
Ask HN: What will the world be like in 10 years? - mariushn
How do you think a particular industry you&#x27;re familiar with will be like in 10 years? Or other aspects of the world?
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acesubido
In 2029? I don't mean to sound "apocalyptic", but currently we're on track
with a lot of global warming projections, 2030-2052 is the 1.5deg temp
projection ([https://www.c2es.org/content/ipcc-1-5-degree-c-special-
repor...](https://www.c2es.org/content/ipcc-1-5-degree-c-special-report/)). So
by 2029 time we might be at 1.3 or 1.4.

I don't know much about other industries, but I do know what happens when
there's a long and hot summer in where I live. The water shortage was so
alarming in Manila this summer, so I expect water shortages in certain parts
of the world to be more exaggerated than what happened this year. Any industry
that deals to contain/service water/ice during heat waves will be raking in
cash.

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taf2
I think we will have self driving cars. A lot more fully electric cars. Much
more practical home automation. Hopefully a commercial space craft will be on
mars. Good chance for the first time co2 levels will either be stabilized or
declining but not increasing. Smart phones will use transparent aluminum
([https://youtu.be/DduO1fNzV4w](https://youtu.be/DduO1fNzV4w)) this will
pretty much end the cell phone repair industry...

We will probably have way more cameras that are doing all kinds of scary
facial recognition for good and evil.

I’m hopefully we’ll have made some pretty steady progress with crisper gene
editing and have a far better understanding of the role of bacteria in the
body for good...

I think the future is bright

~~~
vladojsem
I would argue here that fully self-driving cars are not so close. Not in 10
years definitely.

The problem is not so easy and we are quite far from solving it. It can work
on the highway and great weather conditions. Yet, what will happen in the
narrow streets of Italian cities? What will happen in a situation that is hard
to predict? Would there be some service guy who would come and 'help' the car
off the road? Not to mention traffic and safety regulations tec.

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vladojsem
People tend to overestimate the technology growth in the next 10 years. The
good idea is to pause and look back for the past 10 years? Were there some
huge inventions during that time, something groundbreaking that changed a lot?
Yes, there were few amazing inventions that happened (spread of smartphones),
but in general daily human life did not change dramatically due to technology.

~~~
chrisco255
I mean, I'd you asked me this question in anytime between 1995 and 2007 I
would completely disagree with you. But I feel the past decade has been
relatively iterative and not as revolutionary.

I think around the early 1900s people experienced rapid technological changes
as the automobile and electricity spread throughout the U.S. within a decade
or two. I think change happens rapidly but in spurts. I believe the 2020s will
be another period of rapid change.

~~~
vladojsem
Why do you believe the 2020s will be a period of rapid change?

~~~
chrisco255
I think it will be the beginning of the age of automation and we'll see
breakthroughs in robotics, VR/AR, space tech, biotech, energy, and finance.

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drallison
Field observations (e.g. glacial melting, CO2 levels, methane levels) tend to
be wildly underestimated by the forecasting systems of a few years ago.
Resource based systems dynamics simulations tend to predict collapse about
2030. We are seeing a species die-off worldwide both in terms of flora and
fauna. Fishery collapse, measured by catch-size, is predicted to occur about
2048. David Wallace-Wells's _The Uninhabitable Earth: Life after Warming_ is a
frightening summary of what we can expect and is probably not too out-of-date.

In ten years everyone, even current climate change deniers, will be fighting
to survive in a much changed world; in thirty, humans may be possibly have
gone extinct, or be well on the way to being so.

~~~
chrisco255
This is absolutely ridiculous. Crop yields are up 40% since 1988, population
growth has slowed, there's more energy technology than ever before, and the
sea level is rising at a mere 3mm a year.

The basic needs for life are food, shelter, and water. For modern life, energy
is required. But we have virtually unlimited energy vis-a-vis nuclear
technology (if we have the will to use it). Solar tech has gotten only cheaper
and cheaper and battery tech has gotten only more efficient. There is
absolutely no reason to believe that there will be less than the current
population in 10, 20, or even 50 years. Period.

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tmm84
I think desktop/laptop computers that are standalone will be a niche again.
Chromebooks, iPad Pros and the like will make always online a requirement not
a luxury.

Facial/voice recognition along with AI that will constantly try to figure you
out is definitely gonna happen.

As for the USA, the telecom, entertainment and tech industries will join
forces to become Ma-Bell 2.0 (control over your social media, traditional
media and telecommunications). Social security will finally end with everyone
having to invest on their own. The middle class will continue to shrink or
disappear.

Digital currency will be the new dollar to get paid in.

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CM30
Well I think we'll see at least one currently popular site/service go the way
of the dodo, either through legal issues or a simple decline in popularity to
the point its not profitable anymore. 10 years is a pretty long time in
internet years, and it seems quite rare for a large site or service to stay
popular for that amount of time (or even decades).

I still don't see the media finding a good monetisation model, and I suspect
by then most of the remaining news sources run by for profit companies will
have died off for good.

The games industry probably won't have changed too much by this point, since
VR still seems a fair way off and streaming services are highly unpopular with
current audiences. I do hold a small amount of hope that Nintendo will have
realised the demand for Wario Land 6 by then, and that some sort of proper
Paper Mario revival might be on the cards, but I've hoped for that for a while
now. Lootboxes may be classified as gambling by then too.

Not going to predict anything web development or tech related, since those
fields change a lot, and well, who knows what things will look like after 6000
different JavaScript frameworks have come and gone. All we can know there is
that HTML, CSS and JavaScript will probably be used for websites and apps in
some form or another.

Finally on a political note... well a schism may be on the horizon in some
societies. At least, the US seems to be more and more divided between the
'left' and 'right', and the cultural values underpinning both sides seem to
completely unreconcilable at this point in time. So I can see tensions
building, politics becoming more divided and fraught and things getting worse
until eventually, one side tries to change the law (or constitution) in a way
that breaks the camel's back and things just collapse.

I also see at least one 'first world' country ending up as a dictatorship, if
only because the rise of populism and authoritarianism seems to be an issue
just about everywhere right now.

But those are just a few minor predictions right now.

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buboard
well. 10 years is too soon. lets say 20 years. computers have become some kind
of wearable. natural language has replaced programming - people dictate their
programs to machine learning systems.

Almost all jobs that physically allow it have become remote. Most people are
co-living in nice places outside big cities. The institution of marriage is
abandoned. Most jobs have not yet been automated - and in the ones that have
been, workers have been able to find work of equal skill levels. Genetic
engineering of children and artificial wombs become the norm. GEnetic
modifications do happen, but very very carefully (after a number of initial
failures).

~~~
subjectsigma
This seems ... Ambitious. Even if it could happen, I'm not sure I would want
it to. Sounds like a world where privacy, intimacy, computer literacy,
community, and family ties are all severely degraded.

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bjourne
The world will be hotter. Much hotter. :(

