Life in 2030

I have to say, I find the predictions of this article to be superficial and far-fetched. Basically, he is just predicting that everything will become "smart" (i.e., smart clothes, smart homes, smart toilets, smart contracts, smart food delivery via drones, etc). Some of these things may be worth making smart. But not every aspect of life is worth making smart; smart devices are more complex and expensive than their dumb counterparts, and consumers need to be convinced that the extra expense and complexity is worth it. I'm quite happy with a regular cotton t-shirt; I don't particularly pine for a "smart tee" which can measure my libido or whatever.

This is going to be a really fun read in ten years when none of it comes true. And I really mean none — it’s like he tried specifically to make sure that not a single of his predictions is a serious idea.

Is this a red herring play to his VC friends (enemies) to have them look thatta way while he invests in good ideas?

Wow. This is a surprisingly terrible take on the next ten years.

If he did this prediction ten years ago, he’d probably predict we’d all be using our blackberry’s to automatically checkout DVD’s in blockbuster by 2020.

AR contacts -- Samsung has a patent. It's a matter of miniaturization. Has a chance. Many people trying hard currently.

Toilet analyzing urine -- prototypes have existed for years. Massive potential to improve preventative healthcare, so very strong financial incentive to deploy.

Robot kitchens -- limited prototypes exist. Massive financial incentive because of the huge savings of food prepared in the kitchen versus takeout.

Robotic delivery -- prototypes exist. Very strong financial incentives.

Lab grown meat -- exists. Potential huge benefits for the environment.

Small autonomous vehicles -- huge savings in energy over larger vehicles that aren't fully occupied.

Robotic tail and telepresence robotic arms: existing products.

This article is highly highly optimistic of what we can achieve in 10-15 years. 20-40 would be perfectly believable. Also, a meeting between Paris, Portland, and Cambodia? Do timezones not exist in the future?

honestly I too thought most of these predictions were borderline absurd. 10 years is too short of a time period for the step changes in consumer behavior predicted here.

I mean Americans by and large still use dumb toilets despite entire nations like Japan that have largely embraced tech-enabled (though not necessarily smart) toilets for a long, long time.

If you can’t convince Americans to buy toilets with seat warmers and cleaning tech then I don’t see how we’re all suddenly going to adopt multi thousand dollar toilets that analyze our pee.

Here's a simple test: do people actually want their lives to ressemble this? I'd wager most people don't want most of that stuff. It manages to both provide very little perceivable value, and looks to completely suck the life out of most things through rationalization.

To be fair, some of those things do seem valuable (mostly the health related stuff), and some things may actually appear in a different form, but the storytelling here is some of the least compelling I've seen in a while.

Least realistic like in the whole thing was a throwaway like about the end of Excel...

100pct that when Katie needs to plan her custom clothes in 2030 she’s still using Excel.

100pct that when Katie does send an excel file to her ops department in 2030 with the outline of what’s needed, her engineering department will grumble about how bad excel is, and then fail to build a suitable replacement.

I can't imagine more than 20% of this happening, and even then, it will only be available to super rich people with an interest in this sort of tech, i.e. it's not going to be our lives in 2030.

The thing about the toilet. So many predictions about toilets have failed. Still looking the same since the 40s or 50s.

This video seems totally absurd. Our world in 2030 will be nothing like the one pictured here... one wonders how you could give this talk and be considered intelligent or perceptive whatsoever.

>My day job is to think about my 16-year-old daughter's piss

Ok Joe