I think ar might be a dead dream in its current state, I always thought wed have proper ar glasses by now because I fell for Magic Leaps Marketting, not sure if it’ll come anytime soon.
What I do believe is coming is the resurgence of computers through mobile phones. Everyone has a powerful computer in their pockets but isn’t able to use them to their full potential. I wouldn’t be suprised if android pushed out a proper android desktop experience letting android users get the full linux desktop experience when plugged into a monitor, mouse, and keyboard.
Phone performance is stronger than the average laptops/netbooks from 10 years age and they run linux fine for everyday use. Feels like a missed opportunity if someone doesn’t drop a phone or os that lets you take advantage of modern hardwares capability. They could advertise it to families, mo more buying a pc for school, just get them hardware for their existing device, it can already do everything. Schools could use lapdocks, or tabletdocks, that could force school parental controls on devices while at school and still let them use it for their education while in class.
(obviously not everyone has a phone but that frees up resources for the kids that dont, if the kids that do can use cheaper docks with their exisitnt hardware)
More dystopian. The human race only knows how to oppress each other and make life feel more soul crushing even if it’s materially better on paper. Once in a while some cool gadgets or scientific breakthroughs come along which creates the illusion of freedom and progress but then the devices get locked down, the breakthroughs are locked behind a paywall and red tape and the enshittification proceeds as always. One step forward three steps back until climate change kills us all.
Y’know how things have mostly gotten worse for the past five years, with most innovation going towards corporate control, and nearly all tech services moving towards enshittification?
Yeah five more years of that.
I actually feel like they’ve beat the heck out of the 5 before that. GDPR is a thing, and Windows increasingly isn’t.
AI may well be done it’s explosive growth anyway. Assume all my predictions in that case are “x existing application continues to expand”.
I actually think AR is still coming - it just needs really specialised hardware to work and have acceptable battery life.
The issue with mobile OSs on desktop is that they’re designed to depend on conventional OSs right now. There’s no way to develop an Android app on Android, and debugging your Android from itself is possible, but only as a hack.
Okay, on to my own predictions. I’m limiting this to computers, not all technology, which I think was intended.
The fediverse slowly grows.
Geopolitics significantly weakens the US tech monopolies. FOSS benefits, although they probably are replaced by more commercial platforms for the most part.
More likely than not somebody actually mandates cryptography backdoors. It’s a boondoggle, although it might not fully unravel in the window given.
There’s a chance crytographically-significant quantum computing comes early and causes pandemonium. Bitcoin becomes (nearly?) worthless.
Okay, I will mention one AI thing. It’s going to find a place in rendering pipelines for videogames.
The trend to heterogeneous computing continues. Analog and reversible chips become part of the mix.
Nix-type immutable systems become daily driveable.
Open source devices will become more mainstream as a push back by consumers against enshitifcation, privacy invasion, disposable products, ever rising subscription costs.
Not just things like phones and laptops but things like mice, keyboards, headphones, even tvs and kitchen appliances. I know some of these are possible now, I use a ploppy trackball and qmk based keyboards but a wider spread of these across the home and more than just hobbyists like myself.
Large chunks will be 3D printed, moving the large component parts of manufacting to the local area. Plus things will be endlessly fixable and upgradable.
The thing is, injection molding is just dummy cheap at scale. If you have a significant run of open source hardware it still makes sense.
Chips are also pretty impossible to make at small scale, so you have to account for that. To date it’s possible to find a decent chipset, but I worry it might not always be.
All of which is true but it doesn’t matter if the product is crippled by the designer. Whole point of my model is that you are the designer so its only shit if you are.
Yeah, I’m not saying proprietary enshittified hardware is good, lol.
And I think that at some point enough people will have had enough that they take on production of that themselves via open source projects.
Sure, some will always be driven by cost, thats never going to change, but self sustainability will become more desirable as main stream brands, not just temu tat, drops in quality.
It makes no sense to think about the future of technology while ignoring one of the biggest technological developments to date. Whatever you think of AI, it’s necessarily going to shape every aspect of technological development going forward.
One example I can give you off top of my head is that traditional user interfaces will likely be going away. There’s no need to have a complex UI the user has to learn to navigate when you can just use language to describe what you want. You will just ask the agent to find whatever information you need, and present it in a specific way to you. Think of it as having a personal secretary who compiles information for you, and makes presentations.
AR is pretty much dead on arrival for at least a decade because everyone willing to make the tech to back it up wants to give you a walled garden of ads (like replacing billboards with their own adds, adding animated ads to whatever blank surface you see, and whatever app you’re using) and the only people who are willing to buy it at >$1000, 1>lbs, and early adopter quality only want it for business/hacker/utilitarian/gamer/influencer reasons who have a very low tolerance for ads and login-with-your-big-brother-account-walls meaning the supply/demand chart is like 5 total sales for actual Homo Economicus.
We will see more and more ridiculous subscriptions. I’m talking about $200+ a month. It could be cloud services (AI or not) streaming bundle, phone plan, car entertainment plan, etc.
Top 10% accounts for 50% of consumer spending. This trend only gets worse, and soon enough, companies will stop caring about poor people and tailor their services to the rich.
We’ll pay more for less in terms of software, and we’ll pay more for more in terms of hardware, but nearly everybody would happily buy less. For example, the cheapest phones will be $1k+ but with unused bells and whistles, and there will be a subscription paywall to use Google maps.
We’ll have less privacy and security. Our devices will be used to spy on us even more than now.
PlayStation 6 will come out. The next Xbox will have a really fucking stupid name. Call of Duty will be a 250GB game.
It will become more feasible to implement battery tech in your home. Generators will give way to a big battery for power outages. Areas with variable power rates will see people supplement their home power with battery during the day and charge them back up at night. EV adoption will continue to rise. Self driving tech will not change in a meaningful way. Fusion power will be commercially implemented, but barely break even, which is fine because that’s how new tech takes early steps to optimize.
China will be far and away ahead of the US in terms of infrastructure, daily consumer tech, and overall happiness. The US will pretend otherwise and launch a targeted propaganda campaign to keep its people too dumb and busy to notice how badly they’re getting fucked. But even worse than now, though.
Healthcare tech will expand. But not in the US. Not for the working class, anyway. Measles outbreaks will come in waves. Flu and a new covid strain will be devastating within 18 months. Polio will pop back up like measles currently is. Maybe TB too. Mental health will continue to get stigmatized if not fully ignored.
Physical media will be basically gone. Disc drives will as rare as actual audio CDs are in everyday life.
Lab grown meat will be more affordable, and it will bring a culture war with it.
Maybe in the US but rest of the world has access to budget Chinese smartphones .
I could see apple maps and google colluding, both dropping paywalls same year
Think companies will track us in our homes using wifi and well just have to accept it, like they track our actions on websites, where we click and look
idk physical drives have gotten real cheap and plentiful, but I do trust the cloud more than myself and thats always getting cheaper
Everyone has a powerful computer in their pockets but isn’t able to use them to their full potential.
Android Desktop is actually pretty nice, the thing that makes it useless is that basically no android apps have desktop mode or hotkeys and mouse support (Chrome is half-assed and Firefox is wearing assless chaps) plus a lot of standard I-just-want-linux things are going to be wonky. If you’re considing buying any hard-ware for the purpose of Android Desktop, you’re almost always better off buying a laptop at the same $100-$400 price.
trigger happy police drones - I Can’t Believe It’s Not A Real Cop ™
Probably contains “AI”, though.
Less bulky wearable technology, I hope.
I really like my dumb watch and have yet to find a wearable – that isn’t a watch – that isn’t clumsy or bulky
Restrictive OSs and stuff will become the new normal, essentially stripping us of our freedom, more things will become 1st Party only and moving your data will be even harder than ever, essentially becoming cultural houses, basically what apple has already done
linux is getting a push due to windows becoming more and more abusive with how they force you to use a certain ui filled with ads and ai bs
Big tech will try and create a cartel to make open source less usable. Google is already pushing Manifest V3 to make development of browsers extensions more difficult, Microsoft could try and use TPM to only allow running “certified” software, and that could be the end of OpenSource as we know it
Its really easy to be honest, you just have to slowly take away everything and give them choices, and they will be so occupied with discussing what they want to choose, they will not even notice how we slowly strangle them
Windows update: you can no longer move the start button position people get crazy Windows update: UI improvement, now you can customize the start button position
In the meanwhile: recall, more spying, microsoft account and internet connection required for installation
I don’t think much will change in 5 years that is not AI.
Everything is focused on AI right now. So just more powerful hardware that is geared towards running ai is all I think that will happen.
AR is not dead but it will take much longer than expected to be as light and comfortable as a pair of sunglasses.
I’m hoping to see a lot of progress in display tech. We’ve already seen first transparent screens but there is still work to be done. I would love to let my monitors „disappear“ when not in use. Also flexible displays are maturing, this could get interesting.
Imo you can’t not include the use of AI anymore
