
ASK HN: What emerging technologies do you think will trend in 2020 and why? - IsraCV
What emerging technologies do you think will trend in 2020 and why?
======
indescions_2017
Optical computing.

Quantum ICs attract billions in research dollars. With cybersecurity perhaps
being the key industry driver. But recent materials and design advancements in
"electronic-photonic" interfaces have yielded incredible boosts to matrix
multiplication and FFT calculation. And the temptation to create machine
learning and AI capable mobile devices may speed adoption of a new generation
of photonics.

Lightmatter, a startup using light to accelerate artificial intelligence, wins
the 2017 MIT $100K Entrepreneurship Competition

[http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/lightmatter-a-
startu...](http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/lightmatter-a-startup-
using-light-to-accelerate-artificial-intelligence-wins-
the-2017-mit-100k-entrepreneurship-competition-300460259.html)

Light-Powered Computers Brighten AI’s Future

[https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/light-powered-
com...](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/light-powered-computers-
brighten-ai-rsquo-s-future/)

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gamechangr
This is asked and answered many times on Quora...take a peak there and you
will find plenty of answers.

Here is a similar question for example: [https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-
top-10-emerging-technolog...](https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-
top-10-emerging-technologies-in-the-next-5-10-years-2020–2025)

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Top19
Wireless charging on a level not seen yet. The idea might be for a wireless
charging network similar to what we already have for cell phones, so each
tower has a 3 mile or so radius. You’ll never be without power in a sense that
you’re not, most of the time, without cell coverage.

This would help a lot with the limits we are approaching with batteries, as
well as the environmental effects associated with their production.

Long term, people are proposing the collection of solar energy in space, and
the resulting energy beamed down in microwaves to the “cell towers” so
described above.

~~~
sgillen
Maybe you are aware of a breakthrough that I am not, but the technology you
describe does not sound feasible to me. If you're transmitting power
everywhere that's an R^2 relationship under ideal circumstances, you'd have to
pump a HUGE amount of energy into the air to charge everyone's cellphones in a
three mile radius.

Maybe you can do beam forming and try to direct the energy at the phone you
are interested in? Still seems like a big challenge though.

~~~
sova
Wireless Energy Transmission by Nikola Tesla pointed to an entirely different
approach. Using the earth as a resonant cavity, signals of electric conduition
could be intoned and subsequently amplified by "striking" at the appropriate
time and place on the globe, eventually saturating the well of the earth with
such strong ambient electrical potential that anyone could stick an antenna
into the ground and harvest electricity. Of course, no one has really
demonstrated this yet, and these findings are based on my own research, but
Tesla surely thought he was onto something and it does seem like a logical
endpoint of wireless energy, that it would be freely and easily available
anywhere on the planet. It is very much different from putting up cell towers
and blasting powerful radiation, but maybe we will compromise with a hybrid
approach.

~~~
nolok
My original comment was meant to remind you that many who looked at that part
of tesla's work concluded it was mostly not going to work and kind of a dream.

Then I reminded myself that many of the technologies I'm using to tell you
that suffered the same so, eh, I don't believe it will but who knows! And I
hope it does.

~~~
sova
:D Precisely!

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saimiam
Micro dosing and "augmented" reality.

~~~
sova
Micro dosing is the way.

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chrisco255
Solar. AR/VR. AI. IOT. Blockchain. Robotics. I think we're at the cusp of a
platform explosion. I honestly wonder if we even have enough engineers to
fully explore all these burgeoning fields.

~~~
sova
We don't, and we could have many more brilliant minds working on such things!
Let's get more people out of survival mode so we can all flourish

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jetti
Blockchain.

While it may not fit some people's definition of emerging I think we will see
implementations outside of cryptocurrency. I know some clearing companies
(related to the stock/futures/etc markets) are interested in it and so are
banks. I can see them having something implemented in the next 3 years, even
if it is just something that does a very small share of their business. I'm
very excited to see applications of blockchain outside of cryptocurrency!

~~~
devopsproject
it would be a nice replacement for credit agencies

~~~
jetti
It would definitely make it easier to dispute when you made payments but the
collection company/company says that you haven't. Checking the blockchain
would prove one party correct rather than he said, she said.

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Herodotus_2
I have a somewhat darker view: I expect we will see an increase in more
flexible, more robust equipment as climate stresses increase... At least the
emergence of that sort of a market. I bet a lot of people, after those
hurricanes, would be interested in phones that still work in emergencies.

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quickthrower2
Haskell. There is a clear advantage in having a strong type system that lets
you develop in userland what can only be language features in lesser
languages. And language features means wait for it to be developed.

Also the compile time certainty that things line up is hard to live without.

~~~
demygale
I would be willing to be a significant amount of money that Haskell will not
be a mainstream language in my lifetime.

~~~
quickthrower2
Maybe not Haskell itself but very likely a derivative.

Look at it this way. ReactJS is functional programming but in JS. The natural
home of this way of building UI is in a ML like language. Can already be done
in purescript for example.

Once people get their heads around react and reduces, changing to a type
system like ML will yield obvious advantages

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LarryMade2
Augmented Reality

Supportive tech for Self-Driving Cars (Travel planner, guides, entertainment,
portable charging technology for Electrics

Semi-Autonomous Drone networking/clustering for coordinated tasks

Emergency response technologies involving drones/self-driving vehicles

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forgotmyacc
Augmented Reality. After Pokemon Go went viral and the iPhone X including AR
Kit. AR will be the next 200$ hour job.

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EGreg
Solar Panels.

Decentralized energy generation and cellphone signals.

Local currencies and social apps.

Decentralization in general.

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sova
Utilizing blockchain + gitlike versioning for legal systems. _kneels down to
pray_

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hijinks
solar for residental

kubernetes running a lot of companies workloads

blockchain for things people never thought they'd use a ledger for.

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noam87
Synthetic biology.

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SirLJ
Crystal balls for everyone

