Ask HN: What's going to be the next big thing?

There are a lot of really interesting things happening in BI. First, many accounting and some business grads are now coming with database knowledge.

They're able to gain insights from data that the older generations in this space didn't have the skills to do.

Way more interesting to me are advances like Amazon's QuickSight [1] which is geared towards business data. You can just upload stuff (CSVs, ERP databases, etc.) and, perhaps, gain some insights. As they build intelligence around similar business data sets it should improve over time.

Next big thing, perhaps not. But definitely something to keep an eye on, at least in my space.

[1] https://aws.amazon.com/quicksight/

Embedded processors are reaching < 30uA/MHz operation and useful sleep modes in the hundreds of nanoamps. Super capacitor/battery density, and energy harvesting continues to improve.

I think we're incredibly close to battery-less consumer electronics.

IoT technologies will disrupt most major industries. It's like 1995 right now for IoT and businesses are wondering if they ought to have a website.

As more operations and products come online, data platforms will become standardized. The skills gap will be bridged, through AI / Machine Learning and more data-literacy educational training.

I actually expect mobile device sales to slow down as the number of connected devices per person grows. We won't need to always carry fragile expensive lil' phones anymore -- we will be able to communicate, connect, work with information, and engage with applications in new unexpected ways.

"Experience Design" and "Data Management" training will be necessary...

3D printing, when it becomes possible to make things a little more sophisticated than a few plastic shapes. For example, imagine if you could set up a robotic wood shop in your garage, using ordinary tools, and you could download a piece of furniture. I think there'd be some very interesting business models that would come out of something like that. Perhaps you're buying the furniture, or perhaps you're selling it to your neighbors as a franchiser for some kind of virtual IKEA in the cloud. Metal shops and other kinds of fabrication, similarly, would be great.

Look for something which is an unexpected interaction of recently-developed or recently-reduced-in-price technologies.

My go-to example would be the intersection of brushless motors and cheap IMUs from phones making the drone revolution possible.

Spoken language interfaces. My 10 year old uses the voice input on her Android phone all the time. "What's the weather today?" "What's the weather tomorrow in Lexington?" "Set an alarm for 6:00am." Some of those just bring up a web page, but talking back would be great.

I've seen the notion of electronic assistant as an obvious next thing for some time. "Bring up that pdf file I was reading yesterday."

I wish the Sync interface on my car was more conversational than it is - it's much like a verbal menu today.

CRISPR/CAS9 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CRISPR is something that will revolutionise everything including computing. I thing Genes & DNA will be used for computing instead of traditional processing hardware

Teledildonics

I think we'll see a new interface for AI.

There is no way we will keep communicating with AI through text or speech.

A new communication paradigm will be the next big thing.

Realtime bioinformatics from mobile dongles that are actually useful to the general population.

Machine learning/AI isn't done getting popular yet.

AI that raises our intelligence. AKA better video games.