[HN Gopher] What Will Happen in the 2020s
___________________________________________________________________
What Will Happen in the 2020s
Author : gz5
Score : 215 points
Date : 2020-01-01 16:29 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (avc.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (avc.com)
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| CalChris wrote:
| Thanks for the nudge. I donated.
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| If you buy a lot from Amazon, you can also choose Internet
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| throwaway8291 wrote:
| I found a couple of old scanned mathematics books on the
| archive, which I could not find elsewhere. Many times a
| web.archive.org link cut short a journey to an old blog post,
| that might have been lost in the ether.
|
| Thanks archive, I'm glad I can support you a bit.
| gist wrote:
| > Please consider this. They are a real bargain and provide a
| real service to humanity. Instead of upvoting this comment,
| please give them $5 instead if you can.
|
| What do users of the archive gain by it being independent of
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| And why can't it be a non profit and also offset expenses by
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|
| Look at it this way.
|
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| a greater need. Make sense?
|
| Now of course you are saying 'give them $5 instead of
| upvoting'. So that is a small enough amount that you would
| say 'you still have $5 to give to someone else'. But I say
| when people (en masse) behave like that a portion will feel
| that they have done their 'good person' duty and not make
| another donation to another cause (that once again can't sell
| advertising).
|
| By the way 'service to humanity'???
|
| Edit: One other thing. I'd be glad to pay IA for 'service'.
| That is if I need to get a page taken down or I need to get
| something scraped more or less I'd gladly pay for being able
| to discuss with a real person and get something done. This
| idea that free means 'you take what you get and you don't get
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| no ad service but then charge for things to raise revenue not
| just 'donate donate donate'.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| It's more about being "independent of _advertisers_ " than
| whether advertisements are practically hosted on the site.
| An archive should be a third-party, neutral source, and
| advertising jeopardises this.
| gist wrote:
| It's not a newspaper (as only one example) where they
| hold editorial control over the content and are therefore
| (in theory) beholden to the people who pay the bills (the
| advertisers). Forgetting for a second whether it would
| have any major impact (I say it would not I mean they
| scrape web pages in a very clear fashion) it's hard to
| believe it could go the route of say YELP in their
| mission. Or that a minor impact to what they do would not
| be offset by not having to beg for money. (With PBS it
| was called a begathon when they had to raise money).
|
| And even with donations they could in theory be
| 'corrupted' just the same. A rich person could give them
| a large sum of money (as a donation) and then would have
| some defacto say in how things were done.
|
| Take as another example ball parks (to even counter my
| point). They sell naming rights. That does not mean that
| the entity who purchased the naming rights gets to decide
| who plays on the team or who coaches the team although
| you could argue that that could happen (and I would say
| it does not offset the benefit of not having that
| 'independence'.
| petulla wrote:
| Thanks for this nudge. I signed up for a recurring donation.
| DrAwdeOccarim wrote:
| Totally agree and signed up for monthly recurring $10.
| jhbadger wrote:
| >9/ We will finally move on from the Baby Boomers dominating the
| conversation in the US and around the world and Millennials and
| Gen-Z will be running many institutions by the end of the decade.
|
| And as typical in such pieces, GenX gets forgotten...
| dang wrote:
| Please don't do generational flamewar on HN. It's tedious and
| such large generalizations don't really say anything.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
|
| https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
| meddlepal wrote:
| GenX is tiny and has failed to progress forward precisely
| because it is so small compared to the Boomers and Millennials.
| Also by the end of the decade parts of GenX will be approaching
| 60.
| malvosenior wrote:
| Gen X did just fine. They created most of what we know of as
| the internet. You probably don't hear much about them because
| we've (Gen X -- I'm one) been focused on building new things
| and not complaining about old things. It's a model other
| generations should look at and emulate quite frankly.
| _jal wrote:
| "GenX ... has failed to progress forward"?
|
| Did I stop aging at some point and not notice?
| SllX wrote:
| What you're perceiving as aging is merely an illusion
| created in your mind when you look in the mirror. You think
| you must be aging because most people do, in fact, age.
|
| What you need to realize is that Gen X is stuck in a crack
| in time that halts the aging process for them. All of them.
| A side effect of this is that while they can interact with
| the world and almost be perceived, they actually _have_
| been forgotten by the rest of the world.
|
| On occasion a regular aging schmuck will notice a wild Gen
| Xer and be able to interact with them whilst the Xer is
| within their field of perception, however these
| interactions are invariably fleeting and almost immediately
| forgotten for it leaves the regular person's body and mind
| in a strangely exhausted state. Interacting with a
| forgotten person stresses the body, and so while someone
| may not exactly know why they wish to flee from this person
| that seems like another person, at some point the brain
| sends the neurological equivalent of a kill -9 to end the
| conversation. It is estimated that about 200,000 Gen Xers
| are killed a year in this way, but nobody has been
| convicted since 1. nobody has been able to find the bodies
| again and 2. Even if they were, it would probably be ruled
| as self-defense and 3. All memory of the events that
| transpired invariably slips away from the living.
| trentnix wrote:
| "Failed to progress forward" - what are you talking about?
|
| The United States - and really the world as a whole - has
| enjoyed its most prosperous time in all of human history
| during Gen-X's window of contribution.
| chiefalchemist wrote:
| Yes. But that prosperity came with a massive balloon
| payment in the form of climate change. What's label
| prosperity today will be "Grand ma, WTF were y'all
| thinking?"
|
| Long to short, the jury is still out on the actual success
| of Gen-X.
| trentnix wrote:
| I'm not buying the climate change alarmism.
|
| The climate has changed and will change. Some of that
| change (although I think its a small part) will be
| influenced by human activity. The Earth will adjust.
| Humanity will adjust. And humanity will continue to
| flourish.
| chiefalchemist wrote:
| A high percentage of the world's population lives on or
| near the coast. Why the climate is changing doesn't
| change the effect on these people and the places they
| live. Dismissing this fact as alarmist isn't going to
| help anyone.
|
| p.s. Humanity will continue to flourish? Your prediction
| is based on what, past performance? When Mother Nature's
| bounty was harvested mindlesssly and shameleessly? That's
| going to continue forever? Infinitely? Can you share some
| links supporting such projections?
| brlewis wrote:
| What makes you think there's an anti-correlation between
| "approaching 60" and "running many institutions" rather than
| a correlation?
| C14L wrote:
| Straight from "those who have the most experience" to "those
| who yell the loudest". Can't say I'm looking forward to it.
| frenchy wrote:
| I'm not sure if you realize this, but as time passes people
| get older, and they usually gain experience. Soon, Gen X-ers
| will be the ones with the optimal experience/dementia ratio.
|
| Also, yelling the loudest is problem the predates human
| history.
| 88840-8855 wrote:
| Excellent saying - sums it up perfectly.
| Ozzie_osman wrote:
| Really? Honestly I hate generation-based generalizations.
| Each group is the result of different circumstances and faces
| different generational challenges.
|
| That said, if anything, a cursory glance at my Facebook feed
| reveals the boomers yelling the loudest.
| weej wrote:
| Bizarre: In chrome this is rendering as strange character set in
| UTF8, but HTML source shows correct english text output.
|
| https://imgur.com/a/18CJCDY
| watertom wrote:
| I think the climate is going to change much faster than any
| models predict, like 3-4x faster, because we went past the
| tipping point about 30 years ago.
|
| Phytoplankton populations will crash out in the next 10 years and
| the marine food chain will collapse.
|
| Extreme wether patterns are going to completely disrupt food
| production, which will cause mass starvation and a global
| immigration/refugee crisis.
|
| In the U.S., the terrified of everything elderly, and right wing
| will go for less freedom and more authoritative government
| control. They will also secede more control to corporations as a
| way of avoiding "big government", effectively handing over power
| special interests and the ultra wealthy.
|
| Healthcare will however become nationalized because the system as
| it stands is out of control and therE is no way to reign it in,
| so costs will keep spiraling up until the system breaks.
|
| Marijuana will get legalized in most states, and the percentage
| of THC will start to get capped.
|
| Designer CRIsPR "therapies" will become popular.
|
| The U.S. college system have a major event, costs are spiraling
| out of control, and the colleges have no way to stop the cost
| growth, students are becoming more accustomed to online classes,
| in the next 10 years there will be a mass realignment of the U.S.
| college system, just like banking, healthcare. A lot of closures,
| mergers and partnerships. A commoditization of higher education,
| which will be good for some majors, like STEM, and really bad for
| majors that are more "subjective". I also think we'll see
| incorporation of what is seen as traditional "trade school"
| skills. Learning is learning, and is the schools can make it
| profitable, "why not?".
| radford-neal wrote:
| Phytoplankton populations are not going to crash. Extreme
| weather is not going to cause mass starvation. There's no
| scientific basis for either of these things happening.
|
| Furthermore, _you_ don 't believe they are going to happen. If
| you did believe this, it would be absurd to talk about a "major
| event" regarding the US college system - "mergers and
| partnerships", "commoditization", etc. Really? Really?? What
| happened to the major event of the students starving to death?
|
| What happened is that you don't actually believe the stuff you
| say about climate change. You just think it's cool and
| sophisticated to say that you know that change will happen 3-4x
| faster than any scientifically-based model says. Because
| whatever...
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| What's going to _cause_ the crash of phytoplankton? Rising CO2,
| I presume, but by what mechanism?
| Symmetry wrote:
| Possibly ocean acidification could damage the cell walls of
| diatoms, which make up a fair fraction of phytoplankton? But
| I don't see how that could have been locked in 30 years ago.
| boyadjian wrote:
| There are two wealth in this world: financial wealth, and
| demographic wealth. Both are limited by natural resources, so it
| should come as no surprise that they are declining. Humanity will
| be confronted with the principle of reality.
| ianai wrote:
| What is demographic wealth?
| amelius wrote:
| I'm guessing a population that can generate wealth (think age
| distribution, education).
| SlowRobotAhead wrote:
| Fred Wilson (A VC) somehow dominates HN last New year as well...
| And was so completely wrong it's shocking anyone would promote
| him year after year.
|
| It's obvious to me people are doing so only because they WANT all
| these predictions to come true not that they have any basis in
| reality. It's bubble talk for bubble people, no offense.
|
| His solution to NN (which we all died from, remember?) was
| "blockchain".
|
| Here he is last year heavily propped up for saying Trump wouldn't
| be in office after Mueller probe... Remember the Mueller results?
| Anyone not involved in hyper partisan politics knew it was going
| to be a dud. https://avc.com/2019/01/what-is-going-to-happen-
| in-2019/
|
| Just browsing his previous predictions just makes more curious
| how he gets spotlights here every year. 2018 he made a list
| "questions" answering only some himself, about 1/2 wrong. And
| 2017 is just... well... AI isn't the new Mobile, Cyberwarfare
| isn't the new Cold War: https://avc.com/2017/01/what-is-going-to-
| happen-in-2017/
| chiefalchemist wrote:
| > We will see real estate values collapse in some of the most
| affected regions and we will see real estate values increase in
| regions that benefit from the warming climate.
|
| Identifying the risky low lying areas is relatively easy.
| However, predicting how and where the climate will change for the
| better, is at best a crap shot.
|
| We'll know things are getting serious when there's talk on Wall
| Street about moving out of lower Manhattan.
| grok2 wrote:
| What? No reference to country specific disconnected-from-the-
| rest-of-the-world Internet, a-la Russia's experiment a few days
| ago? To me, more government control over the Internet to the
| extent of governments basically sealing the Internet to within
| country borders with more regulation (taxes, anyone?) of out-of-
| country access seems like a no-brainer thing happening in the
| upcoming decade...way more than just the great-wall-of-china
| firewall.
| nicebill8 wrote:
| > Error establishing a database connection
|
| Looks like we're going back to the 00's
| csomar wrote:
| Comments are broken too...
| cpach wrote:
| Wilson's site got the hug of death :)
| cpach wrote:
| Fortunately it's back now :)
| rvz wrote:
| Some of the points made here I agree with, probably slightly more
| accurate that the other warped predictions I've seen so far.
|
| However, I question that predictions /2 and /6 seem to be wildly
| far-fetched that it's as if the author based his predictions from
| a damaged magic mirror.
|
| /2) While the tech is there for automation, Several safety and
| regulatory requirements the AI technology is not transparent
| enough to completely replace workers. This will take more years
| to only end up being a complimentary tool for its users.
|
| /6) doesn't sound very realistic to achieve in this decade. The
| research is experimental or starting to emerge but not mature yet
| for be available to all yet and will not be in this decade.
| Probably the next or very late 2020s.
|
| I'm surprised to see that mainstream AR not being mentioned nor
| the further regulation of tech being detailed more in this
| article.
| adventured wrote:
| Several of his answers are between laughable and decades sooner
| than would be possible under any scenario. It came across as
| Fred reaching desperately to say something interesting and
| instead he just wrote a bunch of well-worn low value fantasy
| from other sources.
|
| Just look at how comical this stuff is:
|
| > Plant based diets will dominate the world by the end of the
| decade. Eating meat will become a delicacy, much like eating
| caviar is today.
|
| In one decade? Dominating the whole world and meat becoming a
| delicacy. That's such a bad prediction it's borderline sad.
| Maybe over the course of 50-100 years. It would take a decade
| just to scratch the surface of that prediction. It'll take
| decades just to scale up the necessary food production changes
| and distribution required by that prediction. He entirely
| ignores the massive investment required, the slow moving nature
| of it, the entrenched gatekeepers that dictate food policies,
| and the very slow moving nature of changing global consumer
| taste & demand (more likely to occur via aging out and new
| young people adopting, rather than true mass adoption by
| existing people that have all been eating meat for the entire
| lives; that will take a long time).
|
| > Asian crypto exchanges, unchecked by cumbersome regulatory
| restraints in Europe and the US and leveraging decentralized
| finance technologies, will become the dominant capital markets
| for all types of financial instruments.
|
| Things at that scale, dominated as they are in finance by
| giants with vested interests and tightly regulated and
| influenced directly by military muscle, do not change that much
| in the span of ten years or less. Another absurd, impossible
| prediction. This is Fred going overboard on a crypto binge.
|
| He might as well have said in his list that we'll all be
| piloting flying cars in ten years. It's the exact same bullshit
| worthless futurism fantasy backed with the exact same
| supporting basis (vapor).
|
| > China will emerge as the world's dominant global superpower
| leveraging its technical prowess and ability to adapt quickly
| to changing priorities
|
| In ten years the US will still have the only global projection
| military and will still have the world's largest economy.
| Another obvious error of projection by Fred and a bad one at
| that. If everything goes right for China, in 30 years they
| could theoretically occupy a dominant superpower position.
| That's best case scenario. However what is most likely is that
| China will split the world in half with the US and never
| achieve such an overwhelming position and that they'll suffer
| stagnation due to well understood problems they're already
| sinking under (demographics, debt, increasingly extreme
| authoritarianism).
|
| Basically none of what he lists in item #1 will occur in the
| next decade. Most of it is so impossible to occur in the span
| of just ten years, that again, it's super far fetched. Someone
| should have screened all of this for him before he hit publish.
| travisoneill1 wrote:
| > 4/ Countries will create and promote digital/crypto versions of
| their fiat currencies, led by China who moves first and benefits
| the most from this move. The US will be hamstrung by regulatory
| restraints and will be slow to move, allowing other countries and
| regions to lead the crypto sector. Asian crypto exchanges,
| unchecked by cumbersome regulatory restraints in Europe and the
| US and leveraging decentralized finance technologies, will become
| the dominant capital markets for all types of financial
| instruments.
|
| People will not start trusting the Chinese government in the next
| 10 years. If there is a use for crypto here it will be for rich
| Chinese to evade their government when moving money outside the
| country as they typically do.
| ivan_gammel wrote:
| Trust is not binary in the world of finance. It is a measurable
| quantity and it's equal to the premium investors are willing to
| pay. If the market is attractive enough people will invest in
| the hell.
| Animats wrote:
| _If there is a use for crypto here it will be for rich Chinese
| to evade their government when moving money outside the country
| as they typically do._
|
| That's the real use of Bitcoin. It's why Bitcoin mining is such
| a big thing in China. It's "exporting". Made in China, sold
| outside China - that's exporting, and not only legal, but
| encouraged and subsidized. Buy a share in a Bitcoin mine in
| yuan, watch your EUR or USD balance build up in Hong Kong or
| Switzerland.
| opportune wrote:
| It also messes up the Bitcoin mining economics for the rest
| of the world. If you see mining bitcoin as a way to convert
| CNY -> equipment and electricity -> bitcoin -> foreign
| currency, you're willing to operate at a loss. Kind of like
| how when people launder money they accept they'll only get
| 50% or something of their dirty money converted into clean,
| except in reverse.
| DailyHN wrote:
| > 2/ Automation will continue to take costs out of operating many
| of the services and systems that we rely on to live and be
| productive. The fight for who should have access to this massive
| consumer surplus will define the politics of the 2020s. We will
| see capitalism come under increasing scrutiny and experiments to
| reallocate wealth and income more equitably will produce a new
| generation of world leaders who ride this wave to popularity.
| fastball wrote:
| #YangGang
| rayhendricks wrote:
| One thing that was not mentioned was anti-trust action by the
| government. I predict by 2030 one of the FAANG + MSFT will have
| been investigated and broken up by the government. Leaning twords
| FB or AMZN.
| Yizahi wrote:
| No excessive carbon taxation will happen. No significant or
| global emergence of digital currencies (not including regular
| "electronic" dollars or euro). Meat may become more rare along
| with fish (due to still unregulated in 2030 overfishing and
| acidification), but there will be no or almost no lab grown food.
| Mass surveillance will propagate even more but privacy will not
| succeed or become sought by majority.
| csomar wrote:
| > The looming climate crisis will be to this century what the two
| world wars were to the previous one.
|
| I don't think so. WWII was a war between two fronts. Climate
| change affects countries very differently. The ones not affected
| much will unlikely contribute. My guess is that everyone to his
| own in this one.
|
| > experiments to reallocate wealth and income more equitably will
| produce a new generation of world leaders who ride this wave to
| popularity.
|
| I don't think it'll be more than experiments. Capital is very
| sensitive to being grabbed by government for the benefit of the
| "people". My guess is that we'll see countries that try to have
| their industries collapse; while other countries letting that
| capital flow to them.
|
| > China will emerge as the world's dominant global superpower
|
| China is doomed to fail in the long run. Not sure if it's going
| to happen in the next decade or later, though. But it'd be all
| good and hopefully democracy is established.
|
| > Countries will create and promote digital/crypto versions of
| their fiat currencies, led by China who moves first and benefits
| the most from this move.
|
| This was already tried and failed. Crypto-currencies have no
| meaning without the decentralized factor. Governments will never
| be able to establish their crypto due to the fact that they want
| to control the underlying.
|
| > Asian crypto exchanges, unchecked by cumbersome regulatory
| restraints in Europe and the US and leveraging decentralized
| finance technologies
|
| Kinda related to the point above. Countries with low taxes are
| going to boom further as western countries are tightening their
| fiscal game.
|
| > A decentralized internet will emerge, led initially by
| decentralized infrastructure services like storage, bandwidth,
| compute, etc.
|
| I, very, believe this one and hope it happens in the next decade.
| ianai wrote:
| China doomed to fail based on what?
| csomar wrote:
| Based on history. Except this time there are several global
| powers looking to either take over or keep it fragmented.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| There were last time, too. Eventually those global powers
| had troubles of their own, and had to pull out of China.
| almost_usual wrote:
| Witness what's going on in Hong Kong? There's plenty of
| speculation that what's happening there is being funded or
| supported by an opposing party in China. Older generations
| are also implicitly supporting protestors there very
| carefully. The young college kids are who everyone sees but
| there is a lot happening behind the curtain.
|
| China has had multiple generations of unrest. It isn't just
| the young generation that is ready for change.
|
| I wouldn't say China itself is doomed but communism there
| might be.
| NeedMoreTea wrote:
| The older generation in Hong Kong, if my friends there are
| in any way representative (all adults at 97 handover, like
| me) in what they tell me, simply hold the same resentments
| they did in 98, 99, 00 etc for the changes China has made
| to their home and how it is governed, and the constant
| chipping away at what they have. Some of those friends have
| been out on the marches and protests across the years, not
| just 2019's. First demo in favour of universal suffrage was
| probably in 98 when China dismantled the electoral system
| for the LegCo and replaced with the pro-Beijing weighted
| system. Universal suffrage of the Chief Exec was promised
| right back then.
|
| It doesn't need an opposing mainland party to explain HK.
| There may be, but I see little evidence for it.
| evgen wrote:
| Demographics if nothing else. I am now betting that China is
| going to grow old before it becomes rich, I think they made a
| good try but will end up losing that race. China has a gender
| imbalance that is going to cause serious problems over the
| next decade, both due to social disruptions caused by a
| staggering cohort of men who will never find brides and by
| the hit these 'missing families' will have on the next
| generation.
| gz5 wrote:
| >5/ A decentralized internet will emerge, led initially by
| decentralized infrastructure services like storage, bandwidth,
| compute, etc. The emergence of decentralized consumer
| applications will be slow to take hold and a killer decentralized
| consumer app will not emerge until the latter part of the decade.
|
| The pendulum of history suggests this will occur (at some point),
| and I hope it happens sooner than later in many respects, but it
| is also seems like one in which we won't know the
| triggers/causes/sparks until after the fact, partially because it
| seems it will take complex combinations of causes?
|
| Anyone seeing possible sparks which perhaps the rest of us aren't
| yet identifying?
| jandrewrogers wrote:
| The spark is already here. I work in a rapidly emerging domain
| where the trends clearly indicate that traditional concepts of
| centralized infrastructure cannot serve the required workloads:
| operational sensor/geospatial data models. Basically, machinery
| measuring and reasoning about the physical world at scale,
| often in real-time. Several aspects of these data models
| (technical, economic, regulatory) strongly indicate a globally
| federated implementation that allows for fast, decentralized,
| ad hoc cooperation of storage-dense compute elements at the
| edge. The aggregate data velocity is so high that the physics
| of data model centralization is untenable, so there is a
| certain near-term inevitability about it even though you can
| make a centralized solution work today.
|
| There is active research into the theoretical and practical
| design of systems and protocols that will make this plausible.
| It has no precedent in literature and it is a very non-trivial
| problem but the sense is that a practical workable design is
| achievable in the not too distant future.
|
| It is worth noting that effectively managing climate change
| requires implementing the same kind of data model with similar
| theoretical constraints. Building data models of physical
| reality at scale breaks just about every part of classic data
| infrastructure architecture.
| geoah wrote:
| ipfs, dat, zeronet I think are good examples of the sparks you
| are looking for.
|
| These are outside of the blockchain world of compute/storage as
| a service attempts that got started suring the ico goldrush and
| seem to be doing quite well for themselves.
| sagichmal wrote:
| > ipfs, dat, zeronet I think are good examples of the sparks
| you are looking for.
|
| All of these things are failures?
| gz5 wrote:
| i might categorize protocols (or even combining ipfs and dat
| as the basis of interesting solutions) as fuel. not sure they
| are the spark that lights the fire.
|
| maybe that sounds like semantics, so to propose a rough
| taxonomy of different types of actors:
|
| a. nation state level superpowers
|
| b. nation state level challengers
|
| c. large business / incumbents / leaders
|
| d. small business / startups / challengers
|
| e. individuals / consumers / social groups
|
| f. possibly horizontal groups across combinations of the
| above
|
| it would seem at least one of those groups would need to
| believe they can reap move-the-needle level benefits from
| decentralized internet in order to spark progress?
| pascalxus wrote:
| I think we should be asking: What problem does it solve? why is
| that problem important? and why would someone use that new
| solution rather than what they're already using.
| chubot wrote:
| Maybe there will be a need for massive computing in remote
| areas: Antartica, or space. They need a lot of local storage
| and compute. And they have low bandwidth.
|
| It's kind of like GPUs are in cars right now. You can't drive a
| Tesla with dumb sensors over the Internet -- you need smart
| local compute.
|
| https://www.wired.com/story/tesla-self-driving-car-computer-...
|
| So I guess IoT and doing heavy local computation is a technical
| reason you would need decentralization. I can see that
| happening for many use cases. I'm not sure if it will happen
| for the consumer web because centralization is more efficient
| and the current network effects are so ingrained. Similar to
| how Windows is still dominant on the desktop, but iOS/Android
| are perhaps more important platforms.
|
| ---
|
| I think major changes in behavior are driven by new hardware --
| phones in the 00's, PC's in the 80's, Internet in the 90's,
| etc.
|
| People have been trying to push VR, but to me VIDEO is the real
| VR -- more stuff happens there and more people use it. I was
| chatting with a friend yesterday and observed that YouTube is
| basically what "SecondLife" was supposed to be. People are
| exchanging all kinds of valuable information and entertainment
| on YouTube.
|
| So if you need to process a lot of video locally for some
| reason, that could be a killer app for decentralization. Just
| like a self-driving car, although I'm bearish on self-driving
| impacting the average consumer in the next 10 years. I think it
| will continue to be cheaper to operate rideshares with human
| drivers in most parts of the world and most terrains/climates.
| mymythisisthis wrote:
| There will be another factorial increase in, for a lack of a
| better term, email attachment sizes.
|
| It's still hard to share files that are 500MB in size, and I
| don't see why. I think it has to do with media companies like
| Google not wanting individuals to share files, unless it is
| through them. But the damn will break soon, much like
| Megaupload changed the scene in 2005.
| chukye wrote:
| Error establishing a database connection
| gfodor wrote:
| I predict the 2020's will turn out to be the most difficult-to-
| predict decade yet. The predictions of the OP in my mind fail to
| account for several yet-to-mature disruptive technologies that
| will potentially transform our society to the degree the Internet
| and web have. The only prediction I'll make is in the domain
| where I work:
|
| By the end of the decade, most people will be wearing some kind
| of immersive computing device (glasses, contacts, perhaps
| neurological etc) all day which allow software to proxy most
| aspects of their visual and audio perception, perhaps more.
|
| Among the many results of this change, the most profound will be
| the loss of physical co-presence as a factor for interacting with
| other people. People will routinely 'beam in' each other (similar
| to FaceTime conceptually, but with no visual or auditory
| perceptual deficiency vs being together in person) in varying
| contexts for varying purposes.
|
| The technical miracle aside, this will cause a fundamental shift
| in the way we think about what it means to "be" with other people
| -- the dependence upon physical co-locality will be no longer
| something we place highly in our mental model for spending time
| with others, other than children.
|
| This will affect nearly every industry in terms of economics,
| some sectors potentially catastrophically like long distance
| transportation, but the biggest effect will be degree to which we
| will become able to empathize with others around the world and
| create novel, deeply impactful forms of interacting with others
| in a physical and emotional sense.
|
| I suspect, perhaps hope, that the dominating result will be that,
| in combination with new forms of media based upon these new
| technological marvels, we will be able to greatly reduce or
| eliminate the tribalist tendencies we have for one another when
| those 'others' are out-of-reach for us to talk with, hug, dance
| with, and learn from.
|
| In 2030, you'll be able to hug anyone on Earth instantly, and
| that's something to be optimistic about.
| joejerryronnie wrote:
| > In 2030, you'll be able to hug anyone on Earth instantly, and
| that's something to be optimistic about.
|
| Or instantly punch anyone on earth in the face. Based on how
| the last decade went, I'm not optimistic.
| dagss wrote:
| The internet is already a huge step up in communication from 20
| years ago. Turns out people use that to find ideologically
| likeminded people meaning tribalist movements everywhere are
| stronger now than before internet came along. 90's were full of
| optimism about how tribalism could be overcome that is
| completely vanished now.
|
| From the same technological situation you describe I can only
| think of how people would use that only to further isolate
| themselves. At least today, physical location sometimes dictate
| you have to interact with people outside of your own social
| class and background. What you describe could reduce that,
| making every one retreat even further into their echo chamber.
|
| People already live in close proximity to millions in cities.
| They generally don't hug each other; more fixated on rushing
| past each other, avoiding eye contact.
|
| Humans just aren't made for having 7 billion friends...
| mymythisisthis wrote:
| The Internet had temperately killed technical clubs like HAM
| radio, wood working shops etc., as people got into coding and
| could collaborate remotely. Around 2008 lots of Makerspaces
| started to open, but not nearly enough, the maker movement
| has stalled though.
|
| We need to rethink the ways schools operate, from 8am-3pm
| they can be for kids. After 4pm they can be adult learning
| hubs, maker spaces, DIY bicycle repair shops etc.
| rch wrote:
| I think libraries are a better fit than public schools, and
| some already have maker spaces, seed banks or gardens, and
| opportunities for continuing education. With funding
| provided by a dedicated library district (which is
| increasingly common) in addition to private foundation
| support, these institutions can have a significant positive
| impact in the communities they serve.
| chefkoch wrote:
| The main usage will be porn.
| majewsky wrote:
| > People will routinely 'beam in' each other (similar to
| FaceTime conceptually, but with no visual or auditory
| perceptual deficiency vs being together in person) in varying
| contexts for varying purposes.
|
| This made me laugh. We haven't even figured out how to do
| telephone conferences reliably. I'm still waiting for a telco
| that does not have the obligatory "You're breaking up" or "I
| cannot see the screenshare" or "Oh sorry, my microphone was
| still on mute" or whatever somewhere in between.
| npo9 wrote:
| Beaming in might be popular for some use cases, however
| physical presence will still be the gold standard. VR/AR will
| always represent a big drop in information density compared to
| reality. In human conversation even a 75ms lag would be
| noticeable compared to real-time. I highly doubt looking at a
| vr projections eyes can match the same intensity as looking at
| a real person's. Also, VR completely removes items such as
| touch and smell.
|
| How much data does a human 6 feet away from you project to you?
| How much of that data enters your conscious? How much enters
| your subconscious? With Moore's law dying we can't hope to
| match that amount of information, much less accurately record
| and transport it in real time. Lossy capture and output
| mechanisms will still be present in a decade.
| nine_k wrote:
| Most humans on Earth don't _want_ to be hugged by a stranger.
| Privacy and all that.
|
| And for those few we really care to hug, we most often care
| enough for to be around anyway.
| joejerryronnie wrote:
| A coworker and I were discussing this trend as it relates to
| the physical workspace. We imagined a psuedo-virtual cubical
| which you can "decorate" in any theme you'd like - jungle, sci-
| fi, steampunk, tropical beach, etc. - which would be rendered
| by your coworkers' AR wearables/implants.
|
| My favorite concept of that discussion was virtual guardians to
| protect your flow - look, you can interrupt that developer but
| you're gonna have to defeat his virtual dragon first.
| nine_k wrote:
| I, for one, make my physical workspace disappear from my view
| as much as possible. When I'm at my desk, 99% of what I see
| is my screen, 1% goes for the occasional look at the tea cup.
|
| No room, or need, for decorations and fluff.
| joejerryronnie wrote:
| In a sense, you are already virtualizing your workspace in
| macintosh-chic :)
|
| Perhaps your coworkers would be required to execute a
| perfect Japanese tea ceremony before interrupting you.
| jstimpfle wrote:
| What are your thoughts considering that VR was supposed to be
| the next big thing in the 90s already (at least from what I
| remember hearing...) and what are your thoughts regarding human
| chemistry?
| gfodor wrote:
| The tech track towards full perceptual override in this
| current generation of VR is fairly well understood and has
| been on track, though slightly delayed, for approx 7 years
| now, with the current Oculus Quest device being the best
| available, and something many of us in the industry felt was
| almost a dream possibility a few short years ago. So I'm
| fairly optimistic that the tech will mature to a point where
| it is effortless to have fully convincing perceptual software
| proxying all day in 10 years.
|
| I think the bigger unknown questions are around the impact of
| this technology. It seems hard to understate how much of a
| change it will be, particularly if there is a path towards
| young people being able to use it at a young age.
| bobajeff wrote:
| The problem with all these predictions about VR taking
| over, is they seem to pretend that visual sense is the Holy
| Grail of VR immersion we've all been waiting for. But
| that's a far cry from what was imagined in The Lawnmower
| Man or The Matrix. In reality we have 4 other senses to
| take care of first.
|
| In the mean time you just have a display that obstructs
| your view and which can't be tolerated for more than a
| couple of hours.
| dclowd9901 wrote:
| "Full perceptual override"?
| bigwavedave wrote:
| The parts of the real world that are still perceived by
| our senses but ultimately completely hidden/masked by AR.
| buboard wrote:
| While its correct that telecommunication will become much
| important at work, i dont see why people will be stuck in VR
| outside work. If all work is remote, why would anyone choose to
| live away from loved ones?
| doc_gunthrop wrote:
| > In 2030, you'll be able to hug anyone on Earth instantly, and
| that's something to be optimistic about.
|
| This sounds sad and absurd. Hugging someone in person is a much
| more visceral experience than via AR/VR.
| iamwil wrote:
| > This will affect nearly every industry in terms of economics,
| some sectors potentially catastrophically like long distance
| transportation, but the biggest effect will be degree to which
| we will become able to empathize with others around the world
| and create novel, deeply impactful forms of interacting with
| others in a physical and emotional sense.
|
| Careful. I remember reading similar sentiments about the web in
| the 90's. Turns out it's true, to a degree, but also unleased
| all the misinformation we see today. I can imagine something
| similar in the future where you can't tell what's real, not
| only news, but also what you see in front of you.
| ineedasername wrote:
| I remember when Second Life was predicted to transform
| everything from Education to basic human interaction.
| redis_mlc wrote:
| It would be great if somebody could link to an analysis of
| what happened with Second Life.
|
| I remember the early hype, but then read a few interviews
| with users/losers who were just escaping reality.
| nine_k wrote:
| What happened: nobody needed it.
|
| Too slow (latency is inevitable), too limiting, too hard
| to do or show anything non-trivial.
|
| You could do interesting things if you put it a lot of
| time. But few have the time to spend on unclear benefits.
| iamwil wrote:
| I had a coworker that worked on the fraud team at Second
| Life. He said the engineers ran the place and would work
| on stuff that was technically interesting to them, rather
| than working on stuff that users wanted or needed. That
| probably didn't help.
| jl2718 wrote:
| > people overestimate what will happen in a year and
| underestimate what will happen in a decade.
|
| Last decade seemed like the opposite. So much happened every
| year, but nothing changed over the decade. The biggest change
| seems to be the expansion of aggrieved classes to include almost
| everybody. This only applies to "the West" of course. Changes
| elsewhere are perhaps striking.
| anonytrary wrote:
| The climate crisis will be exacerbated by the increasing
| centralization of large cities. Humans are tending towards
| centralized population hubs, and away from rural areas.
|
| This will be the main catalyst for adopting greener
| infrastructure. Fear of permanent climate change will _not_ be
| the catalyst, as that is a long term repercussion of not solving
| the pollution problem, and humans have _never_ been good about
| preparing for things in advance.
| dehrmann wrote:
| I'm not following your logic. Yes, humans are leaving rural
| communities for cities, but I'm not sure how that exacerbates
| climate problems...unless they're all moving to New Orleans.
| ianai wrote:
| I've seen at least one article suggesting the end of
| centralization into cities. I suspect LEO based internet
| services will further help people move back to the country.
| All that's needed is work out there.
| dehrmann wrote:
| A friend lived outside a city of 20,000 in rural Colorado.
| He dropped $10-20k to get fiber run out. It seems like a
| lot, but If that's literally the only thing keeping you
| from moving from the Bay Area to a small town, you just
| haven't done your research.
| augustt wrote:
| I thought it was the other way around? Don't people in cities
| have a lower carbon footprint because of public transportation,
| smaller homes, and other things that can be shared?
| lettergram wrote:
| I kind of doubt most of these. My prediction:
|
| 1. China will fall to internal strife of some kind. Still may
| maintain power, but famine and mass executions / disappearances
| will occur.
|
| 2. we will have further centralization of the internet
|
| 3. Solar will only account for 10k Gw
|
| 4. Agree that nuclear will make a massive resurgence
|
| 5. Gas will still be the dominate power source for mobile
| transportation, but less so. This is because gas prices will
| fall.
|
| 6. Saudi Arabia will have a violent revolution
|
| 7. California housing market will collapse due to high
| electricity prices, lack of electricity and wildfires
|
| 10. Meat will be nearly as prevalent today, but wild caught fish
| will be virtually no more
|
| 11. Self driving vehicles will operate in many of the non-heavily
| effected weather states. Laws will be passed to regulate and
| exclude some states after fatalities
|
| 12. Marijuana will be legal federally
|
| 13. Government will start accessing Alexa, Google, Siri
| recordings and public will be made aware
|
| 14. China will start using / building power projection in states
| it can. Specifically to protect food
| empath75 wrote:
| I think it's more likely that the west will collapse than that
| China will, to be honest. Nobody in the west believes in their
| institutions any more and the uk and us folded like a house of
| cards with just the lightest push from Russia in 2015-2016. The
| economy of the west is still strong for now, but if we continue
| blindly following this nationalist path we're going to end up
| the way we ended after our last dalliance with nationalism,
| except this time with nuclear weapons.
| ertecturing wrote:
| Time to get off the hype train lad. Whether or institutions
| are believed in or not they're functioning. The idea that
| because people and propositions you don't like were
| elected/passed in 2016 that it must be because of the all
| powerful Russia is the greatest hype hoax of the last 6
| decades (only topped by McCarthyism). We are not on a truly
| nationalist path in the traditional sense, more a populist
| path. Nationalists don't tend to value other countries more
| than their own (Trump & Israel). Nuclear weapons didn't fire
| during the insanity of the 60s so they'll never fire.
| simonhamp wrote:
| 13. Wait... you think they're _not_ already doing that?
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| Well, if they are, the public isn't aware yet, which was part
| of prediction 13.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| ubiopinion wrote:
| It's funny how you can predict this person (even if he doesn't
| think so) is a conservative that buys in right wing media
| propaganda. And OP is the opposite but somehow more grounded in
| reality.
|
| See how he believes 2 lies? 1. The trade war is working. 2. The
| US government isn't a puppet of the Saudi Arabia. Okay...
| trentnix wrote:
| I'd bet the farm, all the farms, that your list turns out more
| correct than the one at the link.
|
| The item on your list I have the biggest issue with is 10.
| We'll still be catching plenty of fish in the wild (but some
| places that fish are plentiful today won't be that way) in
| another 10 years.
| graycat wrote:
| Blank.
| runarberg wrote:
| Even if over fishing is under control there is still an
| issue with climate change and everything that comes with
| it, including _ocean acidification_ , _ocean current
| disruptions_ , _migrations of pervasive alien species_ ,
| _collapse of important local populations_ (due to the
| above).
|
| So even if over fishing is not a threat any more, our ocean
| food source is still at huge risk.
| andrepd wrote:
| >China will fall
|
| >Saudi will have a violent revolution
|
| Very very unfortunately, this sounds more like wishful thinking
| than a reasonable prediction. The ways in which modern states
| can maintain power and suppress their people is overwhelming.
| China can and has built perhaps the most oppressive
| totalitarian state ever to have existed. Saudi is diversifying
| its _absurd_ wealth to resist downturns in oil, and the "first
| world" is still hapelly grovelling and kissing the rings of
| that disgusting despot, selling them weapons and propping them
| up diplomatically. All in all, I don't have my hopes up.
|
| It's all rather depressing.
| [deleted]
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| _> China will fall >Saudi will have a violent revolution
|
| Very very unfortunately, this sounds more like wishful
| thinking than a reasonable prediction._
|
| The truly troublesome part is that predictions about social
| phenomenon can be self-fulfilling prophesy. If you basically
| want to see a bloody revolution instead of a better solution,
| that actively increases the odds of it happening.
| golergka wrote:
| The best the world can hope for Saudi Arabia is the status
| quo. As authoritarian and barbaric as they are, the problem
| is, Saudi's internal opposition isn't some liberal freedom
| lovers - it's much more radical religious fanatics that
| would turn the country in (in essence) ISIS, but with oil
| and wealth.
|
| The reason modern western leaders support house of Saud
| isn't that they're the good guys. They're just the best of
| what all realistic possibilities in the region,
| unfortunately.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| >The reason modern western leaders support house of Saud
| isn't that they're the good guys. They're just the best
| of what all realistic possibilities in the region,
| unfortunately.
|
| I doubt it. Saud family were interested in fighting the
| Ottomans, as were the British in WW1, and their interests
| aligned then. And during WW2, once it was found to
| provide access to oil, it only made sense for the west to
| make sure a stable regime was established. The US/Brits
| support the Sauds in whatever they want to do, and the
| Sauds provide oil and purchase weapons. Keeps the region
| nice and unstable for future weapons orders and to
| prevent a situation like Norway where the oil wealth is
| distributed to everyone and no longer able to be
| controlled by a handful of people.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Saud#Origins_and_e
| arl...
|
| For further proof, the more modern socially liberal Iran
| was destabilized in favor of a fundamentalist leader by
| the US for their refusal to play ball:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruhollah_Khomeini#Khomeini'
| s_c...
|
| It's just business, it's easier to deal with a small
| country's king than a democracy.
|
| This is a good book about the circumstances that result
| in the modern situation:
|
| https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/64594.A_History_of_th
| e_M...
| chefkoch wrote:
| > prevent a situation like Norway where the oil wealth is
| distributed to everyone and no longer able to be
| controlled by a handful of people.
|
| Isn't the wealth distributed to the saudis to keep them
| happy and inline?
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Who knows what proportion of it is distributed. Money
| isn't the only wealth. A high trust society with an open
| and accountable government is far more "wealth" for the
| average citizen than getting a check every month.
|
| And if the Saudi king decides to stop the payments or
| kill you for speaking out against them (see Kashoggi
| assassination), what good is a few thousand in oil money
| while the royalty splits the billions with the US.
| brobinson wrote:
| The PRC's working population peaks somewhere between right
| now and the next 5 years. By 2050, over 1/3 of their
| population is over 65 years old. They've been under
| replenishment birth rates for a long time. Their population
| pyramid is really, truly scary.
|
| Their highly leveraged economy will not survive at "6%"
| growth over the next decade. It is not clear that they will
| escape the Middle Income Trap [1]. They are struggling with
| zombie companies and transitioning from manufacturing to a
| services-based economy. Their manufacturing is also being
| slowly eaten away by countries like Vietnam.
|
| As the PRC maintains its legitimacy through the economic
| growth that has happened under its existence, a recession
| could trigger political upheaval or force the CCP to distract
| the populace, e.g. they might try to annex the ROC (Taiwan
| and its other holdings) by force. A military conflict in
| which a large number of one child families lose their sole
| child would have disastrous ramifications as far as
| government stability, too.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_income_trap
|
| (No opinion on Saudi as I only follow the
| economy/demographics of the PRC and Eurozone countries)
| nopinsight wrote:
| Given their focus on technology and modernization and
| massive investment in R&D and STEM education, it is likely
| that China will grow further still. China's R&D investment
| is now at the top of the world about on par with the US.
| There are also a very high number of capable engineers in
| China as suggested by PISA results.
|
| A key difference with middle income countries that only
| earn export income as manufacturing base is that there are
| quite a few Chinese companies that possess its own
| technology and brands. DJI, Oppo, Xiaomi are some examples.
| Many of these brands are not well known in the US but have
| become increasingly competitive with global brands, at
| least in some respect, in Asia and perhaps elsewhere.
|
| It might make sense to compare them to Korean brands a
| while back, with an additional advantage of massive
| domestic market.
|
| Their forward-looking focus on major industries of tomorrow
| like AI, EV, and biotech does not hurt either.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_research
| _...
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21868570
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21692002
|
| Since there are many areas in China that could be further
| developed, the service sector will also likely grow.
|
| My point is that the US ought not get complacent and
| believe in wishful thinking that competition from China
| will simply go away in time.
| georgeplusplus wrote:
| It's all about trade. The USSR was brought down because
| they had no nations to trade with and refused to play
| ball with them and excluded them from the world
| diminishing their growth and power. The key difference
| this time around is Europe seems pretty complacent to let
| China keep doing its thing.
| jsmonkey wrote:
| Yep, and the thing is that most Chinese don't even mind the
| high level of control for the time being. I don't see any
| significant large scale instability as long as the material
| quality of life continues to improve for the average Chinese.
| magduf wrote:
| This is probably pretty normal historically. People start
| rebelling not just because of restrictions on freedom, but
| usually because their quality of life sucks. See what's
| happening in Hong Kong: they don't like the increasing
| Chinese oppression, sure, but they also have some serious
| quality-of-life complaints too, namely with housing prices.
|
| When people are fat and comfortable, they tend not to rock
| the boat too much for vague ideals.
| throwlaplace wrote:
| >1. China will fall to internal strife of some kind. Still may
| maintain power, but famine and mass executions / disappearances
| will occur.
|
| >6. Saudi Arabia will have a violent revolution
|
| why do people make these kinds of predictions. they're so
| uninformed it's beyond the pale.
|
| china and SA are two of the most authoritarian and
| simultaneously well-funded (effective and efficient)
| governments on the planets -- we're not talking libya here (let
| alone syria, venezuela which still stand in their pre-upheavel
| form). how do you practically imagine either of these things
| happening? like a superhero comes down and leads the charge?
|
| do you know what it actually takes to organize on such a
| massive scale as to bring down a state? here in america we
| can't get enough grass-roots organization for free health-care
| and tertiary education. and you think somewhere in china is a
| political mind so brilliant that they'll be able to organize
| some portion of 3x the population to violent revolution (since
| they don't have elections)?
| Aperocky wrote:
| Because they've never been to China but simultaneously think
| they knew a lot about China because the news they were fed.
| Particularly that Chinese people want democracy like Iraqis
| under Saddam (note: both are untrue).
| dehrmann wrote:
| While I haven't been to China, I think you mean Han
| Chinese. Uighurs and Tibet are less excited about being
| part of China.
| magduf wrote:
| The Han Chinese are, by far, the majority. Uyghurs are a
| small and unliked minority. What makes you think they're
| going to destabilize that nation? Did the poor treatment
| of black people in the US cause it to collapse? It did
| lead to a civil war at one point, and to some turbulent
| times a century later, but that's only because people in
| the US actually cared about human rights. I don't see any
| evidence that most of China's population is too concerned
| with the treatment of Uyghurs, unfortunately.
| ummonk wrote:
| True for the Uyghurs, but less true for Tibetans. The
| Tibetan public is largely happy with what has happened
| under China - it's the deposed nobility who are less
| excited about it.
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| Many were alive when the Soviet Union and the Iron Curtain
| fell. That makes such large upheavals believable. The
| weakness of authoritarian regimes is that by their nature
| dissention is hidden. Those in charge aren't really aware of
| how far they're overshooting until it's too late to release
| some of the pressure. I don't understand Chinese culture or
| their current situation enough to say whether or not they're
| in danger but Saudi Arabia certainly seems to have many
| parallels with other authoritarian regimes that fell to
| revolution.
| throwlaplace wrote:
| >Saudi Arabia certainly seems to have many parallels with
| other authoritarian regimes that fell to revolution.
|
| SA has the 12th highest purchasing power parity in the
| world. what parallels do you see exactly with the soviet
| union?
| WaltPurvis wrote:
| If anyone predicted in 1985 that a mere 7 years later the
| Soviet Union would no longer exist and Germany would be
| reunited, and it would all happen with essentially no
| violence, people would have derided them mercilessly.
|
| Monumental changes _can_ happen, and shockingly quickly.
| Juliate wrote:
| Well, Soviet Union (hence the Iron Curtain itself) were not
| really _well funded_ anymore when they fell. The system
| they had in place was completely failing.
|
| Edit: or maybe I'm wrong. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dis
| solution_of_the_Soviet_Unio...
| NeedMoreTea wrote:
| Not to me. Soviet Union's fall was a very unique set of
| events, some unique to the time and sweep of history, some
| just plain unique. It was a combination of the right
| leaders, Chernobyl, fallout from WW2 divisions such as the
| Baltic States Molotov Pact protests, and Solidarity and
| Lech Walesa in Poland, then the right chain of events over
| a decade.
|
| Many of those Soviet Republics were _very_ reluctant
| participants, forcibly occupied with underlying resentment
| going back centuries in a couple of cases, to WW2 in
| others.
|
| There seem very few parallels with Saudi or China.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| Yeah, when China breaks down again, it will be for very
| unique reasons, singular for their time and place, and
| dependent on a few very good or bad political decisions.
|
| When has social change ever not been unique?
| NeedMoreTea wrote:
| Which is rather my point, rather than a few vague
| sweeping generalisations of GP drawing parallels where
| none appear to exist.
|
| It's always easier to explain collapse with hindsight. :)
| magduf wrote:
| The Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact countries were in many
| ways the opposite of modern China. They were not efficient
| at all, and their economies were absolutely _terrible_.
| China has its problems, but a moribund economy is not one
| of them.
| lidHanteyk wrote:
| Fascist states don't need a revolution to collapse, though;
| they just need to run out of anger and people to oppress.
| Consider China's attempts to oppress Hong Kong; like with all
| prior oppression attempts, China must succeed if they want to
| continue expanding. Given how precarious their position is in
| HK, it's not a stretch to imagine that they might not be able
| to reconquer the South China Sea soon enough to ensure
| continued growth. China's out of places to expand in the west
| and south, and so it's South China Sea or bust for them. I
| don't know _how_ they 'll collapse, just that they will.
|
| The Saudis are much more comfortable in their position. MBS
| can and will dangle individual rights for women, one by one,
| like red meat for the laity. He will garner applause
| throughout the next two decades for his progressive attitude
| towards women, even as he is a bloodthirsty despot.
| kortilla wrote:
| > free health-care and tertiary education.
|
| Probably because there is no such thing. The people who vote
| against them realize that you're still paying for them via
| taxes and that you'll be destroying the entire market.
|
| Destroying the market with the best healthcare research and
| the market with much of the best academic research shouldn't
| be taken lightly.
| throwlaplace wrote:
| in your effort to reiterate a cliche you've completely
| missed my point. nationalized health care has broad
| support:
|
| https://thehill.com/hilltv/what-americas-
| thinking/412545-70-...
|
| and yet we can't get organized enough to pass it.
| FreeHugs wrote:
| A decentralized internet will emerge
|
| It already is decentralized. No single authority controls the
| routing of packets. led initially by
| decentralized infrastructure services like
| storage, bandwidth, compute, etc.
|
| Seems like what he means is that more decentralized services will
| be built on top of the internet. Services, where you don't know
| who will provide the service you are buying. And where anybody
| can jump in to provide that service.
|
| A bit like AirBnB, Uber etc. But probably he means that the rules
| of those new services will be enforced by protocols, rather then
| by companies. So I guess Bitcoin is the most prominent example of
| such a service that is already in existence.
| jackcosgrove wrote:
| I too dream of a decentralized internet and especially
| decentralized cloud resources, but I can't find a way around the
| question of how you securely host a database on some random
| person's idle computer/"spot instance". If that data is
| compromised, who do you sue? The random person who has no assets?
|
| Data security ultimately depends on secure physical access to the
| hosting hardware. Not everything can or should be put in a public
| database, so you need physical security. Cloud providers provide
| physical security plus trustworthiness due to their reputations,
| as well as deep pockets to sue if something goes wrong.
|
| Most industries end up with only a few competing firms. Why would
| cloud computing be different? I'm open to solutions on data
| security.
| jaggirs wrote:
| 1. Data Redundancy
|
| 2. Encryption
| jackcosgrove wrote:
| You need to decrypt the data somewhere, which requires
| holding the key in memory. What's to prevent a nefarious node
| in the distributed cloud from extracting your key?
|
| I could see a solution where every user has their own key,
| served by a securely hosted (non-distributed) server, and
| decrypting the data client side, but that doesn't cover all
| cases where you might need to aggregate or share data across
| users.
| ironarm wrote:
| I think it's very possible to decentralize databases. Not to
| sound like I'm jumping off the deep end... What if each set of
| decentralized data was verified by each user on... a block
| chain. Using a proof of work/stake model that each existing
| copy verified each new copy or propagated update. If the hashes
| didn't match with the greater pool then data would be
| considered corrupt and ignored. Even cooler is people could
| simply fork their data sets and create a new blockchain for
| their project. Truly free data.
|
| I'm iffy on the cryptos but it's appearing less and less of a
| solution looking for a problem and more a solution for many
| problems dealing with decentralization.
|
| For an interesting existing solution sans blockchain check out
| [gundb](https://gun.eco/).
| brlewis wrote:
| > We will see nuclear power make a resurgence around the world,
| particularly smaller reactors that are easier to build and safer
| to operate.
|
| Funny, I was digging into this issue just this morning. One
| family member supports Andrew Yang, but another won't support
| anyone who advocates for nuclear power.
|
| Despite Thorium not being fully proven yet, I lean toward
| agreement with Yang:
| https://en.howtruthful.com/o/nuclear_power_is_a_crucial_comp...
| nradov wrote:
| I support nuclear power, however I doubt we will ever see many
| more reactors built in most countries. The growth of
| photovoltaic solar power combined with coming cheaper grid
| scale battery storage is going to wreck the economics for
| nuclear (including fusion if it ever works).
| brlewis wrote:
| Solar wrecking the economics for nuclear looks unlikely to
| me: https://en.howtruthful.com/o/nuclear_power_can_replace_co
| al_...
| paul_f wrote:
| The big assumption being economical grid storage. We don't
| have a technology yet to do that.
| mdorazio wrote:
| Yes we do and it's already being deployed. See [1] for
| example.
|
| [1] https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2019/07/29/california-gas-
| plant-...
| Reedx wrote:
| It's incredibly unfortunate nuclear has such a bad PR problem,
| as we need it to get to large scale clean energy. If we had
| properly invested in nuclear earlier, we'd probably be in a
| much better position today. Now we need to play catchup.
|
| It was a smart move by Yang to bring up new technologies, which
| most don't seem to be aware of yet, and provides a way forward
| through the PR problem.
| chillacy wrote:
| By the numbers nuclear is very safe but it does have asymmetric
| risk and most importantly a bad reputation. Next gen nuclear
| should be a marketing rebrand in addition to new tech. So Yang
| is right to focus on thorium.
| ianai wrote:
| Wish these billionaires with good intentions would invest in
| marketing to revamp public nuclear sentiment. There's clearly
| the possibility of progress given how effective other
| political campaigns are.
| wallace_f wrote:
| If most billionaires are optimizing for social image / good
| will, your idea makes no sense to most of those people.
| roenxi wrote:
| On inspection, if they are optimising for social image /
| good will then a marketing campaign is the obvious
| starting point.
| ianai wrote:
| Their money can market both that nuclear is safe and
| they're to be trusted. Plenty of oxygen for both.
| Symmetry wrote:
| Is the asymmetric risk really any worse than hydro-electric,
| though? The Banquiao Dam failure killed something like an
| order of magnitude more people than Chernobyl. And there was
| the recent Oroville Dam incident which didn't kill anyone but
| it came pretty close to failing catastrophically.
| cesarb wrote:
| > Is the asymmetric risk really any worse than hydro-
| electric, though?
|
| Yes.
|
| You are only looking at the immediate damage. After the
| dust settles, with a worst-case nuclear accident you have a
| heavily contaminated area which cannot be resettled for a
| long time; after a worst-case hydroelectric accident, you
| have mostly only water and mud, and can start rebuilding
| almost immediately.
| amelius wrote:
| Ok but the choice is not democratic in every part of the world.
| Think e.g. about China.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| dadarepublic wrote:
| There was a smattering throughout about areas where the US lags.
| There was a lot of discussion around #6 but I found #3 to be
| quite interesting, esp. the last sentence:
|
| > Conversely the US becomes increasingly internally focused and
| isolationist in its world view
|
| I wonder what are some people's thoughts on this - specifically
| if they agree and what are some of the potential impacts to US
| citizens and abroad (influence, wealth, industry leadership,
| etc)?
| buboard wrote:
| What about demographic collapse in the west/china? will it not
| overshadow a lot of this? Esp coupled with demographic looming
| catastrophe in africa. Poor countries becoming increasingly
| unsustainable at a time when the developed ones will be least
| able to help.
| [deleted]
| rgarrett88 wrote:
| Immigration will make both of these things less of an issue. It
| will create increasing political tensions.
| buboard wrote:
| immigration requires opportunity, and opportunity is becoming
| increasingly scarce in europe. it's more likely, lots of
| capital will be reallocated towards the growing parts of
| africa
| nradov wrote:
| Immigration doesn't require opportunity if you're fleeing
| from drug cartels or islamist death squads.
| buboard wrote:
| that's a very small number; and they re refugees
| emayljames wrote:
| Agree with all, except the crypto currency bit.
|
| Asia (China) would not have an incentive politically to run with
| it, as it would remove traceability and control of money flow.
| Not to mention online currencies pitfalls.
| dehrmann wrote:
| Crypto currencies have failed to be useful as currencies, so
| I'm not sure why governments would be so eager to try them.
| [deleted]
| bransonf wrote:
| A few good takes, but China becoming the dominant global power?
| Not a good take.
|
| China is fairly good at a few things, namely lending money and
| manufacturing goods.
|
| What they aren't good at is making people happy. See Hong Kong
| for the last 6 months.
|
| I don't think the United States is becoming increasingly
| isolationist. I think we've seen a brief period of these
| attitudes, but it's not indicative of the next decade imo.
|
| And the author seems to think China will be able to rapidly adapt
| to change, pointing to global warming.
|
| China is the world's worst source of pollution. I don't think
| they're going to 180, especially since their economy is built on
| it.
| jayd16 wrote:
| Another interesting aspect is they might need to transition
| into a focus on their middle class or risk pricing themselves
| out of the labor market. Politically, I would think thats a bit
| of a catch 22 for the party. Empowering a large group would
| weaken the party, I would think.
| bsder wrote:
| Yeah, the worst thing that could happen to China now is that Li
| Xinping lives a long life.
|
| We have seen over and over in history that an individual
| dictator fairly quickly diverges from rational paths.
| joyjoyjoy wrote:
| "What they aren't good at is making people happy. See Hong Kong
| for the last 6 months."
|
| Wrong Chinese people are very happy. In some rankings they
| belong to the happiest people. Here they are medium range:
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2013/09/10...
|
| My prediction:
|
| We will see an economic depression, also caused by energy
| problems. The current quantitative easing is actually the first
| sign of the problems with energy:
| https://ourfiniteworld.com/2019/09/12/our-energy-and-debt-pr...
|
| PS: The US is also pretty good at making other countries
| unhappy. Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran to name a few :-)
| Baeocystin wrote:
| "How's life in soviet russia?"
|
| "Can't complain!"
|
| This is the mistake you're making regarding China.
|
| Source: grew up there
| bouncycastle wrote:
| Exactly. To say that you're unhappy is frowned upon. I'd
| assume in China it's both politically and also socially
| steming from confucianism, (i.e. against upsetting the
| harmony).
| joyjoyjoy wrote:
| "How's life in China?"
|
| "Great!"
|
| Source: I live there!
|
| This is the mistake you're making regarding stuff you have
| no idea of.
| deadbunny wrote:
| You're missing or outright ignoring the wordplay in the
| post you're replying to.
| Baeocystin wrote:
| >Source: grew up there
| joyjoyjoy wrote:
| Yeah. Because we know that post-soviet Russians are very
| happy people. Not.
|
| Source: I am there once a month.
| Faark wrote:
| I mean, yeah, being against those in power isn't a good
| idea in authoritarian regimes. At the same time, people
| describe living in former east germany as the most easy-
| going / carefree time of their life. Being taken care of as
| long as you do as your told isn't all bad and probably was
| the default state of the smaller communities in the past.
| Whish we would find ways to achieve this without the
| authoritarian aspects.
| [deleted]
| hbt wrote:
| difficult to know the truth when the population answers
| surveys by picking the _right_ answer instead of giving their
| true opinion.
| bagacrap wrote:
| So you're saying that Hong Kong is a different country?
| PacketPaul wrote:
| Watch a lecture by Peter Zeihan on YouTube. His entire thesis
| is the US is becoming isolationist. But yea I agree with you
| about China.
| [deleted]
| qaq wrote:
| China is good at things we are really bad at: building up
| modern infrastructure fast and at reasonable cost, investing in
| long term projects (payoff in decades so meaningless for
| election cycle driven politics in other countries).
| LeftHandPath wrote:
| A lot of the article seems to be based on liberal ideals, which
| include a less prominent America, the promotion of Veganism,
| and embracing the fall of the West. For the most part, the
| author's expectations about crypto are mistaken in that they
| assume financiers in the west trust China enough to buy into
| its digital currency. We are bordering on a Cold War; we aren't
| about to trust them to keep their promises on crypto.
|
| I think a more moderate take would be suggesting a straddle of
| the EU - either it strangles itself with clunky bureaucracy, or
| it becomes more closely unified and a world power in the likes
| of the US, Russia, or China.
|
| Furthermore, I think we could see the United States grow with
| the additions of Guam, Puerto Rico, and/or Greenland.
| Fauntleroy wrote:
| In theory the US could add Guam and Puerto Rico... but how
| would that ever be politically viable? There's no way this is
| going to happen if one party in a two party system knows it
| will lead to their doom.
| burfog wrote:
| Add two at once. Possibilities include creating West
| California, West Washington, South Virginia, and South
| Illinois.
| arnaudsm wrote:
| I agree except with your last sentence. They have the biggest
| total pollution, but their pollution per capita is actually low
| compared to eastern countries, and they are investing and
| legislating aggressively for clean tech.
| pedalpete wrote:
| Furthermore to your point, I don't think we need to look at
| pollution from a more holistic point of view. How much of the
| pollution in China is due to them manufacturing and
| "recycling" goods for the west? Can we look at pollution that
| has been "offshored" and calculate that into the mix?
| Phenomenit wrote:
| Yeah but in this case absolut numbers seem more relevant, per
| capita will always be low if you're a billion population
| nation.
| bobx11 wrote:
| That is a logical stat I never hear about and it looks they
| they are indeed lower than USA and Canada (and the worst,
| Middle East):
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_.
| ..
|
| However it's still far worse than most European countries in
| the list.
| asdfasgasdgasdg wrote:
| None of 4, 5, or 6 are at all likely either.
| [deleted]
| unexaminedlife wrote:
| I think by the end (very end) of this decade it will become
| common place for at least the upper class to cryogenically freeze
| and store a cell culture to take advantage of advances in
| medicine that will also occur in this decade such as affordable /
| reliable processes for growing your own organs for transplant,
| etc.
| lidHanteyk wrote:
| Ah, from the mouths of babes.
|
| 1) Maybe. Or maybe we fuck it up and we are the penultimate
| generation of pre-Anthropocene human life. Hard to say for sure.
| So far, the rich and powerful seem to have little trouble selling
| their property.
|
| 2) Automation will not lead to some sort of wakefulness and
| critique of capitalism, but just more technocracy. The future is
| Google being too busy to offer you customer service.
|
| 3) China will collapse after their attempts to monopolize the
| South China Sea fall through.
|
| 4) Cryptocurrencies as a technology will collapse after several
| showstopping protocol-level issues are found. Most notably, a
| team will crack Satoshi's key and steal their BTC hoard, crashing
| almost all cryptocurrency prices, while as a runner-up effort,
| another team will successfully demonstrate forgery of high-
| difficulty blocks with ironic complexity analysis.
|
| 5) The various decentralized mesh networks around the globe will
| each grow to blanket their metropoloi, and some areas will see
| their mesh networks merge to create massive clouds of ambient
| connectivity. Disks will still be expensive, though. In fact,
| I'll predict another disk supply crash due to a natural disaster,
| akin to the tsunami from last decade.
|
| 6) Most folks around the world do not eat that much meat, and no
| numbers are listed, so I'll instead say that people will
| _continue_ to not eat much meat. Perhaps meat consumption in USA,
| China, etc. will diminish, but probably not.
|
| 7) India and China step up their national space programs over the
| next decade, while ESA and NASA continue operating. Elon Musk is
| still around because of sheer willpower, but nobody else is
| really privatizing.
|
| 8) Already happened. It will continue to happen. The author's
| really showing off their bubble with this one.
|
| 9) Yes, many Boomers are near the end of their mortal coils.
| Don't be so morbid about it. I'm not sure if this prediction's at
| all interesting, since any actuary could make the same prediction
| without a single cup of coffee.
|
| 10) Gene therapy will still be sputtering and straining at the
| end of the next decade. CRISPR with Cas9 will have been long
| obsoleted, and nothing will have replaced it. There may be a
| field of genetic programming, though, where people specialize in
| writing code using DNA; there will certainly be a field of
| epigenetics which is distinct from traditional genetics.
| tardo99 wrote:
| My favorite is the part where the torch will be passed from baby
| boomers to millenials and gen z. As if there isn't an entire
| generation of people between the baby boomers and the millenials.
| cinnamonheart wrote:
| I'm seeing a database error, but there's a similar site with 2020
| predictions (and onwards):
|
| https://futuretimeline.net/21stcentury/2020-2029.htm
|
| Most of the 'predictions' have links explaining why they think
| this may occur in that timeframe, e.g., this one about exascale
| computers:
| https://www.futuretimeline.net/21stcentury/2021.htm#exascale
| fabatka wrote:
| >7/[...] The early years of this decade will produce a wave of
| hype and investment in the space business but returns will be
| slow to come and we will be in a trough of disillusionment on the
| space business as the decade comes to an end.
|
| I guess this depends on SpaceX's success with the Starship - if a
| rocket that is made outside a cleanroom and with cheap rolled
| steel frame proves to be usable means that going to space becomes
| very very accessible.
| Faark wrote:
| Yeah, but space needs to be profitable, not just accessible,
| for private companies to take over investments. Even as SpaceX
| fanboy, I have a hard time imagining this any time soon.
|
| Space based internet constellations have a huge resurgence
| right now, but that's unlikely what the author meant.
|
| (Asteroid) Mining? Even if we already had the tech, such a
| mission would take decades. Who would accept the uncertainty
| risk of investing over such long time-spans? That is, if there
| is anything worthy enough to mine in space in the first place,
| will that still be the case many years later?
|
| Tourism might be a thing, but enough to bootstrap an entire
| space economy?
|
| Countries/politicians/billionaires wanting to project power or
| memorialize themselves still seems like the safest bet to me.
| ianai wrote:
| The predictions about China are a little confusing. I know
| they've copied lots of foreign tech, but have they demonstrated
| any ability to source original research and development that had
| no external links? This read a little like what China would want
| the 2020s to look like.
| m_ke wrote:
| Does it matter? They're a manufacturing powerhouse and have a
| government in place that can (and has shown willingness to)
| take long term bets that are in the interest of their country.
| arnaudsm wrote:
| I agree. Except for mass manufacturing and stolen tech, most
| chinese tech is smoke and mirrors at the moment. Chinese
| research is famously low-quality given that most researchers
| are paid by the paper.
|
| I hope their fusion and quantum experiments are real, and not
| PR lies like the soviet union used to do in the 80s.
| Symmetry wrote:
| Historically most countries don't succeed in copying others and
| those that are able to, like the US and Japan, go on to
| innovate later.
| booleandilemma wrote:
| This kind of reads more like a wishlist than a list of
| predictions.
| octocode wrote:
| If we start predicting that the 2020's will be the rise of the
| remote-working 6-hour workday, maybe it will catch even more
| momentum and finally become true.
| PaulAJ wrote:
| China is _not_ going to provide a crypto version of its currency.
| The Chinese government is all about centralisation and control.
| It will go for electronic transactions via a few tightly-
| controlled banks combined with the elimination of physical cash.
| djmips wrote:
| This has already happened AFAIK.
| amursft wrote:
| I recall seeing that they were experimenting with it. Yep,
| here's a story from August.
|
| https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-08-12/china-
| s-p...
| chefkoch wrote:
| >Unlike decentralized blockchain-based offerings, the
| PBOC's currency is intended to give Beijing more control
| over its financial system.
|
| So not what you are expecting from a crypto currency?
| hanniabu wrote:
| From this week: https://www.forbes.com/sites/billybambrough
| /2020/12/30/china...
| aazaa wrote:
| Many of these seem like wishful thinking on the part of the
| author. For example, take the first one:
|
| > The looming climate crisis will be to this century what the two
| world wars were to the previous one.
|
| Oddly enough, if you go back to 2010 for predictions about the
| next decade, you'll see quite a few people talking about "peak
| oil." Almost nobody predicted a sharp turnaround in oil
| production and I don't think anyone in 2009 was predicting that
| the US would become a net oil exporter by the start of 2020.
|
| I'll make a counter-prediction on the topic of climate crisis for
| the 2020s:
|
| The climate crisis movement will become widely discredited for
| its attempts to manipulate scientific data and the scientific
| process for political ends. Grave prophecies of doom will not
| come to pass, causing loss of momentum and credibility. Climate
| research will continue, and as a result, new thermal regulatory
| mechanisms will emerge that lead to a more nuanced view of future
| climate change.
| commandlinefan wrote:
| > Grave prophecies of doom will not come to pass, causing loss
| of momentum and credibility.
|
| Why would you think this? Grave prophecies of doom have failed
| to come to pass for nearly half a century now and the climate
| change tale is _gaining_ momentum.
| mymythisisthis wrote:
| All cars will be required to have dashcams. Either by insurance
| companies or by governments.
|
| All cars will be required to have GPS, and be tracked in real
| time. This is already the case with the majority of commercial
| vehicles.
|
| Incremental steps in autonomous cars, first starting with 'drone'
| cars. Cars and trucks that are operated from a remote location.
| This will be piggy backed on existing technology. Cheap cameras,
| cheap cell networks etc. Think of delivery car, one person drives
| a truck from a remote location and one person is inside sorting
| packages, carrying them to the door. People with kids can work
| from home as Uber drivers and delivery drivers.
| RivieraKid wrote:
| The GPS thing is unlikely, what would be the rationale of that?
| This would be a very unpopular policy.
| criddell wrote:
| The rationale is taxation. As more cars go electric they have
| to replace the gasoline tax.
| aquaticsunset wrote:
| What country is this intended to be in? I can see it,
| possibly, happening in more forward minded societies... but
| certainly not the United States.
|
| If anything because there's no way in hell they can cost
| effectively retrofit the vast amount of old vehicles we all
| tend to drive here.
| criddell wrote:
| If I had to implement it, I'd do a two stage system. If
| you install a tracker you pay ten cents per mile. If you
| don't have a tracker you have to report mileage every
| year and pay twelve cents per mile plus a $40 processing
| fee.
| dmurray wrote:
| The cash for clunkers program paid $4k to everyone with
| an old car. A couple of hundred dollars for GPS trackers
| (and transmitters, which is presumably what is meant)
| seems well within the collective budget of all parties
| who pay for cars in the US.
| hanniabu wrote:
| I would think it should be the other way around where gas
| cars would need to pay carbon tax. Or we can just call it
| even. Or in a hopeful scenario, stop oil and gas subsidies.
| rad_gruchalski wrote:
| Depending on location, we already pay carbon taxes. In
| gasoline, tax on the new car, green sticker for being
| able to drive into low emission zones. Electric cars have
| none of that, yet they contribute heavily. For example by
| using electricity produced from coal. It's just that the
| owner does not see the emissions.
| tjoff wrote:
| That ship has already sailed.
|
| In Europe all new cars, since 2018, must be able to
| automatically call emergency services and provide GPS
| coordinates in the case of a collision.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECall
| SideburnsOfDoom wrote:
| > The GPS thing is unlikely
|
| How so? Why would a new car not come with GPS navigation on
| the dash? Why would a new car not come with a data
| connection? These are commodities, your phone has them.
| mymythisisthis wrote:
| Not everything is done for a rational choice, or even
| moderately good reasoning. Insurance companies what to know
| where you drive, when, and have a dashcam video if you get
| into an accident. Government want to experiment with
| different forms of taxation. Police and courts want to track
| people convicted of crimes. Employers want to know that their
| company car is being used responsibly. Car companies get sued
| for making fast cars, start to install GPS for liability.
| Municipalities want to fine/tax speeders. Cars that are on
| lease can be tracked and shut down remotely if payments stop.
| All these reasons start to add up.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| Taxes and demand based tolls.
| streblo wrote:
| If you ride a rented scooter from e.g. Lime or Bird, your GPS
| location is being streamed in real-time to many of the
| departments of transportation in the cities in which they
| operate[1][2]. It's not a quantum leap to assume cars will
| follow, especially if they're autonomously operated by some
| central service, doubly so if they're rented (e.g. from Uber)
| and not individually owned.
|
| 1. https://slate.com/business/2019/04/scooter-data-cities-
| mds-u... 2. https://blog.remix.com/mds-gbfs-and-how-cities-
| can-ask-for-d...
| Spooky23 wrote:
| The GPS thing is a no-brainer, as we need it to replace fuel
| excise taxes.
|
| As for the rest, no way. The GOP has pivoted to being the rural
| party, and rural folks can not afford drone cars and will be
| paralyzed without them.
| andrewem wrote:
| I recall a discussion of this point on HN a long time ago,
| but GPS is only one way to charge taxes based on vehicle
| miles traveled (VMT) - another, which is less invasive, is
| just to read the vehicle's odometer on some regular basis,
| either by hand when doing an annual vehicle safety
| inspection, or automatically by having the vehicle transmit
| the data. Certainly those have risks of tampering, but so
| does GPS.
| jayd16 wrote:
| I really doubt dashcams and gps will be required in the next
| decade but I bet installing them will get you a discount of
| some kind.
| a10c wrote:
| I'd be surprised if cars didn't come with cameras built-in as
| a standard. Think Tesla Sentry mode.
| smileysteve wrote:
| It's arguable that dashcams are "required" now as insurance
| in many ways already. At least as much as adequately insuring
| your vehicle, and arguable to reduce the likelihood of police
| abuse.
| buckminster wrote:
| The eCall system - which automatically phones the emergency
| services with your position after a crash - is already
| mandatory on new cars in the EU. The GPS is already there.
| Making further use of it, perhaps to assist self-driving
| cars, doesn't seem like such a stretch. (Which is not to say
| I welcome it.)
| LeftHandPath wrote:
| I don't like this. I'm okay with dying in a cold river or a
| burning car after a crash if it means I don't have to be
| worried about being tracked every second of my life.
|
| At some point, its going to cost extra to buy cars without
| GPS trackers, houses without police-force endorses
| surveillance nets, or phones with an actual "off" button.
| This is much more pressing, in my opinion, than people
| buying into heavily processed meat substitutes.
| jayd16 wrote:
| I think there's quite a gap between, 'built into every car'
| and insurance companies requiring access to it. GPS is in
| every customer phone but insurance companies don't require
| access to that either.
| nradov wrote:
| Our current cellular data infrastructure isn't nearly reliable
| enough to allow routine use of remote operated vehicles in
| public roads. What happens when a construction crew accidently
| cuts the backhaul fiber and takes out a whole group of base
| stations? And no, that problem won't be solved by 5G networks
| or satellite service.
| dclowd9901 wrote:
| Your last point got me thinking about people sitting in a dark
| room waiting for autonomous cars to have trouble on the road
| then alert them to intervene, turning 1 driver:1 car into 1
| driver:20 cars.
| mymythisisthis wrote:
| I can see that. Or, even simpler, a delivery person hopes out
| with a package and the remote driver circles the block.
| Garbage trucks might be the first to have this system
| installed. You need two people to operate a truck currently,
| a driver and a guy in the back. It drives slow along the
| road, very predicable routes. Needs to be driven back to the
| yard once filled, and another truck to take over the route.
| nradov wrote:
| Many garbage trucks have only a driver now. The guy in back
| was replaced by a mechanical arm that grabs and lifts the
| garbage cans.
| markkanof wrote:
| Also the ability to drive the truck, at least to some
| degree from controls at the back of the truck. In my
| neighborhood there are too many parked cars to be able to
| let the robotic arm do everything. I often see the driver
| at the back of the truck moving it forward and hoping off
| to position trash cans where the robotic arm can pick
| them up.
| mymythisisthis wrote:
| I feel that this was the big trend that people missed;
| instead of AI we simple rebuilt the system to
| mechanically function better. First with standardized
| shipping containers, then progressed to other boring
| stuff.
| [deleted]
| allovernow wrote:
| Sounds like a soul crushing job.
| mc32 wrote:
| There are all sorts of people. To some art is "boring". To
| some being a refuse truck operator is interesting or being
| a remote crane operator is exciting. I've met people who
| straight up love "cold calling". I cannot cold call for the
| life of me. Some people are excited by engaging with
| strangers and trying to get them excited about a product or
| service.
| throwawayhhakdl wrote:
| Sure, some people may find being a garbage man to be even
| erotically stimulating, but that doesn't mean the
| majority of garbage men think it's all that great. It's a
| relatively pointless observation.
| tonmoy wrote:
| Sounds more interesting than driving trucks
| Buttons840 wrote:
| If this happens, I bet police cameras and trackers are still
| unreliable at convenient times while all the other commodity
| cameras and trackers work 100% of the time.
| unexaminedlife wrote:
| By the end of this decade a commercialized, industrial strength
| solution will exist for people to (a) make machines do things
| just by thinking, (b) transfer a subset of your thoughts to
| someone else just by thinking them.
| daxfohl wrote:
| AI will attain perfect scores on international math and computing
| olympiads. Toward the end of the decade we'll see AI solve an
| unsolved Clay Millennium Problem.
| politelemon wrote:
| I would take a pessimistic view on #8:
|
| > Mass surveillance by governments and corporations will become
| normal and expected this decade and people will increasingly turn
| to new products and services to protect themselves from
| surveillance. The biggest consumer technology successes of this
| decade will be in the area of privacy.
|
| I'd take this a step further and fear that not only will it
| become the norm, even making use of privacy tech and devices will
| be viewed with suspicion or may even serve as barriers towards
| getting access to various societal instruments.
| ohazi wrote:
| WTF, the products and services _are_ the surveillance...
| matt_kantor wrote:
| > making use of privacy tech and devices will ... serve as
| barriers towards getting access to various societal instruments
|
| This already happens.
|
| For example, in the US good credit is often necessary to rent
| an apartment, open a bank account, get insurance, or even land
| a job. In order to maintain "good credit", one needs to make
| sure their financial activity is reported to the bureaus. If
| you do everything using more-private cash or debit transactions
| you lose out.
| sethgibbons wrote:
| I'm hoping that in 2020 fewer VCs will try to market themselves
| by making random predictions for the future.
| F_J_H wrote:
| ...and that we'll have fewer trolls...
| cleandreams wrote:
| In my view being optimistic about the future is in conflict with
| believing that China will become the dominant power. There are
| many concerning signals from China, not least the situation of
| Muslims and also the surveillance state. There is much we don't
| know about the true situation of debt, public and private, in
| China.
| magduf wrote:
| >There are many concerning signals from China, not least the
| situation of Muslims and also the surveillance state.
|
| Why is the situation with Muslims concerning for China? For
| Muslims and for anyone who cares about human rights, sure, it's
| concerning, but it does not follow at all that this is bad for
| China. The US became the dominant power despite having slavery
| longer than any western nation, and then having Jim Crow laws
| for a full century afterwards, including during the post-WWII
| economic boom.
|
| I would argue that, unfortunately, there is no evidence that
| treating your minorities well is necessary for economic
| success. In fact, it may be the opposite. Ancient Rome did
| quite well while having slavery, after all.
|
| As for the surveillance state, here we don't really have a lot
| of historical precedent. Obviously it didn't work out too well
| for the Warsaw Pact nations, particularly East Germany, but
| what they're doing in China really isn't like that.
| chukye wrote:
| 6 is a big NO. The most part of diseases of this decade are
| caused by plant based diets. Humans need meat, without it we get
| sick. B12 can't be found in plants, there are plenty studies that
| shows how sick we get if we eat ONLY plants.
| edflsafoiewq wrote:
| Plant based != no meat.
| [deleted]
| anonytrary wrote:
| Vegetarians can eat animal products like milk and cheese, which
| _do_ contain vitamin B12. "Meat" refers to muscle and other
| foods derived from animal death, but does not refer to animal
| products like milk, cheese, and eggs.
| uxcolumbo wrote:
| RE: The most part of diseases of this decade are caused by
| plant based diets
|
| Do you have any studies that back up your claim that humans
| need meat to live a healthy life?
|
| Several governmental bodies worldwide state[1] that one can
| live healthy using a plant based diet and The Physicians
| Committee for Responsible Medicine[0] even recommend a plant
| based diet for good health and disease prevention.
|
| Did you know B12 is produced by bacteria and that some meat
| eaters are low in B12 and need to supplement. Animals in
| factory farms are being fed B12 supplements[2].
|
| You might want to research this further so you're better
| informed next time you state information as fact. Or watch this
| documentary - https://gamechangersmovie.com/- it's on Netflix.
|
| [0] https://www.pcrm.org/good-nutrition
|
| [1] https://www.nhs.uk/live-well/eat-well/the-vegan-diet/
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK396513/
|
| [2] https://baltimorepostexaminer.com/carnivores-need-
| vitamin-b1...
| throwaway5752 wrote:
| In case you are serious, vitamin B12 is produced by single
| celled organisms. It is found in algal (seaweed) and fermented
| foods, too, not just animal based foods.
|
| Almost every study about responsible plant based diets shows it
| has healthier than average outcomes. I say "almost" just as a
| hedge, I don't know of any.
|
| By all means, eat whatever diet you want and don't feel bad
| about it, but do it for factual reasons and don't invent facts
| to justify your preferences.
| yes_man wrote:
| There are indeed people who have medical conditions that make
| their life dangerous with a plant-based diet. For people
| without such conditions (the majority of people), science on
| negative effects of plant-based diet seems to focus on certain
| deficiencies (such as deficiency of zinc and iron, or omega-3
| EPA and DHA fatty acids). These deficiencies can be avoided by
| consuming specific plant-based sources, such as certain
| seaweeds for EPA and DHA.
|
| For most people plant-based diet is probably completely safe
| and when debating this issue, the bottom argument of opposition
| to plant-based diets usually boils down to one thing: the god-
| given right or even necessity for man to eat other animals (be
| it because of it being natural to eat other beings in nature,
| because "plants have feelings too", or because of traditions or
| humans dying if they don't eat meat). This rests on ignorance
| of science, self-centered attitude and violence. Industrial-
| scale animal production for food is an abhorrent machine by any
| humane moral standards and most people use these counter-
| arguments because they like how meat or cheese tastes and they
| want to close their eyes.
|
| Hunting or fishing or growing your own meat is much less evil
| than the animals-for-food industry but the nature ecosystem
| could never sustain current amounts of meat consumption. Also
| it has to be understood that in developing countries masses of
| people cannot afford to be fancy about what to eat and what
| not. In developed countries however... I think we should not
| consider ourselves "developed" if we kill 10x our own human
| populations amounts of animals each year for food based mostly
| on the fact that we are used to it and that meat tastes good.
| As more and more people realize this, the demand for plant-
| based diets goes up.
| chukye wrote:
| Nice discussion folks.. BUT, there is an argument that never
| makes sense to me "the nature ecosystem could never sustain
| current amounts of meat consumption", so how can nature
| sustain amounts of PLANT consumption IF we all change it to
| plant-based diets? This does not make sense since for 1 piece
| of meat we need to eat dozen of different plants; plants as
| food have a huge impact in nature too.
| throwaway20201 wrote:
| Your logic breaks down when you consider the fact that
| humans will never consume as much plant matter or water as
| livestock.
|
| In fact, the creation of meat is a wasteful process,
| requiring up to 25kg of grain and 15,000 litres of water to
| produce 1kg of steak. [1]
|
| 1: http://waterfootprint.org/media/downloads/Report-48-Wate
| rFoo...
| yes_man wrote:
| The animals eat a lot more plants for a pound of meat they
| gain than humans would need if we only ate the plants. We
| are in the first day of this year and already over 120
| million animals have been killed in the US for food.
| Approximations on amount of animals killed each year for
| food in the USA vary, but it is in tens of billions. Can
| you imagine the strain natural ecosystem would need to
| sustain to support tens of billions of new animals every
| year? We are already on the edge when feeding those animals
| with industrial crops.
| burfog wrote:
| Humans are not ruminants. We can not survive on hay. We
| can survive on the high-nutrition parts of plants, but
| creating these parts is resource-intensive. In some cases
| the whole plant is simply difficult to grow (pests,
| fertilizer, etc.) and in other cases we don't get very
| much food from each plant.
|
| There is a whole lot of tree attached to a cashew.
|
| Goats and sheep are happy to eat the weeds on a rocky
| hill, and cattle do almost as well.
|
| Other food animals are happy to eat disgusting waste.
| Pigs, chickens, and catfish are especially willing.
| danans wrote:
| > There is a whole lot of tree attached to a cashew.
|
| There is also a whole lot of cashew attached to that
| tree, and the same tree produces more, year after year.
| chukye wrote:
| Exactly! Humans to survive need to combine a lot of fancy
| vegetables, we can't live eating grass...
| [deleted]
| PerfectElement wrote:
| > The most part of diseases of this decade are caused by plant
| based diets.
|
| I'm not sure if you are being serious. Approximately 3% of the
| US population claim to be 100% plant-based, and you are saying
| that this 3% is responsible for most part of diseases?
| ivan_gammel wrote:
| It is a technical problem, not a law of nature. B12 and other
| nutrients will be produced by plants, insects or bacteria in
| sufficient supply by the end of the decade, given the amount of
| interest vegetarian diets receive. Some investment will come
| from space companies, which need to shorten the food chain.
| warent wrote:
| I'm not sure how you reconcile this with the existence of
| healthy individuals who have eaten nothing but plants for
| decades. I myself have not eaten meat in about 5 years, and I
| just had a health check-up with full blood work. My doctor said
| "whatever you're doing, keep doing. You're healthy and I don't
| recommend changing a thing."
| chukye wrote:
| I bet you live in San Francisco :D /jokes a side; for you to
| be healthy without eating meat you need to eat a large
| variation of plants, it's not only one, it's not only one
| meal by day. It's not easy and have a great impact in nature
| too, meat have all we need and is simpler. Also, humans that
| are fed only with meat are able to eat once a week (or less).
| uxcolumbo wrote:
| Again, please share the studies to back up your claims.
| You're either trolling or just very poorly informed and
| spreading misinformation without checking it.
|
| And how do you reconcile the fact that animal agriculture
| is a large contributor to ecological destruction and
| greenhouse gas emissions. Here is the result of a 5 year
| Oxford Uni study that recommends adopting a more plant-
| based diet to reduce your personal carbon footprint[0]
|
| [0] https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-
| families...
| gswdh wrote:
| You're a nutcase.
| ertecturing wrote:
| The B12 meat has is from supplements given to the cows,
| chickens, etc. That's just meat eaters supplementing B12 with
| more steps.
| brlewis wrote:
| Aren't there a lot of people currently following vegetarian
| diets and not getting sick?
| chukye wrote:
| No. They need to supplement B12 and some other nutrients that
| are not found in plants.
| anonytrary wrote:
| This is just not true. You're probably thinking of vegans
| who aren't allowed to have cheese, milk, and eggs.
| Vegetarians can _easily_ get B12 in their diets.
| ertecturing wrote:
| Vegetarians get B12 from the animal products created from
| animals which supplemented B12. Everyone is supplementing
| B12 regardless of their diet, it's just a matter of how
| many steps removed from the supplement that people seem
| to think makes a difference (it doesn't).
| lalaland1125 wrote:
| You can still follow a plant based diet and use supplements
| derived from non-animal sources.
| [deleted]
| chacha2 wrote:
| They're not found in meat either. B12 comes from bacteria
| out of dirt.
| dashundchen wrote:
| In fact industrial animal agriculture frequently has to
| supplement b12 to animals as they are commonly deficient.
| PaulAJ wrote:
| Any prediction of decentralisation of the Internet, or anything
| built on it, needs to explain how this will overcome the
| economies of scale (1 big data centre is cheaper than 1000 little
| ones) and the network effects (everyone buys and sells through
| Amazon because thats where you find the most buyers and sellers).
| bhauer wrote:
| The gradual return of symmetric connectivity, which is underway
| today, as well as edge adoption of IPv6, could/should usher in
| a revitalized era of peer-to-peer and other decentralized
| computing models.
|
| Peer-to-peer models last thrived when connectivity was
| predominantly symmetric (e.g., the early days of DSL) and faded
| quickly as asymmetric connectivity became mainstream. I think
| the decline of decentralization and the rise of asymmetric
| connectivity are intertwined; neither necessarily caused the
| other, but they are correlated. One could argue asymmetric
| connectivity became popular because users only wanted to
| consume rather than share/serve. But similarly, people stopped
| sharing and serving because their connectivity discouraged that
| use case.
|
| Today, symmetric connectivity is returning, such as in the form
| of 1G/1G fiber connections to the home. Combine this with
| infinite static IP addresses, and ever rising edge compute
| capacity, and I think decentralization is inevitable. I won't
| predict the magnitude, but as a fan of decentralization, I
| personally hope it is at least significant.
| FreeHugs wrote:
| 1 big data centre is cheaper than 1000 little ones
|
| There are billions of computers out there that are idle most of
| the time. Utilizing them might very well be cheaper then
| building and maintaining a new datacenter.
| everyone buys and sells through Amazon because thats
| where you find the most buyers and sellers
|
| Not everyone. Not even the majority. Even in the USA which is
| Amazons biggest market, their market share is less then 50%.
| Individual onlineshops are also moving billions. Even the small
| ones built with Shopify are moving billions when you combine
| their revenue. And then there is Ebay, Facebook Marketplace,
| Alibaba, Rakuten, Zalando ... all moving billions worth of
| goods.
| ineedasername wrote:
| Re: unused computers: I don't see technology on the horizon
| that would tackle usage of unused systems in any way that
| could compete with the low-friction of something like AWS.
| I'm not saying it's impossible, only that it doesn't seem
| like a problem that is getting much attention.
|
| Re: Amazon: Most of the other venues you mention are
| secondary markets for the exact same sellers. People have
| their own Shopify, Etsy, Ebay, etc., storefront but then
| _also_ sell on Amazon because that 's where so much of the
| market is. As far as I can tell it's an increasing trend in
| that direction.
| cesarb wrote:
| > There are billions of computers out there that are idle
| most of the time. Utilizing them
|
| That used to be popular (for instance, distributed.net) back
| when the processors used the same power whether they were
| idle or not. Nowadays, there is a huge difference in power
| usage and heat output between an idle or mostly idle
| processor, and a fully loaded one.
|
| (My first desktop had a processor without a fan or even a
| heat spreader, and came with an operating system which had a
| busy loop as its idle loop.)
| ohazi wrote:
| > There are billions of computers out there that are idle
| most of the time.
|
| They will remain idle unltil untethered energy and bandwidth
| become free.
|
| I won't let you use my phone's spare cycles and murder my
| battery while we're still using lipo cells that degrade after
| 2 years with _regular_ use.
| hanniabu wrote:
| > They will remain idle unltil untethered energy and
| bandwidth become free
|
| unless you tie it to an incentive, and thus you arrive at
| cryptocurrencies
| stickfigure wrote:
| Funny you mention that, since we've seen cryptocurrency
| processing concentrated in big data centers... for all
| the same reasons everything else is located in big data
| centers - energy and bandwidth are cheaper.
| hanniabu wrote:
| That's up to whoever is supplying the services. While
| many may be outsourcing this to data centers, I'm sure
| it's not the case for everyone and there are people
| operating their own hardware.
| ken wrote:
| I assumed that was covered by #8 ("The biggest consumer
| technology successes of this decade will be in the area of
| privacy"), somewhat by #9 ("Millennials and Gen-Z will be
| running many institutions"), and mostly the second half of #5
| ("a killer decentralized consumer app").
|
| Network effects of centralization explain why current big
| companies prefer to build centralized services -- but the next
| big idea never comes from existing big companies, anyway.
|
| My 30,000' view of computing history is that big companies, as
| a rule, don't create big ideas that survive. They pick up small
| ideas that work and scale them up (Gall's Law). Git and HTTP
| and Python didn't come from Microsoft or Google or Amazon, but
| those companies took them once they were already popular and
| made them scale -- in large part by making them work well in a
| centralized architecture.
|
| The software that comes next won't win because FAANG like it
| better for building centralized architectures. It'll win
| because everybody and their dog will be using it at home. Then
| companies like FAANG will see that and pick it up and try to
| centralize it. Then the cycle will repeat.
|
| We've already got a billion tiny data centers -- the powerful
| computers and smartphones in our houses and pockets. All we
| need is the right software, and the desire to not have every
| service delivered free-with-ads-over-the-web from big
| corporations.
| rishirishi wrote:
| > All we need is the right software
|
| Who authors and maintains this software? And what is their
| incentive?
| amelius wrote:
| > We've already got a billion tiny data centers -- the
| powerful computers and smartphones in our houses and pockets.
|
| With asymmetric up/download speeds.
| rishirishi wrote:
| This. And who will constitute these 1000's of decentralized
| nodes?
| dclowd9901 wrote:
| Free remote data storage + cell phone mesh network?
| rishirishi wrote:
| Who pays for the "free remote data storage"? And who writes
| the software for the cell phone mesh network?
| hanniabu wrote:
| The people operating them if you have the proper
| incentives in place such as is done with
| cryptocurrencies. They pay the upfront operational cost
| and then are paid for usage by those using the network.
| esotericn wrote:
| Network effects are important, granted.
|
| Regarding economies of scale - it's all so cheap that it
| doesn't matter for most cases that don't involve utterly
| tremendous amounts of resource usage.
|
| I mean, the primary thing holding this back is consumer level
| ISP's being arsey about servers. A 10 year old machine hooked
| up to my 35mbit home connection is more than enough to run most
| internet services.
|
| And that's effectively free because I already have it.
| rishirishi wrote:
| How does the layperson know how to set up a node? And, care
| to.
| maxerickson wrote:
| It's $X per month though right, because of the electricity?
| I'm thinking about setting up an always on computer and I
| definitely will make sure to compare up front costs and
| operating costs if I do it.
| esotericn wrote:
| I guess that having had a computer since age 10 or so I
| just considered it a fairly standard thing for nerds to do.
|
| Yes, strictly. A 20W average laptop would cost approx
| 3-4GBP per month to leave on all the time in the UK, a
| modest desktop perhaps 10-15GBP.
|
| It's been a measurement error in my power budget as far
| back as I can remember. Sure, you can go and compare it to
| EC2 or whatever if you like, but that's just silliness.
| It's a big mac meal.
|
| My Threadripper box with a shitton of HDD's and RAM etc
| moves the needle because it has high idle consumption. I'll
| probably be getting rid of that soon; but it's still a low
| cost relative to purchase price.
| seanalltogether wrote:
| > Plant based diets will dominate the world by the end of the
| decade. Eating meat will become a delicacy, much like eating
| caviar is today. Much of the world's food production will move
| from farms to laboratories.
|
| This needs a huge asterisks at the end of it right? You could
| argue that plant based diets already dominate the world. Now if
| he's claiming that "muscular" foods that are produced in a lab
| will pound for pound outsell animal based meat I would happily
| take that bet against him.
| toyg wrote:
| Same. Beyond the obvious lack of perspective on the developing
| world (where meat-eating can only grow), entire cultures are
| completely wrapped up in the rituals around eating meat and
| will resist any attempt to go back to the bad old days of meat
| scarcity.
| nine_k wrote:
| If artificial meat becomes really good, these cultures won't
| need to change.
|
| Real meat, and all the rituals down to the actual killing of
| it publicly, can still coexist with artificial meat, with an
| elevated status, like marble beef, or having a sheep solemnly
| slain for a feast, already are today.
| tomjen3 wrote:
| >This needs a huge asterisks at the end of it right? You could
| argue that plant based diets already dominate the world. Now if
| he's claiming that "muscular" foods that are produced in a lab
| will pound for pound outsell animal based meat I would happily
| take that bet against him.
|
| This seems to be one of those issues that is likely to flip
| very quickly. I suspect there will be two cut-of points (making
| no prediction on when it will happen), with the first being
| when it is cheaper to make then lab-grown meat than the old-
| style with profit and return on investment in the assets to
| make the food (ie when you can no longer afford to start new
| farms, but can keep existing ones in profitable production) and
| when the price of lab-meat drops below the marginal cow cost
| (ie when you can only sell meat based cows at a loss).
|
| I suspect that it will take much more time to reach the first
| cutof point than it will take to go from the first cutoff point
| to the second and when either is reached it will have very
| quick effects that will prove massively destructive to existing
| farms and related infrastructure.
| Symmetry wrote:
| A possibly even more significant milestone would be when the
| best lab-grown or hybrid lab-grown/plant-based meat tastes
| better than the best natural meat. This seems like something
| that should be possible, possibly within a decade given
| recent trends.
| Animats wrote:
| Look at Impossible Burger. Burger King sells them. Try an
| Impossible Whopper alongside the Beef Whopper. They're making a
| million pounds of burgers a month, from soy, potatoes, and heme
| for the meat flavor. Their plant in Oakland is only the size of
| a supermarket. This isn't an expensive product to make.
|
| When the beef industry's lobbyist in Washington first tried
| one, he called his people and said, "Guys, we have a problem".
| seanalltogether wrote:
| And if he had made a prediction based on processed meats like
| burgers, deli meat or sausages being outsold by lab derived
| products it would have been an interesting prediction, but
| there is a wide variety of animal meats that people rely on
| day to day.
| hanniabu wrote:
| > When the beef industry's lobbyist in Washington first tried
| one, he called his people and said, "Guys, we have a
| problem".
|
| Source? This just sounds like a story made up for
| advertisement.
| Animats wrote:
| _" If farmers and ranchers think we can mock and dismiss
| these products as a passing fad, we're kidding ourselves.
| This is not just another disgusting tofu burger that only a
| dedicated hippie could convince himself to eat. It's 95
| percent of the way there, and the recipe is likely to only
| get better. Farmers and ranchers need to take notice and
| get ready to compete. I've tasted it with my own mouth, and
| this fake meat is ready for prime time."_[1] - Eric Bohl,
| Director of Public Affairs & Advocacy for the Missouri Farm
| Bureau.
|
| [1] https://mofb.org/taste-test-this-fake-meat-is-the-real-
| deal/
| paul_f wrote:
| There is a coming backlash against fake meat due to the
| amount of chemicals and processing required. It's not just
| soy, potatoes and flavoring.
| cableshaft wrote:
| What will happen in the 2020s: "Error establishing a database
| connection."
|
| Yep, sounds about right.
| justinzollars wrote:
| My predictions:
|
| 1. China overtakes the USA GDP by 2029
|
| 2. Trump wins reelection
|
| 3. The United States has a recession by 2021
|
| 4. Inflation becomes an issue in the United States because of
| high debt, increased military spending as a result of great power
| competition and huge pension debts/promises coming due with baby
| boomers retiring. The best investments (other then great startups
| of course) becomes Gold (because of the proclivity to favor
| spenders over savors.)
|
| 5. The United States will focus on big infrastructure spending.
|
| 6. Google develops a competitor to Huawei's Safe City project for
| the United States and its geopolitical allies, this will be a
| great benefit to our society
|
| 7. Humanity will reach mars
|
| 8. Humanity will turn the corner on Carbon pollution
|
| 9. San Francisco reaches a breaking point and elects moderates
| whose focus is building more housing.
|
| 10. The United States will join the TPP
|
| 11. Chinese culture and media breaks out and becomes popular in a
| similar way Hollywood and American culture is popular in other
| places
| ertecturing wrote:
| 1. Probably
|
| 2. Trump wins by smaller margin (losing Michigan or Florida)
|
| 3. What will the recession be caused by?
|
| 4. Maybe younger voters vote against Social Security for this
| reason [insert doubt]
|
| 5. Unless Bernie is elected don't expect any infrastructure
| spending
|
| 6. Huh
|
| 7. Don't get your hopes up
|
| 8. Maybe
|
| 9. There's no breaking point. Their Hell has no bottom.
|
| 10. Both Bernie & Trump are against TPP. Would require moderate
| to get it.
|
| 11. Only Americans/Brits are good at spreading movie culture,
| that'll be true for a long time to come.
| opportune wrote:
| I don't really buy into 4-6.
|
| I don't see any benefit for a country to turn its currency into a
| crypto asset. Either they are relinquishing a great deal of
| control in democratizing their financial system (also exposing
| themselves to attack), or it's a crypto in name only that doesn't
| seem any better than digital cash through banks except for a
| buzzword.
|
| Decentralization is hit or miss. You get economies of scale with
| centralization that are hard to beat. I only see decentralization
| being useful for certain applications (namely, anything that
| needs to be censorship resistant/ can't rely on the centralized
| infra for some reason) like it already is being used for.
|
| Meat won't be a delicacy unless we are not counting lab grown
| meat. Absolutely no way. I would be willing to take a huge bet on
| this. People all over the world love meat, it's one of the first
| things people start spending on when they hit middle income
| (globally speaking). Plant based alternatives will become a lot
| more popular especially once they become cheaper, and we will
| probably start eating mostly lab grown meat, but meat _will_ be
| consumed, at least by stubborn, older red-blooded Americans wary
| of technology and set in their ways that the author likely has
| little exposure to.
| Gustomaximus wrote:
| Also 7/10
|
| 7 - I can't see massive exploration suddenly over 10 years. And
| when this boom does come governments will be very involved,
| like in the colonial periods, there is massive national
| advantage to get people to go stake claims. I can only see it
| being a similar blend of govt/private.
|
| 10 - we will see progress but anything groundbreaking in the
| cancer fight this seems too short a time scale.
| 6nf wrote:
| I don't think any major currencies will get turned into crypto
| assets either, there's no reason for a government to do that.
| Instead what's happening is that traditional banking systems
| are being upgraded to allow instant and person-to-person
| transfers of money. This is one of the main benefits of crypto
| - being able to instantly send money to anyone. If you can just
| use your existing online banking system, so much easier. And
| the government still gets to track it all and make sure we're
| not cheating on our taxes or funding terrorists or whatever.
|
| I'm not an expert but I believe many EU countries now have
| instant P2P bank transfers. Australia just got their system
| going in the last few years too. The US is a bit behind but I'm
| sure it's coming.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| All the big consumer banks in the US also have instant
| transfers to phone numbers or email addresses:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zelle_(payment_service)
| 6nf wrote:
| The Australian system does not require signup from the
| recipient (or the sender for that matter) and there's no
| transfer limits beyond what your bank already had on your
| accounts previously.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| Ditto for the UK and European systems. Give destination
| routing number and account and amount, press some button.
| Done. No fees, ever, and transfer is more or less
| instantaneous.
| nobrains wrote:
| Muslims, 24% of the world's population, have the following
| requirements to eat meat:
|
| - They sacrifice a goat (or sheep, cow, camel, etc.) once a
| year on Eid.
|
| - They sacrifice a goat, etc. upon every baby's birth.
|
| - They are encouraged to sacrifice an animal for atonement,
| blessings and other reasons.
|
| Read more here:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_sacrifice#Islam
|
| I don't think animal consumption is going down that soon.
| __d wrote:
| There are plenty of religious observances from various
| traditions where an historical literal act has been replaced
| by a symbolic representation.
|
| I don't think it's a problem, if the economics are in place.
| danans wrote:
| The vast majority of those Muslims are in poorer countries
| (think Indonesia and Bangladesh, and not Saudi Arabia), and
| could never afford to eat meat in the daily quantities eaten
| in the West, the Gulf, and increasingly in China.
|
| Their regular diet consists largely of cereal grains,
| legumes, vegetables, and small amounts of meat to supplement,
| and even that is mostly cheaper to produce/acquire meat like
| chicken and eggs, or small riverine fish.
|
| The religious observances you mention account for a tiny
| portion of overall meat consumption in the world, and to use
| them as an example why meat consumption can't be reduced is
| at best an abuse of statistics, and at worst a cultural
| scapegoat.
|
| If anything, other cultures could perhaps learn from them to
| treat the consumption of meat as a sort of sacrament to be
| appreciated on special occasions, like the birth of a child.
|
| The bigger factor driving meat production is my kid ordering
| a 1/4 pound hot dog and then throwing away half of it.
| pascalxus wrote:
| Yes, the only way #6 will come true is if the replacement for
| meat looks, smells and tastes exactly like the real thing and
| it'll have to be cheaper too.
|
| People all over the world love meat, especially US, UK and the
| Chinese. I've tried to convince some family members to reduce
| their meat consumption even a tiniest amount gets a huge amount
| of resistance. People aren't going to give up their meat: they
| may not even be willing to try alternatives.
|
| Impossible meat has a great start and I think their market
| share will continue to increase. But, there's an immense amount
| of variety in the meat market and the alternative meat industry
| still has a huge amount of work to do to address it.
| __d wrote:
| If an effective carbon tax is introduced (see #1) then the
| price of meat will rise astronomically, which will make
| reduced consumption inevitable.
|
| In many places, climate change will make existing agriculture
| unsustainable, so there'll be massive upheaval in the
| industry at the same time.
|
| If that's combined with a cultural movement similar to
| flugskam, I think drastically reduced meat consumption is
| possible.
|
| Of course, there'll be counter forces -- likely primarily
| cultural. "Only libtards don't eat meat" etc. So it goes.
| 6nf wrote:
| Faced with a choice between beef or fake beef that tastes
| exactly the same, most people will just go for the real beef.
| They don't want the highly processed fake stuff that contains
| who knows what.
|
| The only way beef loses is if the alternatives are
| significantly cheaper. If a McBeef is $5 more than a
| McFakeBeef then you got a shot at converting people.
| rhlsthrm wrote:
| But what if it's not "highly processed" due to advancements
| in tech? Personally I would always choose the fake (lab
| grown or plant based) over the real meat. Real meat and
| three industrial farming process just has too many ways
| that the product is prone to contamination, not even to
| mention the cruelty/ethics. I say this as an avid meat
| eater as well. I love the taste of meat but I'd switch in a
| heartbeat once there's an alternative that compares.
| pascalxus wrote:
| This is a bit shocking and I'll get downvoted for it but:
|
| Not to mention that red meat is a class 2 carcinogen
| (Source: WHO). And processed meat, is a class 1
| carcinogen, right up there with Plutonium, according to
| the World health organization.
| gordaco wrote:
| You are being downvoted, but I think that you are totally
| right. For an awful lot of people, eating meat is a matter
| of status; it's similar to why many people prefer having
| big cars even if they are less environmentally friendly.
|
| There is also the fact that plant based diets are still
| associated to certain ideologies and because of that they
| will keep being scoffed at by people from opposing
| ideologies. Sure, you don't have to lean left to be vegan,
| but the vast majority of vegan people, or people seriously
| trying to reduce their meat consumption, do lean left
| (continuing with the car analogy: remember the rolling coal
| fad).
|
| Dietary choices go way beyond their nutritional value.
| People feel attached to what they eat, and they will resist
| change. So, yes, a strong economic incentive is needed, and
| even worse, it might not be enough.
| RivieraKid wrote:
| > Countries will create and promote digital/crypto versions of
| their fiat currencies
|
| Why? I don't see what would be the benefit of that. Fiat currency
| already is digital. And - at least where I live - domestic
| transfers are instant.
| [deleted]
| magicsmoke wrote:
| Here's a possible reason for why a crypto fiat currency with a
| distributed ledger might be attractive.
|
| Currently, all fiat currencies operate with a central ledger at
| whatever central bank is authorized to print or destroy units
| of the currency. For example, every US dollar is linked through
| a chain of deposits and liabilities back to an account at the
| Fed since any bank operating in the US is required to hold an
| account with the Fed. However, this gives the US the ability to
| control the transfer of USD to use in sanctions.
|
| Suppose you were an Iranian company that wanted to buy goods
| from the EU, to be paid in USD. In normal times, an Iranian
| bank with an account at the Fed would ask the Fed to transfer
| USD from its account to that of the EU bank to complete the
| trade. However, since Iran is under sanctions, the Fed can
| freeze the assets and refuse to initiate the transfer or
| confirm that the Iranian bank has the required funds. Without
| assurance that you can actually pay for the goods in USD, the
| EU company decides not to sell any goods and you're stranded
| from the world market.
|
| Trying to bypass this by buying the goods with Euros doesn't
| work either, since the Fed can also threaten the USD accounts
| of EU banks too. Suppose the US catches an EU bank helping an
| Iranian company trade with a EU company in Euros. The US could
| then order the Fed to freeze the accounts of the EU bank or
| extract a fine for violating sanctions. EU banks get spooked
| away from helping Iranian companies deal with international
| payments due to the risk of getting themselves locked out of
| the USD system. All this is thanks to the power the Fed has
| over the one central ledger of USD that they can modify and
| freeze at will.
|
| But with a distributed ledger secured with cryptography, the
| Iranian bank wouldn't have to depend on the Fed to modify their
| central account book when performing money transfers. They
| could cryptographically prove that they had a certain amount of
| USD in their accounts and transfer it to the EU bank in a way
| that all bystanders can observe and confirm. You would have a
| currency system with unblockable and unsanctionable transfers,
| as if you had teleported containers of physically verifiable US
| dollar bills from Iran to the EU.
|
| This would be the key draw for countries trying to make their
| fiat currencies crypto. They could then advertise it as a
| currency that is impossible for the host country to use for
| sanctions. This boosts the cryptocurrency's viability as a
| reserve currency, and once enough countries begin using it then
| the host country could print money to improve their country's
| consumption, living standards, and economic clout without
| worrying about inflating the currency away.
| mdo91l wrote:
| So what is the incentive for countries with geopolitical
| clout? Why wouldn't they just make it illegal?
| magicsmoke wrote:
| The incentive is for countries with less geopolitical clout
| to use cryptocurrencies to pull more countries towards
| their bloc. I don't see the US moving towards
| cryptocurrencies anytime soon.
| buboard wrote:
| Yeah, if anything, central banks have been clear that
| cryptocurrencies are the devil and they will be shot down. From
| today on , EU adopts stricter controls for transferring Gold as
| well. If anything, there will be a backlash to this extreme
| capital controls , but theres no way governments will loosen
| the leash on money on their own volition
| petters wrote:
| Giving each citizen an account at the central bank. Then
| everyone will have access to "real" money digitally (not only
| via cash, which is currently the case).
| jayd16 wrote:
| What's the point? Why would countries bother?
| throwawayhhakdl wrote:
| who exactly does that help?
| James-primitive wrote:
| Bitcoin and Urbit will come to dominate the political, economic
| and social landscape of the Internet.
|
| Wikipedia will decay and become increasingly difficult to use. It
| will be supplanted by something built on top of Urbit.
|
| Marvel will take over the reigns of the Star Wars franchise.
|
| Elizabeth Warren will be President.
| ma2rten wrote:
| Regarding China, I believe that the Chinese economy will collapse
| because less and less countries will want to do business with
| China due to it's human rights violations.
|
| Regarding plan based diets, I agree but I think that eating meat
| will be seen as babaric. I believe that the way way we treat
| animals now will be seen similarly as we see slavery now.
|
| Regarding, decentralized internet and crypto currencies. I don't
| see why those would happen and believe will see more regulation
| not less.
| wayoutthere wrote:
| > Regarding China, I believe that the Chinese economy will
| collapse because less and less countries will want to do
| business with China due to it's human rights violations.
|
| Think you're totally wrong here. The only countries that will
| care about China's human rights record are the NATO countries.
| The other 6 billion people in the world live under governments
| that will be happy to work with a superpower willing to look
| the other way to their own transgressions.
| ma2rten wrote:
| But those are the countries that China would want to trade
| with.
|
| China also has territorial conflicts with all of it's
| neighbors in South China Sea.
| alasdair_ wrote:
| People are more than happy to deal with the Saudi's despite
| appalling human rights records. So long as they have something
| people want, countries don't care about human rights.
| ma2rten wrote:
| There are number of differences: China doesn't have a natural
| resource only China has, China's human rights violations are
| on a larger scale, China is trying to pressure western
| companies (e.g. the nba) and steal intellectual property
| which will backfire on them.
|
| I also believe that people will be more aware of these things
| in the future than in the past.
| bouncycastle wrote:
| One prediction he missed out is the mining of space for scarce
| resources. (He just touched on commercialization of space, but he
| probably assumed things like satellite launching and space
| tourism)
|
| I wouldn't be surprised if Tesla/SoaceX towed a lithium filled
| asteroid to near Earth within the next decade. They are probably
| working on it right now.
|
| Save this comment and come back in 2030
| Buttons840 wrote:
| My prediction: Average commute time will increase in proportion
| to the adoption of self driving vehicles.
| criddell wrote:
| I think so too. Autonomous cars are going to fuel urban sprawl
| like crazy. I know I want to get further out of the city. Once
| I can commute without driving I won't mind a long commute.
| Namrog84 wrote:
| I disagree and think it will decrease because self driving
| vehicles will act as pace cars and smooth out traffic
| considerably
| amursft wrote:
| Good predictions.
|
| Didn't mention distributed/remote work. Not sure if that's
| because it's so obvious a trend as to be boring?
|
| I think he's early on the plant-based diet prediction, but
| correct in 20-30 years. Actually a lot of these seem like trends
| that might take more than 10 years, but have a high chance of
| being correct eventually.
| rubidium wrote:
| Distributed work will continue to be a minor thing prevalent
| mainly in tech circles. Human nature doesn't change on 10 year
| timescales. We're tribal beings who organize around work and
| family.
|
| Best Buy's pullback from it for their office staff is
| instructive.
| chrstphrhrt wrote:
| Yeah I've been doing remote 95% of the last couple years and
| it takes a toll not being able to be around people at all.
| Even as a mostly introverted person who needs quiet alone
| time for solving harder problems and general flow state.
| There's something about social interaction that helps with
| motivation that I find hard to get over chat and video. This
| is assuming the people are not toxic somehow.
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