I might be just drawing arbitrary lines. "Mobile" depended on a number of technologies to happen. Possibly, looking back, this large number of simultaneous technologies will be described by one overarching technology category.
I might be just drawing arbitrary lines. "Mobile" depended on a number of technologies to happen. Possibly, looking back, this large number of simultaneous technologies will be described by one overarching technology category.
For instance, people have been predicting that VR will be the next big thing for years now. I remember a birthday party more than 30 years ago at an arcade with an expensive VR setup that, while far more limited than today's applications, was still an awkward piece of headgear that's more of a novelty than a potentially-ubiquitous change to society. It's still possible that we hit some sort of inflection point where technology improves to the point where AR/VR becomes unobtrusive enough that it can become ubiquitous, but that's by no means a certainty.
Similarly, I think the jury is still out on IoT, drones, 3D printers and cryptocurrencies/blockchains. If I had to place a bet, I'd say that when we look back on this time period, we'll be talking about machine learning and AI defining this era. The rest of the "current hotness" technologies I could easily see not getting that big.
Now, as I understand it, growth has slowed outside of the labs and Moore's Law appears to no longer be valid. So, there will likely still be growth, but the growth will be more rare, difficult, and expensive?
Like your VR example, we've often had great predictions of the future and so very few of them actually pan out as expected.
I don't know, it's just a thought I've pondered.