The polling seems to be all over the map with Gallup saying that vegetarianism was just 6% in 1999 and 5% in 2018 showing no growth [1] while other publications say 6% of US consumers now claim to be vegan, up from just 1% in 2014 [2].
In my experience it is definitely the latter. In my part of the country, it used to be that grocery stores carried Boca burgers at best in specialty parts of the store. Now they carry several brands in dedicated sections typically labeled something like "Meatless Meals". Instead of just Boca, it is now routine to see Boca, Gardein, and Beyond Meat. The last of which is reportedly going to go public as a company[3]
1: https://news.gallup.com/poll/238328/snapshot-few-americans-v...
2: https://www.reportbuyer.com/product/4959853/top-trends-in-pr...
3: https://www.marketwatch.com/story/beyond-meat-is-going-publi...
Though I do think many of the hardest problems today are regulatory (climate, health, digital political advertising), not necessarily technical.
Point to a job that doesnt require human interaction and someone in the field can tell you how to make him jobless.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MgrFXN4d1Jc
Its disturbing to say the least.
But to the other comments - the fishing industry is horrifically unsustainable - there is no replenishment to the degree from which we take from the oceans.
Poor measurement of fish populations, and even when the data exists stating that populations are over fished, shady regulatory boards provide licenses to fish what shouldnt be fished.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-future-of-fis...
Will this make fish much much cheaper?
Will it be easier to regulate since it is all data is stored? Are these companies more interested in regulation (since if theyve invested so much they may want longterm production)
It would certainly allow for clean, unpolluted fish and let the fish in our oceans recover.
- Autonomous cars will continue to be a tantalizing but unrealized dream for all but a few niche markets.
- AI will fade back into science fiction. Automation will continue to be the boogeyman that isn't quite here yet.
- I think public support of the health insurance status quo will collapse and Medicare for All will become an actual Thing.
- Facebook and Google will face legitimate disruptors. Apple will try to pivot away from reliance on iPhone for growth and try to be another Alphabet instead.
I'm almost certain about the first part (collapse) but much less certain about the second.
The fundamental issue is affordability: we can't afford the health system we have. No matter who pays, the burden is going to be substantial. It's just a question of whether it's foisted onto shareholders (capital), households, or taxpayers.
I'm honestly 50/50 on whether we'll head toward more widespread government insurance or whether coverage will become harder to get, thereby forcing more people into the private markets, with healthcare orgs working more like auto repair shops -- mostly private with a lot of price competition, and broad affordability. Either outcome has its pros and cons.
I think a lot of the next 15-20 years is going to depend on what happens during the next 5. It's basically two outcomes.
Scenario A: Interest rates continue to climb, urban housing affordability improves through some level of deregulation/less aggressive zoning, tech fans out a bit. The sense that prosperity is too concentrated starts to dissipate. Ocasio-Cortez and co. lose steam and the US turns back toward a more moderate politics.
Scenario B: Things continue as they are now. More young people embrace socialism because growing student debt, unaffordability of housing, and rising/unavailable healthcare lead to a greater desire for government control of the economy. US takes a hard left turn, we get Bernie or someone of the far left for president. US is in the grip of populism (both left-populist Antifa and right-"blood and soil" nativism), things go backward.
If we get scenario B, we're going to get some form of national single-payer. If we get A, I'm less certain.
The bubble I live in is that I've actually got enough money to pay the out-of-pocket costs if the insurance company screws me. It won't bankrupt me, at least not in the near term. But looking outside my reality, there are a huge number of Americans without anything even approaching that luxury. Especially younger generations. When I look at the numbers, I think your scenario B looks a bunch more realistic. Right now I just have political ideology, but I see a lot of people who have real skin in the game and I wonder how long we can maintain the status quo before those folks collectively realize just how numerous they are and how much change they can effect if they try.
It would certainly be a bit more interesting and informed than the average celebrity blogger predictions that we are usually subjected to.
Electric cars will be the norm, it will cost significantly more to drive an ICE car.
Air Travel will still be brutal.
Jobs will be more difficult to find and keep for the untrained and uneducated. Most services will be self serve or accessed remotely with little to no human help required.
Self Medical Diagnosis will be available to everyone who has a mobile phone like device. You will have access to all your vitals and through your camera be able to determine certain ailments reducing doctor visits.
Exoskeletons will replace wheel chairs for certain injuries and conditions.
Affordable Treatments (Stem Cell/Exosomes) will be available for curing, rejuvenation and general well being.
The rate that processor power/AI/Quantum Computing/Machine Learning/etc is progressing, will drive more change in the next 10 years than in the last 50.
One thing is that I think you need a pretty wide set of priors--breadth. Stuff like history, anthropology, economics, the history of art. Lots of knowledge about human behavior, politics, culture, stuff like how emotions guide behavior, etc.
When I look at a typical STEM education, we deliberately don't prioritize this stuff. We know lots of things about how electrons behave and which sorts of functions grow the fastest and how cellular mitosis works. Not as much about why empires fall, the role of greed in political revolutions, or the changing role of women over the last 500 years. I think this puts HNers (I think STEM people are probably overrepresented here) at a significant disadvantage at making these kinds of broad predictions.
The thing we do have going for us is our ability to understand the course technology is going to take: what's possible, what will and won't work, and why.
I also wonder whether the people you're around influence your ability to predict what's next. On one hand, it's a well-established fact in social science that many social trends, at least in the US (things like marriage and divorce rates, educational trends, changing attitudes around dating, purchasing behaviors), start in the upper-middle classes, as they have the numbers (population) to make real differences in buying habits, politics, etc., whereas the rich have more money but much smaller population. On the other hand, the lower classes in the US vastly outnumber what I'd consider a typical HN reader. Something like 70% of US adults don't even have a bachelor's degree, and the US median income for an individual is around $40K. Keep that in mind as you think about this stuff.
One guy I'll point out who's studied this topic (predictions) a lot is Philip Tetlock (https://www.sas.upenn.edu/tetlock/). He's spent much of a long, fruitful academic career studying questions like whether it's possible for certain people to consistently do better than random at predicting things, and what sorts of traits make those people better. I won't try to summarize a 30+ year academic career here other than to say he does seem to believe it's possible to beat the odds. Good reading; check it out.
The same that make people succesfull at the stockmarket and investments. So mainly luck with a spot of knowledge and information and many small investments to get one good hit
Probably the same reason why it's better to stick with indexes in the long term on stocks.
- Robots: Robot sidekicks, like Vector: https://www.anki.com/en-us/vector, but bigger and more useful, will become common. Tbh Vector is currently at best a cute and expensive toy. With progress in AI, specifically at the intersection of language understanding, computer vision, and robotics, these robots will become easier to talk to and work with.
- Self-driving cars: Self-driving cars will be common, with some business models getting to wider deployment faster than others, for e.g. Waymo, Uber, Lyft. New set of traffic protocols will likely emerge on 100% self-driven localities (humans' traffic rules are _extremely_ inefficient for robots) for faster + safer transport.
- Space: Space tourism will start to emerge. There will emerge entire industries supporting this shift -- from ticketing aggregation services (like Kayak.com, etc. for space) to data services (equivalents of AT&T, TMobile, etc. for space) to cargo (faster earth-to-earth, earth-to-x), hotels, hospitals, etc.
We have filled up our atmosphere with so much junk that space travel may become limited to our past rather than our future.
[] https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/talks/the-birth-and-death...
If you look at movies from the 70s and 80s, conspicuous display of tech was common. Look at stereo systems of the time, and how people treated mobile phones (they were huge and conspicuously displayed). This partially echoes the "machine age" [1] of the early 20th century, a a time when tech was seen as "modern" and a force for progress.
Whereas these days, we want things to be light, invisible, and out of the way. That's a major change in attitude.
I actually feel we might see fewer "screens" in the next few years if the combination of voice and AI becomes powerful enough that most things can be done by voice or thought. I think more and more decision-making (things like which plane to book/flight to take/etc) will be made by automated systems that know our preferences and we'll be picking from fewer and fewer menus. Sort of like a human assistant, but available to the masses and more accurate. Google's Duplex is a big step in this direction. The key is ceding more decision-making authority to software.
In any case, I wouldn't be surprised if we all just have earphones, either over-the-ear, or implanted in our heads, in 15 years. The broader theme is that I think we'll want things to be invisible rather than visible.
I also think you're right that the rich will want less of this stuff. There's already a huge socioeconomic difference in how people use tech. Look at how a rich family eats in the US today vs. a poor family. Rich families put their phones away, poor families spend the entire dinner posting stuff on Snap. Just walk into a burger king vs. a fine dining restaurant to see that trend in action.
Robert Moses built large parts of New York City, including a lot of its roads/infrastructure. When Moses was growing up, cars were very new, and a luxury item. Driving through a scenic route was a very fun experience for most people. Therefore, Moses built the roads to emphasize these scenic routes.
This later became problematic, as he kept doing it well into the age when being in a car was considered a nuisance, rather than an attraction.
PT App: I didn't realize how frequently I checked my light rail app, telling me how long until the next one arrives. Now that I don't have it I realize it only added stress for something largely out of my control, knowing if the next one is 3 minutes or 5 minutes away doesn't affect when I'll get to work. It would still be useful in some situations but I hope to use it a lot less in future.
Clock: My phone was my watch and like the PT app this mostly cause stress about arriving to work on time which mostly involved factors beyond my control. I just try to leave this house on time and I'll get there when I get there.
Reddit: Haven't missed it. Again it's probably adding stress for no real gain.
Internet: Haven't missed it.
Alarm Clock: Miraculously I haven't slept in during the last week and most day's I'm up earlier because can't roll over and go back to sleep without the alarm clock telling me to get up. I could also buy a dedicated alarm clock, it's very rare I get any value from a portable one.
Phone: This one wouldn't generally worry me but this week I've had a sick family member and really needed it. If I had a home phone that would have been more than enough, maybe I should get an IP phone again.
Weather: Turns out the seven day forecast is just noise I don't really need. The morning news tells me if I'll need to wear another layer or not and that's enough.
Music and E-books: This is the one feature I've really missed.
Overall it's amazing how much time and money I've spent on these little devices that offer very little value.
But maybe I'm letting hope sneak into my predictions.
Check out:
And see how little things have actually changed in the last ten years.
I have nothing to do with this site. I found out about it via a Show HN a while back.
Imagine not doing any mundane tasks at home (cooking, cleaning etc)
On the worse side : if there are robos at home. There will be sure outside in streets too. So we will have to figure out new jobs for ourselves.
They are single-function, and not autonomous. This makes them massively cheaper and safer.
More Facebook/Google sized companies. Hopefully, a startup that makes medicine suck a lot less than it currently does.
Right now we only unlock a tiny part of the potential of our electronics. This is because your system of input is very limited. The bottleneck is not your brain or the computer but the link between them. We will have very simple devices for input that allow you to communicate with your computers with incredible speed. This comment is taking like five minutes to type with my thumbs. You could make a device with today’s technology that would allow it to be done in seconds. And it would be cheap. Better than a keyboard and totally mobile.
Imagine that and then include improvements in Image and sound delivery. Then throw in full internet access everywhere for everyone via starlink. It’s going to make our phone habits look very quaint.
Automation is not spreading the wealth, I think you will see even less of a middle class and more extreme divisions of wealth between the classes.
The corporation seems to be the new power structure like the church use to be. You will see more concentration of power and less accountability with this new power structure.
In the US you will see a transformation of the demographic shift accelerate. You may also see a change in politics with a move more towards policies you see in Europe. However they will still not work due to the change in the power structures.
National debts will accelerate to make up for short falls in pension funding and retirement plans like social security. How this ultimately plays out, I have no idea.
I think the next unicorn in food will be what I had proposed to HN previously; the idea of a Standard Pantry - a pantry of ingredients that is automatically tracked inventory and delivery of components and ingredients which allow a range of meal planning options.
Basically, what I want to create is two levels of pantries:
A basic standard pantry, which is subsidized (like SNAP) food stamps, which provides a menu of nutritious meals which can be made from the ingredients, with lessons on how to make the meals, and an automatic delivery of replenish supplies. The lessons are to teach young, lower-income people how to make the available meals provided by the system.
A higher end version, like the "Peloton for cooking" system, where you can subscribe to a meal plan and select from a library of recipes to make for the month, and the ingredients for each weeks meals are delivered and you check off what you made/ate and the system will deliver refills.
The ingredients are purchased in bulk, with minimal packaging and delivered in swappable containers.
The ingredients for fresh produce are farmed like you mention, and/or are sourced as local as possible.
This is where I was hoping the blue-apron/farm-fresh-to-you services were going, but they appear to be holding on to older models still...
20 year olds will be extremely socially liberal. Today's 20 year olds (30-something then) will begin criticizing them and will be trending more conservative.
American Democrats will hold some extremely progressive planks, but will also have returned to center to broaden the base. Republicans will have less religious planks and will have made significant inroads with minority communities.
We'll have a mix of autonomous and traditional automobiles, but they will be owned only by those outside of big cities. The rural poor will have some nice rides (ICE machines), the rich will have self-driving luxury mobiles. Gasoline will be silly expensive.
There will be fewer wars and more international companies. Capitalism will become infused (in one form or other) into every economy. European-style socialism will also be omni-present.
Young folks will be engrossed in ever-more outrageous ultimate sports. Old folks will take great interest in geneology and the weather. Everyone will claim they know what's best to deal with the global climate.
We will have a major recession, much bigger impact than the previous one. This will curtail development. It’s possible climate effects will continue to become more severe. This could lead to human displacement in heavily populated Asian coastal towns. Will be compounded due to the recession.
Left wing and right wing polarization will grow and be compounded due to the above points. I don’t think there will be civil wars, but could be a tough situation in some parts of the world, especially Europe.
Technologically? I don’t think fully self driving cars will be a thing in 10 years. We could see regulations passed regarding social media companies. It could curtail the growth of a Facebook disruptor. We could see some changes in the financial industry due to the recession. But that still won’t change much for the industry.
What I wish:
Self driving cars. A Facebook disruptor. Mainstream crypto currency.
my prediction about this is that the existing private cryptocurrencies will peter out but that we'll see a large rise in government 'e-dollar/krona/etc' alternatives, essentially as an electronic alternative to cash.
Brexit will probably be pretty rough on society, though it won't be quite the disaster some people think it'll be. Think less 'mass starvation/riots/panic' and more 'bad tax deals and export limits when it comes to dealing with the EU' (plus maybe a few legal issues when UK and EU law inevitably differ).
Facebook may not weather the storm. Twitter and Reddit are probably gonna go the same way as Digg and Myspace too.
Lootboxes are going to cause all kinds of legal changes related to the gaming industry, and likely some large fines for companies involved. Certain games with them will probably be discontinued in many regions.
Social media sites will get even more crap for their privacy violations, and the lawsuits and fines are probably coming there too. Also, all those sites 'complying' with GDPR by offering a banner that says 'accept all cookies or get lost' are probably in for a nasty surprise.
I have no idea what web design/development trends will come about, but part of me thinks flat design could be here for a while now.
Authoritarianism and far right/far left politics will continue to rise, as existing parties obliviously ignore the issues that led to it. Chances of war are mixed though; don't suspect a World War 3 is anywhere on the horizon.
Trump will be outright moderate compared to some of the people elected in the next ten years.
Criminals and extremist nutcases will figure out that cyber security + the internet of things + other technology is a recipe for disaster, and exploit it to all hell. The results will probably mean far more government scrutinty over security holes in tech products.
Self driving cars will not take over. Human drivers will also not get replaced. No politician or political party would risk electoral suicide by doing anything there.
AI won't change much. It's coming, but it's just not there yet to lead to any Jetsons style sci-fi future or what not.
VR will get a bit less niche, but AR may catch on a bit more. The applications for that have been advertised a lot better with stuff like Pokemon GO, Snapchat/Instagram/whatever filters, the Nintendo 3DS, etc.
There's a decent chance the UK railways will be renationalised, since Labour keep crowing about the idea. If so, there's also a decent chance they may realise said chance has its downsides as well as upsides.
Wages for software engineering will probably decline a bit, as more people enter the field in hopes of Silicon Valley style lifestyles. Eventually, it could go from doctor/lawyer level salaries to something closer to office worker ones.
And that's about all I can think of right now.
Edit: Oh, and it's possible high costs of living will make marriages and relationships a necessity for many younger people now. Maybe we may even see the social status there flipped, with those who don't need to marry/live with someone else getting more respect than those who do.
One race, indoors-oriented, tribal, authoritarian, amoral, warlike, domineering.
Another race, outdoors-oriented, disorganized, vain, self-obsessed, subjugated.
I bet you will have minimal difficulty envisioning every person you know and which track they're on.
That's more of a 1000-year prediction than a 10-year one.
The Time Machine predicted spinning "history rings" that produced sound (CD's), and Wells' other works were equally prescient considering they came from the 1800's. Morlocks and Eloi were dismissed as simply wrong, but perhaps they were merely further ahead than the critics could see.
Any thoughts on how that would happen? Genetic engineering? Divergent populations? Earthbound and formerly Earthbound?
The difference is preexisting, but only beginning to get expressed. Some people resist authority and don't believe what they're told, and some people crave authority and want to be told they're right. It's not an insult; it's actually probably an evolutionarily superior approach to tend toward the latter. Tribes have distinct advantages.
Increased CO2 levels, indoors and out, are giving rise to increased levels of Oxytocin in everybody's body. It's more a tribal hormone than a bonding hormone. This is where the increased expression is coming from, I believe.
The increase in wealth disparity coupled with centralization of corporate power will cause a proportionally large increase in poverty. You'll either be fortunate enough to have a job (where your hours will rise, due to heavier competition - those at the top will say to hell with the research claiming productivity has an optimum with respect to hours devoted, just like we say to hell with the research claiming we're destroying the planet) or be forced to forage or pillage for your meals.
On another note, marriage rates will continue to decline, divorce rates will continue to rise. The "nuclear family" will therefore become increasingly rare (Why settle when you can swipe?). Suicide rates will increase. Maybe this keeps overpopulation in check. Maybe there will just be more single-parent "households". At any rate, I predict that there will be a much higher incidence of "many unrelated members of the same sex uncomfortably sharing a living space."
Those are both kind of high level, but as far as daily life goes, I think a "social credit system" will either exist globally or see increased adoption outside of the current canonical example(s).
I honestly hope I'm wrong. I hope that the internet dating paradigm doesn't ruin our species. I hope that we can maintain steady employment rates and keep the population at a healthy rate. That's just not what my first guess would be.
If you don't agree with the idea, just put that in comment. But giving minuses because someone has different thoughts.
I understand minuses when somebody is just talking things completely not true like that there never was World War II or X-Rays are safe for you.
Future is by definition not deterministic so everybody may have own imagination. And by giving minuses you're discouraging the people with sharing their thoughts with you.
At least explain you're giving minus.
