What upcoming tech trends do you think will change the world | Hacker News Reader

What upcoming tech trends do you think will change the world

11 pointsseshagiric16 comments

Block chain, super-apps, autonomous driving, satellite internet...

In the entertainment industry, deepfakes. At the moment it's the preserve of hobbyists uploading comedy clips to YouTube, but in a few years I can see Hollywood (assuming it survives Covid) using the technology to prolong franchises with aging actors at the very least. I can also forsee it being possible for film fans to pay a fee to have their own likeness added to their favourite movies.

Soon a writer sitting in a coffeeshop with a laptop could make a full feature length film with no comprimises to their vision.

Infrastructure so massive and so important that it underpins our entire civilization. Then people start retiring, forgetting how it all works. The people will take weird automatic half measures to fix what they don't understand with neural nets. Then it really gets interesting.

To some extent, this is happening now in the banking industry. There are millions of LOCs that are written in Cobol that are part of our banking infrastructure but the people that know how to keep the code working are retiring and no new coders are being trained.

Yes new coders are trained in cobol and csharp to migrate and also maintain.

Virtual Reality. It will be a drug when it is going to completely replace the reality and, as with other drugs, the addiction will make it highly valuable.

10-20 year horizon: Battery Technology. Manufacturing improvements, improving density and cooling requirements, recycling economy, etc. There's a huge race first-mover race that Japan has made a government-backed consortium tackling on batteries.

Most visible effect would be smartphones and laptop charging times and charging cycles.

For cars and work trucks: aside from cheaper cost, it'll also solve range anxiety and charging times.

For solar powered homes, you can opt to store cheaply in your home for night-use instead of sending excess back to the grid.

Lighter batteries on drones would have a multitude of uses from industrial to space exploration.

Longer time horizon: electric-powered flight and electric-powered freight. It will drop supply chain expenses on a macro perspective.

E-bikes and electric velomobiles: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OCo4cRQMBlo Average speed 37.5 km/h over 72 km without breaking a sweat.

As an avid city cyclist I don't get the appeal of e-bikes as a mode of transport.

They're heavy and expensive and require more maintenance than regular bikes. For many cities, riding at 35 km/h on average also sounds pretty dangerous.

A range of 72 km seems excessive, too. That's a 2-hour ride, which sounds like something you'd do as a leisure activity rather than on an everyday basis.

That said, I'm quite bullish on the future of bikes as a mode of transport in general.

Cyclist here living in the southeast United States, where it gets incredibly hot during the summers. The E-bike gives me a better chance of going some place without being a sweaty mess.

One reason I think ebikes are great is because their main target isn't hardcore cyclists but everyday people who need to get from one point to another easily.

Ebikes require a bit more maintenance than a regular bike for sure, but a lot less than a car. They also let you transport more cargo than a regular bike and very often get you there quicker than a car.

I also know a couple people who own ebikes and use them exclusively for running errands (e.g because they don't want to break a sweat when getting groceries).

> As an avid city cyclist I don't get the appeal of e-bikes as a mode of transport.

> They're heavy and expensive and require more maintenance than regular bikes. For many cities, riding at 35 km/h on average also sounds pretty dangerous.

Most e-bikes with 250W engines are capped at 25 km/h so, essentially, for a fit cyclist they only help for uphill climbs and acceleration. But even 25 km/h is good because it means you can keep up with more traffic and thus ride on heaver trafficked roads.

I agree that e-bikes aren't that amazing in good weather, but they are very practical in cold, snow, and rain. A 250W engine makes a huge difference when its snowing and you have a 12 km ride home.

I think imperative programming will make a huge comeback.

(Although given the success of Golang relative to other upstart languages, I guess one could argue imperative programming never left)

There are still parts of the world where Self Driving is not a good option. In Places like Africa, Many Underdeveloped Countries in Asia, self driving is just not feasible

No one's mentioned 3d printing yet

I’m into to 3d printing. It seems to be in that post early adopters trough. I’m long on it it though - distributed customized manufacturing with revolutionize retail, supply chains, and more.

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