Ask HN: Predictions for 2020 and the New Decade? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Predictions for 2020 and the New Decade?

15 pointscsomar9 comments

A new decade is coming! What are your predictions for the next year and this new decade. To keep things orderly, please try these guidelines:

- Use lists instead of long paragraphs.

- One prediction per list-item.

- Separate next year and next decade in two different lists.

Historical:

2010 (one decade predictions): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1025681

2019: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18753859

2018: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16007988

2017: none?

2016: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10809767

2015: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8822723

2014: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6994370

2013: none?

2012: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3395201

2011: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1970023

2010: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1025681

View on HN

My bottomline prediction: World won't change as fast as we always predict. Case in point [0] the prediction a decade ago on HN. Most of the items on that page are way off but precisely the reason why it is so hard to predict the future.

If I do have to add my guesses, I would say that:

- AI/ML hype will fade off and won't really be as mainstream as we want it be right now.

- Crypto currency will still not be mainstream.

- We will have driverless cars but not mainstream yet. Trucking jobs in the US won't go away as Andrew Yang is predicting them to be.

- China and may be even India (due to sheer size and open markets) to an extent will further become more important in World Affairs and US will continue to lose it superpower status even though US will still be very significant overall.

- Mainstream news outlets on TV will keep becoming less important as Indie Media outlets on youtube will become more mainstream. Looking at you CNN/MSNBC/FOX news etc.

- Gig economy will become more prevalent. A lot of people will start doing their own thing since they cannot find traditional jobs. Not always tech. related but freelance industry will grow even further.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1025681

Based of this thread it looks like people were a lot more hopeful about the future 10 years ago than they are today. Back then smart phones were new, the AI winter looked like it was over, Google had just started testing self driving cars etc.

But today, Google is still working on the same self driving cars, we are still using smart phones as our main handheld device, and while the AI breakthroughs gave us chatbots and face recognition it hasn't made much progress since.

So to me it seems like the exciting years are over as the last decade was probably the least exciting technology wise for a very long time. I'd say we'll need a huge fundamental breakthrough for the next decade to not become even less exciting.

- There will be a new series of books that captures the attention of "everybody" and we talk about for the next 10 years

- Children in parks will try to catch pigeons which will fly away

- Coffee will be a very popular drink, except for places that drink tea where tea will remain popular. There will be limited respect between the two groups while they will claim not to understand the other.

- There will be at least 3 different diet fads that become popular. The big names will seamlessly switch between them despite the conflicts in some tenant of the fad.

- Some object/hobby will become the in thing that everybody has to have/do. (generally the object will count as tools for the hobby)

- Teens will rebel from something their parents did, claiming they are unique while doing exactly the same rebel thing every other teen is doing.

- Clothing styles will change in some subtle way that requiring stylish people to replace their wardrobe.

- People will try to escape reality and become addicted to mind/mood alternating drugs.

- Somebody will make millions on their "Jesus is coming" campaign despite numerous claims that directly contradict the bible.

In short nothing major will change. If you are in the right place at the right time and have the right [lack of] morals you can become rich from the above.

While you're thinking about your predictions, I recommend to have a glance at the 2010 thread - it's a great mix of predictions that are:

- hilariously wrong

- things people will still predict today for the next decade

- occasionally spot on

- Porch pirates will use mission impossible style deep fake masks to evade the doorbell camera's tranquilizer darts

- People start pushing empty prams around everywhere to avoid being sacrificed by self-driving vans which are often looted for booty

- large low-powered coloured e-paper screens that open like a scroll and increase definition/fps based on current eye focus replace the TV and smartphone

- e-powered 1-man vehicles for the last mile take off and compete with warehouse blimps in the sky that listen to your conversations via the vibrating glass window about being out of milk and drop one of the pre-defined care packages.

- micro-dosing via skin absorption, a biohack to the smartwatch, but no one will admit to doing it, it's part of the placebo effect, actively discouraging it gets the biggest leg up from it.

Mostly things that won't happen:

* Most taxis won't be driverless, in fact fewer than 10% will be. Those that are will be geographically and destination limited.

* Most cars on the streets in most countries will still have internal combustion engines, though many may be in hybrids.

* There won't be any operational fusion reactors feeding electricity into the grid.

* There will be at least 10 Op Eds or analyst notes every year saying what Apple has to do to stay relevant.

* Apple won't do any of them and will still utterly dominate profits in at least 3 industry segments at the end of the decade.

* Best estimates for the Singularity place it 25 years in the future.

Stupid VR will rule the world. Humanity will get further away from reality.

2020-2021: the first major attack on the global TCP/IP stack, causing major internet outages for regions of the western world lasting weeks/months.

Decade: nuclear war between India and Pakistan, or peace talks spearheaded by China. If the later, this will mark the beginning of global Chinese diplomatical sovereignity.

For the decade:

No human-equivalent AI, though there are more AI systems that trespass on what used to be "human only" territory.

No massive speedup in CPUs - just incremental gains. CPUs in 2030 have double per-core performance of those of 2020.

At least one designer drug with enormous addictiveness destroys a large number of peoples' lives.

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