
Whatever happened to the Next Big Things? - PanosJee
https://techcrunch.com/2019/12/22/whatever-happened-to-the-next-big-things/
======
peter303
The Internet of Things is still developing. A wireless security system may
contain several dozen wireless sensors. Another recent trend is to put all
sorts of devices under voice assistant control.

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babesh
\- smart bulbs, switches, security cameras, voice controlled home

\- drones finding more and more uses

\- deploying to cloud becoming more and more defined with data

\- AI is in every company's toolset

\- much cheaper to launch things into space

\- electric cars and solar for the home

\- digitization of many previously physical tools: ex: 3-d scans of teeth
instead of casts, checkout, money, etc...

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tabtab
I'd estimate for every 10 tech and gizmo fads, 6 die, 3 find a nice but small
niche, and 1 takes off big. I'm ignoring those that may come back several
decades later, when surrounding technology catches up.

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elkos
I tend to see that maybe the most interesting and exciting stuff about "Next
Big Things" are left untapped and will re-emerge to the future in niche
markets that could benefit from these concepts.

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JohnClark1337
The author seems to forget that the internet existed in the 70's and 80's, and
smartphones existed before 2009. Back then they were experimental and many
people thought they might go away, and they might have gone away if they
weren't then refined into technologies that average consumers could more
easily use.

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spunker540
I think animal-less meat is a “next big thing” that will 10x in short time.
KFC and Burger King have their own vegan options, oat milk is the hot new
thing. My question is how can I as a software developer get in on the
ballooning ethically-sourced food industry?

~~~
asdf21
Start a soylent competitor?

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allo37
I feel like a lot of "Next Big things" incubate for much longer than people
realize. It's usually that some technological tipping point is reached where a
good-yet-impractical idea suddenly becomes just a practical idea and it takes
off.

If someone said that computers were a "dead" next big thing when they were
invented, they would have been considered right until the advent of integrated
circuits!

~~~
njarboe
Patents last 20 years, so when a new big thing gets discovered people and
companies quickly patent lots of things about it. Then, 20 years later, the
patents have expired and you can start to have a large amount of new interest
as people are not constrained by the patents anymore.

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wildermuthn
AR/VR is still the next big thing. The hardware only recently became good
enough to host a killer-app.

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pascalxus
We saw very rapid development in technologies in the 20th century. In the 21st
century tech is still rapidly developing but far far less impactful. It seems
the only areas we've really made large progress in is Entertainment and
medical capabilities. If you look at US GDP growth per capita for the last 20
years, we're down to about 1%, far slower than the preceding 100 years.

People kind of assume that tech development will always be there and even
increase but I don't think that's an assumption we can make.

To be truely impactful, the development needs to be in areas that are
important to humanity. Where are those areas? it's all in Maslow's heirarchy
of needs. Most human beings (99% ~ even those in supposedly 1st world
countries) are at the bottom-most level: Shelter, Food. In this modern world,
you need 3 other things as well: Transportation to go to the job, education to
get the job, and medical insurance to keep the money you earn. to be truely
impactful, innovation needs to happen in one of those 5 major areas: shelter,
food, transporation, education or medical.

~~~
pasttense01
Medical capabilities?

No way. Life expectancy is going DOWN in the U.S. While true that this is
because of the opioid problem, if there were substantial improvements in
medicine these improvements would save more lives than opioids were killing.

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silverlake
His chart for Internet use goes from 1995 to 2019. He forgets that TCP/IP was
invented in 1974. So it took 20 years to get to 16M users. The first cell
phone was invented in 1983. The first personal computer around 1975. Even
neural networks were developed before 1970. All big ideas take much longer
than everyone thinks.

~~~
asdf21
So what got invented in the last ten years that is going to be huge?

I'd go with Crispr.. and stem cell therapy.

~~~
boublepop
Weight loss drugs. Not just like all those historical diets that don’t
actually work, but real proven weight loss drugs that stays after you stop
taking them. Current products show around 7% weight loss, but once they hit
around 20%, that’s enough to unleash a snowball effect that keeps people going
all the way to their target weight. Those might actually wipe out obesity
completely.

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Impossible
Unfortunately one of the more interesting responses on this post is from a
shadow banned account (JohnClark1337).

 _The author seems to forget that the internet existed in the 70 's and 80's,
and smartphones existed before 2009. Back then they were experimental and many
people thought they might go away, and they might have gone away if they
weren't then refined into technologies that average consumers could more
easily use._

~~~
grzm
If you see a dead post you think is worth resurrecting, click on the time
stamp and vouch for it.

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Izkata
The failure of chatbots was pretty easy to guess IMO: Anyone else remember
SmarterChild from AIM? We got the same wave-of-the-future hype back when it
first appeared (albeit on a smaller scale), not much happened then either.

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ci5er
Given the success of Alexa and Siri (and various voice->NLP interfaces in
varous settings) - why do you say that chat-bots have failed? (Maybe you are
using a different definition than I?)

~~~
Izkata
Yeah, sounds like a different definition - Alexa and Siri are more like query-
bots than chatbots. Mine is probably more in-line with the article (which
unfortunately didn't define it), which uses Tay as an example of a chatbot.

~~~
ci5er
Ok - thanks. I'm not sure there is a bright-line distinction, then.

I use a set of chat-bot related APIs to implement CLIs for various EHR-related
and clinical-related applications (Navigating kajillions of options in EHR
menus requires, famously, too many damn clicks. Physicians are intelligent
enough to learn simple syntax to avoid all that crap)

I'm probably using the wrong words when I describe it, but when I tell
developers in the ecosystem that we have a "chatbot-like" interface, people
seem to get it, so I haven't upgraded my nomenclature.

~~~
abrichr
> I use a set of chat-bot related APIs to implement CLIs for various EHR-
> related and clinical-related applications

I'd love to learn more about this. Who are your customers? What are the use
cases? Can you share a link where I can read more?

Thanks!

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Animats
He forgot 3D TV.

The consumer electronics industry is desperate for something new they can sell
to everybody. VR headgear was the last big hope. There's nothing after that
nearing production. The industry is forced into price competition on existing
stuff. Look how cheap huge-screen TVs have become.

This is the downside of the "digital convergence" \- no need for new hardware;
new things are just apps.

Some of the next big things turned out to be too hard. Flying cars - batteries
still too heavy, jet engines still too expensive. Self-driving - harder to do
than expected, hardware too expensive. Internet of Things - to do much of
anything that affects the real world, it requires installation, which Silicon
Valley isn't set up to do. (If "we service what we sell" Sears was still
around...) That's also the big problem with home solar. Robot vacuum cleaners
- still not very good vacuums. Robots that can handle things - robotic
manipulation in unstructured situations still works badly after 50 years.

~~~
zone411
Something like Looking Glass (3D without glasses) could be the next hope for
the TV manufacturers.

~~~
agumonkey
At one point they'll run out of resolution increase to sell.. 16k ...
volumetric 32k .. holographic 2kiloK

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baron816
Cloud computing was at one point a NBT. And it turned out to be a huge thing,
but most people don’t even know what it is.

~~~
jakobegger
I think cloud computing is an implementation detail that nobody outside of
tech really cares about. People who sell IT services try to spin it as this
big thing, but for people outside the industry it's just not such a big thing.
Yes, it's easier to rent servers on demand now, but does that really make such
a big difference?

To me it's similar to how engines with direct fuel injection are so much more
efficient, easier to handle, more reliable than engines with a carburetor.
They were so much better that no current car uses a carburetor any more. But
nobody would say that better gasoline engines were the big new thing that
happened in the 90ies.

~~~
benibela
Is cloud computing not just a rebranding of mainframes?

Although cloud gaming could be the next big thing. Now people can play even if
they cannot afford a gaming pc (I for one have not had a dedicated gpu for
like 15 years)

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dredmorbius
In looking at technological revolutions, since the 1700s or so, there've been
at least 4 generally acknowledged (textiles, steam, electricity, electronics),
though arguably numerous others, among the more notable:

1\. The textiles revolution, involving automated (repeated-process or
repeated-cycle) and powered (waterwheel) processing.

2\. Steam, itself occurring over at least three stages, Newcomen (1712), Watt
(1776), and high-pressure steam (1800). Arguably also the Parsons steam
turbine (1884), still a power mainstay.

3\. Metallurgy, most especially iron and steel, with puddling (Henry Cort,
1784) and Bessemer (1856), though there've been major 20th century
improvements. Also aluminium smelting (Hall–Héroult process, 1886), and other
strategic metals.

4\. Coal-tar chemistry, giving rise to the first synthetic dyes and chemicals,
1840s. Closely related, film and photographic techniques.

5\. Electricity and electrical apparatus: motors, dynamos, lights,
phonographs, telegraphy, telephony, radio, speakers, lifts, electrified
transport, and more. Generally 1870s - 1890s.

6\. Petroleum and internal combustion. 1859 - 1880s. Self-contained liquid-
fueled powerplants and transport with high power-to-weight ratios and rapid
throttle response.

7\. Petroleum-based chemistry, artificial fibres, explosives, and fertilisers.
I'll add in viscose rayon (1889), though most of the synthetic plastics were
created ~1920-1940. Nitrogen chemistry gave rise to explosives, with natural
gas as a feedstock, but also fertilisers. Artificial rubber and tarmacadam
pavements. Other general chemistry might be included, covering organic
(carbon-based), carbon allotrope (buckyballs, nanotubes), semiconductor,
alloys, battery tech, continuing to present.

8\. Electronics: radio, television, vacuum tubes, transistors, integrated
circuits, and lasers. These all involve channel creation, signal encoding and
decoding, amplification, transmission, receivers, and encoding / decoding.
1896 - 1960s.

9\. Radioactivity and nuclear chemistry and reactions. Applications in both
power and informational domains (latter, especially: medical and industrial
imaging). 1890s - 1960s.

10\. Quantum effects: semiconductors, photovoltaics, and other
materials/electronics applications for the most part. 1905 - 1960s.

11\. Genetics. Most especially the structure, nature, and manipulation of DNA,
RNA, and proteins. 1953 - present.

12\. Specific vehicle design and control, most particularly of air- and space-
craft.

13\. Large programme- and system-organisation and control. This includes both
engineering projects, and their work-product and processes. Effectively, the
management of complexity at scale.

14\. Awareness, mitigation, and avoidance of second-order effects: unintended
consequences and hygiene factors.

I've been noodling for a few years on an ontology of techological mechanisms,
with nine that seem to stand out: 1) materials, 2) fuels, 3) process
knowledge, 4) structural/causal knowledge, 5) power transmission and
transformation, 6) networks, 7) systems, 8) information, and 9) hygiene /
consequences. There's some overlap between these and the major phases
described above.

There are also the _pre-_ 1700 technical revolutions, including moveable-type
print, advanced architecture, mathematics, writing, the wheel, agriculture,
and speech, among others, each with major impacts.

Most of the notable developments of the past 50 years have been in the area of
information technology specifically. Robert J. Gordon's _The Rise and Fall of
American Growth_ looks at numerous areas of technological advance and finds
most wanting. I'd argue that the realm of limits is underappreciated -- the
environmental movement of the 1950s onward, the oil shocks of the 1970s, the
ozone crisis, environmental contamination in the form of lead, tobacco,
aasbestos, mercury, and other contaminants, CO2 and climate change, and though
pressing awareness has dimmed somewhat, peak oil and its implications. This
may become clearer in future, and represents the 9th class of my ontology
above.

The problem with information technologies alone is that _at best_ they can
only focus other efforts and activities (and they often carry their own
negative effects and risks).

But yeah, delivery has been ... somewhat meh for the past decade.

~~~
dredmorbius
Also: many techs in the article have a _much_ longer time-horizon than
indicated.

TCP/IP / packet-switched networks date from _the early 1960s_. Apple's first
smart-tablet, the Newton, famously flopped. I remember seeing one at work in
the early 1990s and saying "why would anyone want anything like that?" Given
its capabilities, or more accurately, limitations, that was accurate.

IoT two decades ago was powering the first generation of pop-up ads as X10
home-automation systems. Blockchain is rebranded Merkel trees, dating to 1979.

Drones, as with most other aircraft-based technology, is a matter of
lightweighting systems sufficiently, at a reasonable cost, to enable them to
remain aloft. Even now, the popular copter-drones have only a few minutes of
operating time. Further lightweighting, fixed-wing, fuel-based, or other
changes are likely still required.

Self-driving cars are a problem of complex nature in which further
enhancements to basic automation provide ever-increasing domains of
application.

AR/VR suffers from human-machine interfaces. Simulator sickness
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulator_sickness](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulator_sickness))
affects professional pilots -- a device that makes a substantial portion of
the population physically (and projectilely) ill will have limited uptake.

Neil Postman's Seven Questions remain highly relevant:

1\. What is the problem that this new technology solves?

2\. Whose problem is it?

3\. What new problems do we create by solving this problem?

4\. Which people and institutions will be most impacted by a technological
solution?

5\. What changes in language occur as the result of technological change?

6\. Which shifts in economic and political power might result when this
technology is adopted?

7\. What alternative (and unintended) uses might be made of this technology?

~~~
Impossible
I strongly disagree that simulator sickness is the major adoption barrier for
VR. It's a problem, sure but most games and applications do not have the same
motion disconnect as a flight simulator would and developers have got pretty
good at making high to moderate comfort games, even with heavy locomotion.

The biggest adoption problem is quality VR games (Beat saber is really the
only true stand out hit), followed by comfort and form factor of the hardware,
followed by marketing a perception of VR. I don't think VR will ever be a
smartphone or PC sized market but assuming current growth is maintained it
will be a small game console sized market (10-20 million units) in a few
years. This could be seen as a failure or a future that never arrived because
VR won't be truly mainstream, but for all major players except Facebook (Sony,
Valve) I think it will be viewed as a success.

AR hardware should be separated out as well because I think the challenges
there are also applications but also technical difficulty. The mythical always
on high resolution glasses or contact form factor display that could be a
smartphone replacement is a lot longer away than advertised I think. If and
onc technical and design challenges are reasonably solved AR hardware could
take off.

~~~
joefourier
I am surprised by the amount of Hackernews users who keep bringing up
simulator sickness as something that is still relevant to VR. Anyone who’s
tried any headset since the first consumer Oculus and Vive should realise that
it’s essentially a solved problem: the headsets have low enough latency and
good enough tracking, and you simply have to avoid smooth locomotion (moving
the player’s viewpoint without him moving his head).

~~~
Impossible
Many HN users are "stuck" in ~2014 era VR (cardboard, DK2, maybe Vive) and
haven't really paid attention to VR because it became a small game industry
market, as opposed to another market capable of capturing value from existing
industries with low effort. To be fair many years in the future I do think VR
has the potential to disrupt some of the travel market and take over most of
the video conferencing market.

