Ask HN: Has cloud and mobile already happened? What's next? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Has cloud and mobile already happened? What's next?

I would like to suggest that the cloud and mobile has already happened and get suggestions on what fellow HN'ers think is next. Here's my reasoning:

In cloud computing, Amazon, Heroku, Linode etc. have that pretty much sewn up. In cloud storage, Dropbox, Microsoft, Google, Mega etc. have so many storage offerings, price points and features that nobody could hope to compete with them. I believe that the only scope left in the cloud is to build apps using the existing infrastructure.

In mobile there's already too many operating system and platform offerings. The respective app markets have each been driven to the lowest price points and are saturated to such a point that the old "There's an app for that" saying could now potentially be "There's a load of apps for that."

Some say that 'Big Data' is the next big thing. What do you think?

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Focusing on gaming in my response here...

I think the next "Big Thing" is that we are going to start moving more and more toward Augmented Reality (AR) [1] and Virtual Reality (VR) [2].

Thoughts:

1. Look for gaming to start heading in the direction of VR with technology like Oculus Rift [3]. Also, with someone of the caliber of John Carmack [4] involved, with not only his passion and skill, but his ability to work with graphics hardware manufacturers and driver developers to effect change and garner the necessary support and backing, expect to see vibrant, compelling developments in this field.

Here is a video of John discussing some of his VR work. It is from E3 2012:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NYa8kirsUfg

2. Look to see more games like Ingress [5] as things start to move toward AR.

3. I realize that this may be an extreme, perhaps well-into-the-future example, but check out this short film entitled, Sight. It is not difficult to imagine that this is where we are heading with technology like Google Glass (e.g., Note in the film the gamification of things like cooking and dating. Personally, the dating part is scary.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lK_cdkpazjI

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augmented_reality

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_reality

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oculus_Rift

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_D._Carmack

[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ingress_%28game%29

It is yet another cool gadget rather than something what can significantly improve your life.

The internet of things. Sensors everywhere. 3d printing. open design. manufacturing getting smaller and more personalized. drones will become legal to fly commercially soon in US(maybe). if transportation gets disrupted with cars that drive themselves, what could you do with a drivable car api. I personally think a lot could be done with robotic arms and outsourced brains(telepresense). augmented reality glasses api? object recognition api? A kickstarter project reached $10 million. what kind of project can get created with say $100 million?

I agree with Internet of things being the big thing in future.

It is just matter of time when everything we use will have its own API.

I don't really worry what the next big thing is. I worry about what problems people want to solve, and what solution to implement.

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