) are
named after materials? Who would have predicted them before they occurred?

Unfortunately, from my experience, the turnaround from finding an innovative
new material to actually using it in real products is absurdly long.

------
graycat
I'd vote for by CRISPR and the rest of bio-technology, e.g., as in Eric Lander
and his MIT lectures at YouTube, for, my guesses, better crops, healthier farm
animals, attacking insects, e.g., mosquitoes, attacking causes of infections,
for curing some of the remaining difficult diseases, especially cancer.

A second guess, or a guess for second place, would be _artificial general
intelligence_ (AGI) if and only if someone or some team or project gets going
on that problem and has some good, basic, enabling ideas.

I have some ideas, but since they really are just _architectural_ or
_heuristic_ and not mathematical and not in code I can make only wild guesses
for how good the ideas are.

A third guess, or a guess for third place, is my startup and its crucial core
enabling technology, i.e., some original applied math I derived based on some
advanced pure/applied math prerequisites. Why? In broad terms the core
technology of the startup makes some powerful progress on _meaning_. Is this
progress full AGI? Nope. Does the progress fully solve the problem of meaning?
Nope. To repeat, IMHO the progress is "powerful".

Is the technology widely applicable? The range of applications should be
somewhat wider than the application of my startup, e.g., as some core
technology in some infrastructure for some more applications, but for now my
original applied math is proprietary and in my startup is locked up and
invisible in my server farm.

Why third in this list? Because it doesn't deserve first or second, but, if
people like the results of my applied math and what I've programmed, then my
startup can well become a big thing, big enough to be third on this list in a
few years.

Gee, today I'm wrestling with Microsoft's NTBACKUP. So, today it's grunt work!

~~~
legulere
We already have the possibility to change genes, CRISPR is just making it
easier.

The problem is the lack of understanding and ability to engineer non-trivial
things. (Most GMOs are just Glyphosate resistant or have the BT gene).

I guess we will deepen our understanding but still not be able to change big
things for the next decades

~~~
graycat
Yes, but my guess is that with CRISPR we will be able to do DNA editing and
experiments much faster. Then slowly, but much faster than in the past, we
will be able to figure out, first cut, what some segment of DNA does what and,
second-cut, some of the more complicated ways DNA works.

Then applications to agriculture, medicine, etc. might come along in a nice
stream.

Still, of course, it stands to be a very long line of work to figure out much
about how DNA causes a human actually to "work".

------
Aron
I think the transition to self-driving electric cars as a service will be in
full force by then, and it will only be slowed down by the sheer number of
interlocked changes and requirements to finish that process. The sheer scale
of the numbers will ensure significant palpable changes, and for once, it's a
change occurring in the physical world of atoms.

------
rcarmo
Paraphrasing Douglas Adams, I'd go with a volume knob for children, simply
because it would be quite surprising if someone was able to get that
working...

------
ratherbefuddled
Automated driving plus Uber style infrastructure plus electric vehicles and
improved batteries will start to change the way people use them significantly.
Private car ownership will have peaked and begun falling, people will just
order one on an app and let it drive off after they've arrived to the next
job. Cars will spend much more of the day on the road instead of parked
outside houses or offices rather like aeroplanes. Perhaps not a revolutionary
or surprising idea in itself but I think the speed of this change will be
surprising in hindsight.

~~~
_up
I think with automated cars we don't even need that much improvement in
Batteries. We simply could use self driving battery packs that wait at the
street corner and follow you and dock on, if you need extended Battery-
Mileage. Also since Electric Energy is very expensive for private Consumers in
Germany. Why not order Batteries that can be delivered per self driving car.
Garbage disposal is also very expensive and you can not opt out but you can
order a smaller Bin and maybe order and self driving car to get rid of the
rest cheaper. I actually wonder if this is why the Investor/Trade Agreements
(TTIP) where pushed that hard. Because with these, Investors would have to be
paid compensation if regulation would outlaw these Businesses.

------
felipeccastro
Blockchain, decentralized apps - perhaps based on Ethereum, perhaps not. They
have the potential to enhance capitalism in equivalent ways as the current
wave of "sharing economy" startups (Uber, Airbnb) has done, or even surpass
that.

\- it's much easier for more people to become investors, since buying
coins/tokens will become increasingly easier and common.

\- you won't need to be located at a specific startup hub to launch successful
business, because it's so much easier to get investment from around the world.

\- it has a great approach for solving the "network effect", where no one can
challenge the major players with strong networks, by providing strong
incentives for early adopters to join and grow their networks (either by
buying very cheap tokens, or producing content that will render them "free
money").

\- it enables the creation of new business models that might disrupt (ugh,
sorry) several existing industries, due to how they solve the trust issue
between parties that have no reason to trust each other without a central
controller entity. Some are calling this next wave of startups the "Web 3.0".

Sure, it looks like the wild west now, and there are all sorts of problems
from scams to scalability issues, but maturity might be only a matter of time.

------
ellius
3d printing. My buddy works at a major American industrial manufacturer and
the work he describes is fascinating. They're slowly starting to take on
bigger and bigger chunks of the overall business as their capabilities grow
and different business units discover them. I can only begin to imagine the
host of fields that will be affected by the ability to do really nifty agile
experimentation with physical products.

------
jMyles
Most _surprising_? I'm thinking AR, mostly because it's much less discussed
today than similarly positioned tech, but no less viable.

Also, it seems about time for another psychedelic revival / breakthrough, so
don't count out research on psychoactive plants and compounds (if that counts
as tech per your metric).

------
schnevets
Industry 4.0 and the rise of intelligent manufacturing. A marriage of 3D
printing, AI, and IoT technology will change what consumers can order and how
quickly it arrives to them.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industry_4.0](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industry_4.0)

~~~
tomashertus
I agree with this one. Given the advances in 3D printing, distributed
applications and IoT this concept is inevitable and there will be a big shift
in manufacturing.

Are you working in this field?

------
JustSomeNobody
In the U.S.A.

10 years from now will look surprisingly similar to present day. Political
lobbying will continue (and worsen) to stifle innovation and even iteration.
We'll still have a single choice in ISP. Broadband speeds will still be
ridiculously slow in most parts of the country. Driverless trucks will only
just be getting a foothold, and people will still be wondering where the
driverless cars are. Managers will still expect "butts in chairs", so WFH will
still not be an option for most. We were talking about encryption backdoors in
the 90's (clipper chip), we're still talking about them now and we'll be
talking about them in 10 years.

It will be hotter outside.

10 years, is... just not that far away.

------
legulere
The most surprising thing will be that most things will stay the same as now.

------
frandroid
AR headsets.

There were MP3 players before the iPod, but they weren't taking off quite yet.
Then Jobs came, and the iPod changed the music market. And then changed the
smartphone market. Google Glass was a good first mass market prototype,
Microsoft seems to be going in the right direction with Hololens, but we all
know it's not _quite there_ yet. Whoever manages to figure out what the magic
combination is for an AR headset that gets massive adoption, will usher in the
next UI/portable computing revolution.

------
ponci
"Internet of things". It's one of the few things that is already here,
economically viable, but not organized or "distributed" as Gibson would say.
There's simply no reason not to have connectivity in everything if you do it
well with electronics and it provides value. Maybe not surprising as such, so
you have to figure out the implications which is usually what tends to be the
surprising part.

------
reindeerer
Small satellite and generally small spacecraft will drastically change the
affordability of space, which will drive a lot of new development in space.
It's already creating a lot of demand on market for new, small launchers as
well to actually get significant numbers of sats up there, and it will become
an accelerating loop between nanosat launch providers and small spacecraft
getting more affordable quickly

------
angryasian
usable and realistic holography will be the next big step forward in
visualization and interactivity.

------
frandroid
"Plastics!"

------
scottlegrand2
China cleans up their air and Shenzhen disrupts Silicon Valley, creating a
semi-totalitarian, technocratic city that is somehow more free and libertarian
than Silicon Valley has become.

~~~
thinkmilitant
_checks library_ Yup, that's how I have it in all my cyberpunk books. :)

------
iforgotmypass
I'm kinda surprised noone mentioned teleportation.

Also, what about human-computer interfaces? (communicating with your
smartphone and receiving responses using only thoughts)

------
whataretensors
AI. Nobody knows what will happen, or if/what roadblocks await. If it
continues to scale in the best case, we are in for strange times ahead.

------
corporateslave3
One more is the automation of distributed computing. "Big data" will be
completely encapsulated and hidden to the end user.

------
rajington
Laptops will be replaced by phone-powered VR goggles with wireless keyboards.

------
jboggan
Software will eat programming jobs.

------
donatj
Honestly I think with the mass availability of escapist devices innovation is
largely over.

------
JauntTrooper
Insect-sized mini-drones that will create ubiquitous surveillance.

------
corporateslave3
cryptocurrencies, whole new asset class, wild west

~~~
graycat
If cryptocurrencies get very "wild" as an "asset class", then the US SEC, etc.
will make regulations and/or Congress will pass laws to calm it down.

The powerful governments in the world won't let _crypto_ be means for money
laundering, tax evasion, moving lots of money across country boundaries
secretly, undisclosed assets, inheritance and gifts without taxes, etc.

It may be that the important, remaining, applications will be for cases of
contracts, secure communications, etc.

~~~
rainboiboi
It is one thing to make regulations and the other to enforce.

~~~
graycat
There is an _international system of finance, banking, and money_. There are
rules: If some person, company, or country doesn't play by the rules, then
they are not in the system, and that means that they are limited to at most
very small things.

We know a lot about this system because it got a lot stronger trying to stop
the money flows for terrorism, drugs, and tax evasion.

Well, for the "regulations", one can be that the system will not exchange with
_crypto_ and will not work with people who do. There are already, call it
_reviews_ , of any relatively large transactions. If something smells like
drug money, terrorism, large scale tax evasion, etc., then law enforcement can
get involved, crash into a house or office a 3 AM, grab all the papers and
computers, grab phone tap data, grab Internet traffic data, etc. and put
together a case of violation of _crypto_ laws and regulations.

There's a fundamental point here: Sure, on a small scale, the regulations are
tough to enforce, e.g., cost more to enforce than get from the enforcement.
BUT the fundamental point is, for any illegal activity to make or spend much
money, a LOT of people need to know about it and, then, sure, law enforcement
also knows about it and can take action.

------
subsubsub
Sticks and Stones as high tech weapons of war.

------
JauntTrooper
Tomatoes will taste great again.

------
Danihan
Bioweapons.

------
billconan
I think Robotics will be big.

------
SirLJ
crystal balls, teleportation and time travel

