Let's do this again. Predictions for the 2020s
1. What do you think were the three biggest changes in the 2010s (Events or inventions)? 2. What do you think will be three things of significance that happen over the next decade? 3. If you played last time, how would you score yourself? If you made mistakes, why do you think that is? Any lessons you picked up from reading your previous post and comparing what actually happened?
1. Elon Musk and truly reusable rockets, technology shown to be a much more dangerous thing than we believed (social media, surveillance state, addictive gaming), and exoplanet discoveries
2. disaggregated groups of people radicalizing one another and the fallout from that, human lifespan lengthened through medication (aging treated as a disease), and fusion finally
3. I made three predictions. The last one, that flat panel displays would never truly approach wallpaper sizes for the home, was right. The second one, ubiquitous computing finally arrives, I'm going to score half-right. We didn't get RFID chips and walk-up computing, but we do have computers and net access with everything from our TVs to sous vide machines. The first one, that Iran would see some sort of drastic change? Blew that one completely. They look today about the same as they did then, on the razors edge of disaster.
To me the most interesting part of this comparison is how incremental the 2010s were. Current trends in 2010 tended to continue along. I blew it when I thought "this trend cannot continue". Turns out it did. This is a humbling lesson.
I am also happy that my stretch goal, finding earth-like exoplanets, was reached (mostly). I did not realize that this exoplanet story is likely one to span several generations. Damn, science moves slowly at times.
1 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1025681