
Ask HN: What do you think will be “the next big thing”? - Biba89
I found some interesting articles on this topic, but HN always gave me great insights regarding technology and business.<p>I would like to hear your opinion about the potential next big thing(s).
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invalidOrTaken
Children---the conceiving, raising, and educating of.

Smart people aren't having kids. Many of those who do, pass off their care to
strangers or government schools. When they get out of high school, we're not
sure what to do with them---higher education is riddled with problems, but so
is entry-level hiring.

Will we have self-driving cars in 2038? Because we _will_ have 18-yr-olds.

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giantg2
There are too many people.

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muzani
People aren't the problem. The problem is people who have negative value.

A person can grow more food, build more homes, improve the environment,
improve energy usage, staff schools and hospitals. Every negative issue with
overpopulation can be countered with a person.

But there aren't enough useful people. And I think this is an issue with the
system. We do not need more people whose life goal is "financial freedom/FU
money", minimizing taxes paid, and becoming parasites to society. We need more
people creating wealth, but most people are obsessed with trying to get a
larger slice of wealth while contributing as little as possible.

We need to stop trapping people in poverty, where they're useful only for
minimum wage labor, but become a burden on the welfare system. Nobody wants to
live like this, but poverty means they have no choice.

A hack might be only letting people who want children and want to take care of
children have kids, and have multiple kids. While those who don't like kids
get improved access to birth control.

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qlk1123
> A hack might be only letting people who want children and want to take care
> of children have kids, and have multiple kids.

How? We can not even achieve that for pets. Can you come up with any valid
qualification process for this?

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muzani
It's too big a problem to go into detail, but it's more of a social/cultural
problem and the wrong incentives.

Poorer families and cultures are encouraged to have kids, because kids can
bring in more money, take care of other kids, feed their parents. People are
often told, "Who's going to take care of you when you get old?" Having kids as
an investment/retirement plan is bad.

Then there are those who really want kids and would love to take care of them.
2-child policies are bad for them and the punishment can be too harsh. It's
better for those people to have 4 kids, while other individuals have 0.

Policies should be more towards the quality of kids and not quantity. One of
the biggest expenses is college, medical (especially special children), and
housing. Housing is hard to fix, but we could probably subsidize college and
special education more.

~~~
giantg2
Plus at the macro level, most economies are consumption driven and rely on
population as a major driver of growth.

I disagree with subsidizing college more that it is already. There are
numerous scholarships available to promising students. Also, the government
has been directly and indirectly funding colleges through grants and easy to
get student loans. The problem with this is people going to college who might
not be able to perform at that level, or who are unable to find a job that
pays high enough after graduation. There is research that shows that some
minority groups tend to pick careers in lower paying fields because they want
to make a social impact (think teaching, social work, etc), so not everyone's
goal is to maximize profit. There are plenty of trades that one can make more
money working in, such as diesel-electric mechanic, welder, auto mechanic,
aviation mechanic, etc.

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ukdeveloper
Decentralized peer to peer internet, powered by a network of cell phones and
other devices. For this to work it likely needs to use middle-out compression.

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swiley
The internet is already decentralized and cell carriers don’t want consumers
with control over the modems (for many reasons including avoiding this
particular scenario.)

Look at what’s happened with the TV whitespace ISPs. There’s just no way
unless something radical happens with the FCC.

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nefitty
I think there is a big shift toward “self-improvement” tech. The first big
wave has been nootropics, although the hype around that stuff has subsided it
seems. There are researchers still actively looking at ways to improve
standard bearers such as modafinil.

A second push toward wearable devices is probably coming. I think Snapchat’s
glasses probably cracked some of the stigma around that, at least for younger
millennials. We won’t see the same type of stigma that Google Glass had,
especially once Apple gets in the game. This will necessitate new
conversations around privacy in the public space, although this time around
the conversation will be led by people who might not necessarily have grown up
expecting that luxury anyway.

Another big movement is Neuralink and similar physical brain enhancement. The
degree to which these could change an individual’s lived experience is
probably hard to imagine. I somewhat expect something like having a Dropbox-
memory with Wikipedia-levels of factual knowledge. The ability to synthesize
and digest this amount of data will become the new ground on which individuals
differentiate themselves. Knowledge and social management applications will
become essential, ie things similar to Roam or CRM-style apps for your social
life.

I am curious about how the near future will impact pop culture. Maybe our tech
will be able to sense what music we want to listen to in the moment? Maybe
algorithms will start proactively incorporating the preferences of groups of
people, instead of individuals, to make suggestions? Will music and film
become shorter to fit into tinier and tinier slices of attention?

For what it’s worth, futurism is one of my passions. I predicted services like
Stadia 6 years ago. I’m still a little salty about how badly it has turned
out...

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verdverm
Augmented Reality, which is really the merging of our physical and digital
worlds

Bioengineering / Genetics, this will probably change the way we make many
materials in addition to health applications. Nano materials are pretty
interesting too

Something to deal with a hyper-connected world and all the issues therein.
This is probably about rule making. "Rules for a Flat World" is a good read on
how humans have made and used rules and laws.

I hope for something in the social network space akin to the FHIR standard in
healthcare in US. This could enable the separation of the network from it's
presentation and thus (fingers crossed) encourage competition.

Pessimistically, the second cold war

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verdverm
This is likely a relevant topic too
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23956961](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23956961)

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yen223
Smart glasses.

Apple is rumoured to be announcing their version of the Google Glass some time
this year. Their recent efforts around augmented reality seems to confirm
that. If the rumour is true, and if it succeeds, then it will be interesting
times for wearable tech.

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giantg2
Can't wait to see what they bring out. I loved HoloLens, but they aren't
practical for long duration use or in cost.

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ArtWomb
PCoIP. Zero clients. Workflows for teams in virtual environments. It's
analogous to netflix, zoom, and stadia. But for distributed remote-first
enterprises.

Imagine a big budget Hollywood movie production, shooting in locations around
the world, with post-production all working from a single data source, editing
in a single multiplexed workstation.

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dakiol
Microrobots. Each robot the size of a grain of salt; disposable (and hence,
cheap). They'll be able to: clean your teeth (goodbye toothbrush), cut your
hair (you'll have exactly the haircut you want), cut your nails, shave your
beard. Clean your face, your ears.

Probably more usages, but all of them related to human hygiene. I just can't
imagine a future with: toiler papers, toothbrushes, nail clippers, hair
scissors...

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verdverm
We will be the Borg!

This is the one I couldn't remember for my own comment, actually robotics
generally, was thinking farms, self driving, android companions... tiny bots
is another good call. I think there will be a lot more uses outside of humans,
probably first for safety reasons.

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Jugurtha
Git for genes.

Revert, bisect, blame, cherry-pick, merge, rebase, commit. On genes.

Of course, there could be porcelain on that plumbing. You could point at a
trait, like a tumor, and revert it. Remission will last a second or so.

CI/CD for humans, with integration tests and unit tests updated glibally. If
there's mutation and we know that mutation isn't good, it doesn't get merged.

~~~
tagami
[https://igem.org/Main_Page](https://igem.org/Main_Page)
[https://genelab.nasa.gov/](https://genelab.nasa.gov/)

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caryd
A free speech service that is serverless and unable to be shut down. That will
truly give power to individual people.

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arkanciscan
What kind of power are you hoping to gain? Power to say anything you want, or
power to prevent abuse. I don't think you can have both.

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h0p3
I appreciate your willingness to reason carefully about this problem. I may
not understand your point, so please walk me through it, if you have the time
and energy to teach a young man. At the very least, would you agree it is
possible to have a context where anyone can say what they want (perhaps
something we all infrastructurally support and protect) while also having
other contexts in which each user controls who their moderators and
search/feed signalers will be? Isn't it worthwhile to work for both?

~~~
arkanciscan
Anyone can say anything they want? What if I want to say what your address is
and when you are home, and which of your doors is easiest to force open? Even
if you had the ability to hide this content from yourself, wouldn't you prefer
to hide it from those who would like to use it to harm you?

~~~
arkanciscan
Everyone wants to avoid censorship until their sister's revenge porn hits the
decentralized web.

~~~
h0p3
Before I respond any further, I'd like to offer you the chance to speak with
me more privately. HMU, [https://philosopher.life](https://philosopher.life).

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thedevindevops
Smart(er) Cities - publicly available APIs for each city providing real-time
access to what's happening where, from traffic numbers to park occupancy,
requests for planning permission to refuse collection times for the area,
cities produce tons of data and harnessing it would be incredible.

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quickthrower2
Cryptocurrency might still have its day.

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alexmingoia
Biotech (gene therapy).

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helph67
Physical alteration of your finger prints instead of tattoos. Could be used
for commercial gain?

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giantg2
I'm surprised nobody has said quantum computing.

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solveit
QC seems more like the next, next, next big thing. We've only just got a POC
for quantum supremacy. It'll be a while until QC outperforms classical in
_any_ practical problem, and longer until it becomes useful enough to get big.

~~~
giantg2
Yeah, I guess I was looking at the biggest next thing. Many of the other
comments seem like they won't transform our lives or that they are already
here but just need to grow more.

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kk58
AI + science leading to acceleration of discoveries

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decasteve
Flying cars. It’s always flying cars.

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cblconfederate
OnlyFans

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o1lab
XgeneCloud: writing APIs will never be simpler.

With just one command you can generate REST/Graphql on 5 different types of
databases instantly.

[https://github.com/xgenecloud/xgenecloud/](https://github.com/xgenecloud/xgenecloud/)

Has GUI for dB design and API debugging.

And APIs generated can be deployed as even AWS lambda function too.

And this is our MVP :)

Disclaimer: I'm the founder.

~~~
randomlurking
since you’re here: I didn’t find anything about pricing, what’s your model?

