Ask HN: A New Decade. Any Predictions?
===== Biology =====<p>- A major, non-amyloid, non-tau hypothesis for Alzheimer&#x27;s. Because the old guard supporting these dogmas is falling out of vogue.<p>- Really great advances made with CRISPR and immunotherapy, especially with respect to cancer treatment. The immune system already targets cancer or disease-state cells, but perhaps we can give it a little nudge?<p>- Human cloning. It isn&#x27;t at all infeasible, just politically&#x2F;morally questionable. Someone will do it.<p>- Insurance companies get ahold of biometric and DNA data. They&#x27;re salivating for it. Google&#x27;s purchase of Fitbit is scary. 23andme&#x27;s recent sale of data is also troubling.<p>===== Politics &#x2F; Global &#x2F; Society =====<p>- Democracy begins to fade. Trump&#x27;s war on the media is the canary in the coal mine. Social platforms erode our critical thinking and ability to see through the miasma. The success of China&#x27;s surveillance state and the fact that they can succeed without democracy sends the wrong message to the rest of the world.<p>- Diversity increases in Hollywood, high-paying jobs, and political candidates. Racism and sexism begin to wane.<p>- Millennials and GenZ (Zoomers? Zoomies? :P) come to the political forefront. GenZ is more politically active than GenX or the Millennials. There may be some cross-generational war with some younger candidates campaigning on cutting social security, pensions, and benefits.<p>- As more young people move to cities, housing prices in all major cities will skyrocket. They&#x27;re already steep, but this trend will continue. Housing prices in the suburbs will collapse as boomers retire&#x2F;downsize and nobody wants to live there.<p>- People spend even more time on screens.<p>===== Economics =====<p>- We won&#x27;t have a recession at the same level of the 2008 recession.<p>- China has a recession.<p>- Cryptocurrency is dead, no thanks to government regulation and crackdown. Bitcoin is $0.01.<p>- We become a cashless society.<p>===== Energy &#x2F; Transportation =====<p>- Elon Musk becomes even wealthier. Tesla catches on like wildfire with lower-cost models, and they dominate the EV market with their healthy lead. But the real story is SpaceX leap frogging defense contractors and becoming the world&#x27;s gateway to space. Starlink, if successful, might spawn a new era of connectivity.<p>- Yet, gasoline still remains the dominant fuel for automotive transportation. EVs are still in the minority.<p>- Trains come back in vogue as a hipster option for Millennial travel.<p>- Nuclear still isn&#x27;t being built out in the US beyond a few scattered projects (eg. Vogtle).<p>===== Deep Learning &#x2F; Hardware =====<p>- While deep learning isn&#x27;t as big as proponents made it out to be, but we don&#x27;t face another AI winter. There will be huge applications in media (Hollywood will be a big customer), process optimization, computer vision, and other areas. We&#x27;ll even see it creep into consumer products.<p>- Creative tools are greatly enhanced with deep learning and other techniques (computer vision, better models), leading to a creative explosion.<p>- No self-driving cars. Yet. Weather, inconsistent roads, bad drivers... It&#x27;s a hard problem.<p>- Moore&#x27;s law holds &#x2F; is beaten. Deep learning is the driver.<p>- Embedded devices languished for awhile (IOT), but are finally going to be hella cool and novel. Wearables, biometrics. But they remain a huge exploit vector.<p>===== Cloud =====<p>- Anger at managed cloud computing lock-in sets in. We might see a swing back to the data center.<p>- Edge computing is a huge thing. Despite Google Stadia failing, companies vie to run video games in the cloud.<p>===== Web &#x2F; Social Media =====<p>- The web dies and is replaced by more garbage like AMP, walled gardens like Facebook, Slack, and (now) Reddit. Chrome has removed URLs. RSS is dead. Lots of people are very angry at Google.<p>- Lots of federation &#x2F; distributed projects to try to fight back. None of them really take hold since they&#x27;re not backed with the same staffing or scale as the incumbents.<p>- In what remains of the web, Rust&#x2F;ASM has replaced Javascript.<p>- New privacy laws lead to adtech backlash. The masses don&#x27;t care, but politicians, lawyers, and those in tech do and now have leverage.<p>- Facebook (the site) is full of older conservatives and has gone the way of MySpace.<p>- A few new social media sites come out, gain traction, and don&#x27;t sell out to Zuckerberg.<p>- Twitter eats itself and loses engagement. It still doesn&#x27;t have a viable alternative.<p>- Reddit becomes absolutely awful and starts to look more like Facebook or Digg than the site we used to use. They have succeeded in monstrous growth at the expense of the community. This leads to a very successful IPO. Unfortunately, nothing really replaces it.<p>===== Tech =====<p>- Antitrust cases brought against Amazon, Apple, Google, and&#x2F;or Facebook. None of them are broken up. Only slaps on the wrist.<p>- Microsoft thrives, Google dives.<p>- Slack gets disrupted. It&#x27;s just chat.<p>- Rust becomes the most popular programming language and sees deployment everywhere: OSes, servers, games, web apps, embedded, ... the ecosystem explodes.<p>- Tech shifts away from SF. It&#x27;s too expensive. Look to the southeast: Austin, Atlanta, Charlotte. Also distributed workforce growth by leaps and bounds.<p>- Death to the open office floor plan.<p>===== Entertainment =====<p>- Disney and Netflix get disrupted by a new form of media. They may still be players, but classical filmmaking is old-world thinking. Look at what teens watch these days. They want to be both involved and passive, creative and destructive. Twitch, YouTube, Fortnite are good examples. Tech eats Hollywood.<p>- More radical&#x2F;experimental new forms of video games. Games that let you play alongside celebrity streamers. Interesting MMOs and new concepts like battle royale.<p>- More cool stuff like Twitch Plays Pokemon (did that happen this decade?)<p>===== Misc =====<p>- We&#x27;re going to see really cool (and really scary) applications for drones. People will use them to commit theft and vandalism (spray paint? knocking out windows?), and maybe even kill people.<p>- Still no answer on P vs NP.<p>- Still no discovery of life on Mars (or elsewhere).<p>- Singularity isn&#x27;t happening.<p>===== Personal =====<p>- I&#x27;ll get to use Rust professionally.<p>- I&#x27;ll finally launch a startup.