Devil's advocate, is that actually a good thing?
Might be good for the consumer but not great for the laborer. Working for someone else is a bummer. Increasing consolidation means increasingly more of us will be in that position.
People may say that is too-dystopian and cynical of a perspective, but all data-points over the last several decades are very solidly pointing in this direction....
There will certainly be lots of 10B, 50B and 100B companies - then the 1-5T companies will consume them just as the 5B companies grabbed up everything they could to build their moats over the last few years.
There will be cyber-wars for privacy in the next 20 years. There will be digital outcasts who seek to hack and bring down large systems.
There will be plenty of cyber-terrorism to come.
Personally, I thin kthe US is sitting on its laurels way too much and will be completely unprepared for a real cyberwar when it actually happens.
Anyone know of some good authors with a contemporary grasp of where we currently are with technology who is putting out some good cyberpunk fiction about the impending future?
Gibson is the master of the genre.
But I see the dystopian dark nature of it. I helped, along with everyone on HN, build this monster we have now.
I tried Gibson's latest story, and I wasnt too into it...
Look at Microsoft, they did everything wrong and still won big.
They all hacked the innovator's dilemma: they're building bigger and bigger moats. And when they miss on a paradigm shift they jump on the next one. For example, maybe you miss mobile but win cloud etc.
The future will have it's own set of advantages and disadvantages. It's important to leverage your own position in the present to give yourself a better position in the future.
I find this highly unlikely as well.
Hypothetical situation:
Healthcare/Surgery could be practically free. You slide into a machine and there is an AI running on the cloud which compares your health data with your prior states and also with billions of other records from other human beings and makes the perfect diagnosis. Then it makes the precise cut into your flesh and gives you the perfect amount of anesthesia and inserts the stent and your heart surgery is done.
You don't need a radiologist, a general practitioner, a cardiologist etc.
It could still be a net gain since vastly more people get the care they need.
Hell, Intuitive Surgcal (makers of the Davinci) already have plenty of data to run procedures automated - but they wont do that yet...
The data from recorded successful surgical procedures executed by robots but driven by human surgeons is extremely valuable data.
That will be an interesting fronteir in med when you can run diffs across thousands of surgeries to smooth out the execution tailored to each particular subject.