

Poll: Hottest new area in technology? - LordJawsh

In HN's opinion, what is the hottest area in tech at the minute? Also, what do you predict the next 'big thing' in tech will be?<p>Its a bit of an open ended question so feel free to be as creative as you like with the answer.
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iuguy
Hottest area? Cyberwarfare - it's about to hit the peak of the hype cycle, but
there's still substantial problems and money to be had for the right
solutions.

The next big thing in tech (by which I mean PC big, Internet big or Windows
big) will be bio-integration, by which I mean interfaces that interact with or
augment biological functions.

The hacks we're seeing on Kinect will eventually filter into products. We've
already seen circuits implanted on contact lenses. We're already seeing
augmented reality on phones becoming normal.

Now, imagine glasses that project displays Layar style several feet in front
of you. Imagine contact lenses that do this, or that change shape depending on
where you're looking and how you're focusing.

We already have prototypes of these things, or are part-way along the way to
achieving them within the next 5-20 years.

Now imagine map systems that talk to a wristwatch that 'pulls' north or
towards your route so you don't need to use a screen to orient your
surroundings. Imagine walking into a room and closing the curtains with a
gesture. Turn the volume up and down like a conductor.

Those last ones are possible with current technology, they just need to find
their way into commercial products.

So you're meeting a friend at a cafe and you're running late. They can see a
pointer to where you are, and their contact lenses are automatically notified
of where you are 5 minutes before you're meant to meet them (through notifo
8.0, natch). It's ok though because your coffee order was put through and they
know not to begin to fulfil your order until you get within 100m of the café.
Your friend gets notified of the great Vancouver coffee riot (due to crop
failures there's no coffee in Vancouver, the withdrawal was a powder keg
waiting to explode) as they followed the hashtag, articles from the New York
Post mingle with tweets in a semi-transparent newspaper style display about 3
feet from them, but your friend likes old fashioned themes. They get pinged
automatically once you're about to come around the corner (thanks to a YC
funded Google Maps/Notifo mashup) just in time for your coffee.

We have the tech for almost all of that already, the main issues are
bandwidth, integration and battery power, and the lenses.

Now Imagine a wrist-based device that monitors your heart beat by collecting
data from sensors on your chest, can work out your blood sugar level from the
flow of magnetically charged sugar-bound nano particles and that can
administer insulin through a peripheral catheter.

Bizarrely, we have the sensors, we have the potential to create the
nanoparticles within the next 5-20 years, the only issue is the administration
(currently it would be a catheter or subcutaneous administration for some, but
alternatives are in the works). With that technology we could use it to
administer all kinds of stuff.

Now imagine all of that combined with the ability to interact with people both
near you and on the other side of the world with no difference, save some lag.

You could be sat there in the US, having your meds and numbers monitored
remotely from Manilla by trained staff, and your meds will administer once it
notices a significant adverse change. You could then blink, then look towards
the menu item you want to bring up and see your granddaughter's school recital
in Paris streamed over the Internet and watch it as though you're there (or
rather you could if Flash wasn't such a hog and your glasses kept stuttering,
maybe time for an upgrade to iGlasses 2?) and not miss the 49ers game.

That's where I think we're headed. I think that will be the biggest thing in
tech until we're replacing organs cloned from the patient's own cells and can
grow blood in a machine.

Anyway, that's just my 2p worth (perhaps 20p then!). what does everyone else
think, am I nuts?

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mindcrime
Big Data / Data Mining / Machine Learning 'ish stuff. Yeah, that's kinda
broad, but generally speaking there's a lot of cool stuff going on there. Of
course everybody is all amped up about AI at the moment because of Watson, but
even outside of Watson there's a lot of stuff going on in this sphere.

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forgotAgain
A quote from "When Computers Beat Humans on Jeopardy" by Ray Kurzwell in the
WSJ. Search Google for non-paywalled access.

 _The fact that millions of farmers in China can access most of human
knowledge with devices they carry in their pockets ..._

It's not just Chinese farmers. There are now tens and soon hundreds of
millions of people walking around with most of human knowledge available at
their fingertips.

The next big thing will be what enables them to make use of that information.

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bobf
Big data analysis is currently hot, and will almost certainly only get hotter.
You can apply big data analysis in many areas, but only a few have been tapped
so far. What used to be $CRAZY_EXPENSIVE amounts of computing power can be
leveraged to provide new insights into existing fields. In a word: Hadoop.
Combine that with your NoSQL tech of choice (HBase, Cassandra, Riak, etc).

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AngeloAnolin
Data Visualization.

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bloodcarter
The best way to predict the future is to invent it.

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danielnicollet
SaaS

