
Life in 2030 - tempsy
https://a16z.com/2019/12/30/life-in-2030/
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gautamcgoel
I have to say, I find the predictions of this article to be superficial and
far-fetched. Basically, he is just predicting that everything will become
"smart" (i.e., smart clothes, smart homes, smart toilets, smart contracts,
smart food delivery via drones, etc). Some of these things may be worth making
smart. But not every aspect of life is worth making smart; smart devices are
more complex and expensive than their dumb counterparts, and consumers need to
be convinced that the extra expense and complexity is worth it. I'm quite
happy with a regular cotton t-shirt; I don't particularly pine for a "smart
tee" which can measure my libido or whatever.

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GaryNumanVevo
Just wait until your smart underwear measures your libido and automatically
notifies all potential mates in the area

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Iwan-Zotow
would be different for hetero vs homo carrier.

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aabhay
This is going to be a really fun read in ten years when none of it comes true.
And I really mean none — it’s like he tried specifically to make sure that not
a single of his predictions is a serious idea.

Is this a red herring play to his VC friends (enemies) to have them look
thatta way while he invests in good ideas?

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andykx
Some of these ideas are not too far-fetched. Lab “grown” meat, for example,
isn’t too far from becoming a commercially viable product.

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aabhay
But isn’t that the irony that we’ve been reading news stories about lab grown
meat for 20 years, while the real breakthrough product (Beyond Meat) is
basically a souped up veggie patty?

I feel that when we assume technology as the root of progress, we reverse
engineer the past and future to seem causally linked to it

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nickgrosvenor
Wow. This is a surprisingly terrible take on the next ten years.

If he did this prediction ten years ago, he’d probably predict we’d all be
using our blackberry’s to automatically checkout DVD’s in blockbuster by 2020.

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ilaksh
AR contacts -- Samsung has a patent. It's a matter of miniaturization. Has a
chance. Many people trying hard currently.

Toilet analyzing urine -- prototypes have existed for years. Massive potential
to improve preventative healthcare, so very strong financial incentive to
deploy.

Robot kitchens -- limited prototypes exist. Massive financial incentive
because of the huge savings of food prepared in the kitchen versus takeout.

Robotic delivery -- prototypes exist. Very strong financial incentives.

Lab grown meat -- exists. Potential huge benefits for the environment.

Small autonomous vehicles -- huge savings in energy over larger vehicles that
aren't fully occupied.

Robotic tail and telepresence robotic arms: existing products.

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waiseristy
This article is highly highly optimistic of what we can achieve in 10-15
years. 20-40 would be perfectly believable. Also, a meeting between Paris,
Portland, and Cambodia? Do timezones not exist in the future?

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buzzkillington
I've had a meeting between San Fransisco, London and Tokyo. Timezones exist,
and it's the timezone which the CEO is in that is the one everyone else dances
to.

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tempsy
honestly I too thought most of these predictions were borderline absurd. 10
years is too short of a time period for the step changes in consumer behavior
predicted here.

I mean Americans by and large still use dumb toilets despite entire nations
like Japan that have largely embraced tech-enabled (though not necessarily
smart) toilets for a long, long time.

If you can’t convince Americans to buy toilets with seat warmers and cleaning
tech then I don’t see how we’re all suddenly going to adopt multi thousand
dollar toilets that analyze our pee.

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pgodzin
Definitely agree. I would be more agreeable to the notion of installing tiny
senors to retrofit existing toilets for a lot of the analytical functionality.

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davidivadavid
Here's a simple test: do people actually _want_ their lives to ressemble this?
I'd wager most people don't want most of that stuff. It manages to both
provide very little perceivable value, and looks to completely suck the life
out of most things through rationalization.

To be fair, some of those things do seem valuable (mostly the health related
stuff), and some things may actually appear in a different form, but the
storytelling here is some of the least compelling I've seen in a while.

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thedudeabides5
Least realistic like in the whole thing was a throwaway like about the end of
Excel...

100pct that when Katie needs to plan her custom clothes in 2030 she’s still
using Excel.

100pct that when Katie does send an excel file to her ops department in 2030
with the outline of what’s needed, her engineering department will grumble
about how bad excel is, and then fail to build a suitable replacement.

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djohnston
I can't imagine more than 20% of this happening, and even then, it will only
be available to super rich people with an interest in this sort of tech, i.e.
it's not going to be our lives in 2030.

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purplezooey
The thing about the toilet. So many predictions about toilets have failed.
Still looking the same since the 40s or 50s.

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tjr225
This video seems totally absurd. Our world in 2030 will be nothing like the
one pictured here... one wonders how you could give this talk and be
considered intelligent or perceptive whatsoever.

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Wordball
>My day job is to think about my 16-year-old daughter's piss

Ok Joe

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dang
Can you please stop posting unsubstantive comments to HN, regardless of how
provocative something somebody says is?

