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Comment by adrianN | Hacker News Reader

I predict that nothing of this will happen in the next decade.

I'd be wary of saying that exactly nothing will come to pass, especially since some of the criteria are so vague as to permit a wide range of outcomes.

> 19. Increased focus on sustainability and the environment

This is the most likely to me, although less in the sense of more action and more in the sense of more talk, e.g., political debates. I definitely don't think it will overpower other typical topics, but in the sense that it will probably be a perennial topic on the list I can see it happening.

Indeed. "7. AI will achieve human-level intelligence" should call in to question the whole analysis.

Author's premise is entirely based on a > twenty year old book running at about a 19% accuracy rate for its current-decade predictions: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/NcGBmDEe5qXB7dFBF/assessing-...

Then either you don't seem to be very good at predicting the future, or you're a very pessimistic person, or possibly both.

As just one example, #20 is already being done for COVID: https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/10/new-test-detects-cor...

And another disease: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2835-2

I could go on, but I think I've made my point.

> I could go on, but I think I've made my point.

Is COVID "minimised" yet? Quite the opposite. So it looks like the prediction of "disease can be minimised" is an absurd one.

Pfizer would like to have a word with you.

I look forward to their call, but realistically, I am not holding my breath today. Maybe next year.

Is COVID "minimised" yet? (1) Would Pfizer say so?

1) https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-54935700

Clinical trials take so long that emergencies like covid could be the few diseases wiped in the next decade.

The research is bearing fruit, seeing that on the ground is a different matter.

For something to be widely available in 10 years, the R&D has to be mostly done right about today. I think it's likely that we'll see a CRISPR-like technique in the experimental stages for one or two diseases in humans in the next decade, but it's basically impossible that we'll have many such therapies approved in that time. We're in the "kind of works in mice" stage of research. That's very far from approved in humans.

Things related to shopping and widespread embedding of chips/networking are very much already coming in. Having an Alexa-alike in common toys is probably only a few years out.

The high end medical therapies are probably also going to be a thing.

The more funky computing-shell and AI predictions are a flop IMO.

The smart home is pretty dumb. Cameras, lights, roomba, lawnmower, watering. It's not smart. It's a cron job OR'd with voice recognition. It's an automated home - useful in its own right, but let's not hype it inappropriately.

> 18. High-resolution VR will transform both retail and real estate shopping

To me - this one sounds most plausible.

You beat me to it.

Actually, we are already pretty much there. [0]

You might say these aren't 3D, but that's easy to add by following these instructions [1].

You might say there isn't true immersion, but that would be the next step, and already done in a music video. [2]

[0] - http://members.har.com/cwsites/dispVirtualtours.cfm?id=21

[1] - https://www.harconnect.com/2020/07/14/har-virtual-tools/

[2] - https://nofilmschool.com/music-video-lidar-point-clouds-unre...

As for #2, note that it was done with the combination of a Leica LIDAR scanner, an iPhone, and pulled together ultimately in Unreal Engine.

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