Comment by Tangokat | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Tangokat | Hacker News Reader

You kinda derailed your own post by writing cryptocurrency. HN hates it so we never have good discussions on it.

Obvious answers:

- Biotech, our ability to handle large amounts of data and compute should enable biotech to make huge strides forward in all sorts of ways. Personalized medicine (pill made for you etc) and so on.

- AR/VR, we've been talking about this for a long time but it seems like Apple will be launching something fairly soon for AR. It could very well kickstart a new boom. VR has been steadily building for about 10 years and will continue to do so. Better headsets means more widespread adoption. Nearing a tipping point now I think.

- Getting 2 billion more people on the internet. Should allow for more niche products.

Outside the box:

- Online reality TV with avatars. An online world where people play different roles and you can choose which viewpoint you want to watch from. Online 24/7 with professionally built narratives happening in real time.

See GTA RP NoPixel streams on Twitch for an early example.

I think it's AR. At a certain point, a switch will flip where the display and sensors allow actual useful functions... and 2 billion units will be sold in the next three years.

AR and VR are both solutions looking for problems today. The technology is already there for a killer app but no one has figured out what it is yet.

I think AR/VR is that it's being used like film was in the early 20th century. There are obvious technical challenges to overcome, but what it lacks is an industry of creators and auteurs to define new forms of art. The mistake is that the revolution will be driven by artists working out of garages and warehouses, not VC funded startups that only focus on technical challenges trying to corner the markets.

> AR and VR are both solutions looking for problems today. The technology is already there for a killer app but no one has figured out what it is yet.

For me the killer apps would be replacing my monitor/TV/tablet/etc and providing an IRL add blocker. The technology for that is definitely not there yet.

An interesting thought but unlike film one cannot arrive in a new town and put on a show for tens to hundreds of people with one piece of equipment. Both the gear and the physical space required are serious bottlenecks.

My point of the analogy is that film was an entirely new medium for creators a century ago and while the projector and camera manufacturers came up with the idea of a cinema, it was the artists that made something worth showing.

I am kind of familiar with GTA RP NoPixel streams, and there are some streamers with interesting tech proposals such as CodeMiko

BTW, what about "second life", I don't know how much it has grown.

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