Where are the next big waves in tech and innovation?

Notably, none of them led to VCs getting involved because these were published as free software.

But judge them as not innovative or revolutionary at your own peril.

What's funny is a lot of people thought artists would be the last ones to become unemployed by the AI revolution but it actually looks more now like they might be some of the first.

With that in mind, perhaps most white-collar jobs that we thought were safe from automation won't be for long. Automated code-writing, and even requirements gathering also seems to be just around the corner, although I have more doubts about that (I'm biased though so who knows). These may eventually be reduced to prompt-input, no-code solutions useable by everybody.

Climate tech/strategies will obviously need to improve, unless we plan on living in a 500ppm CO2 world for a long time. So yes investment on the atoms front will increase, but I'm having a hard time seeing profitability in this space without whole sectors of the economy having their profits diverted by government in order to make this space profitable.

One single mineral-rich asteroid in orbit around Earth could be a huge boon to space tech and advancement. Serving both as a near earth launch and refueling platform, solar energy farm, and material provider to both earth and space-based industry. This seems a little farther out though. But with SpaceX advancements, all the pieces seem like they could fall into place very soon. We've already made contact with and diverted asteroids. All it would take would be some careful planning and moar boosters.