The next bullshit “killer app” in tech probably follows from historical trends.
Crypto and NFTs were essentially a rerun of the 2001 e-commerce bubble, then Generative “AI” was a combination of 80’s chatbots and the predictive text algos of the last 15 years. So the next big thing in tech is probably something from the early 90’s with some modern twist all buried under a fresh coat of marketing hype.
Cybiko with LoRA?
Gene therapy for cilantro tasting like soap?
A serverless, blockchainless model for Web 4.0 that manages to be craven and awful in entirely new ways?
VR/AR becomes as cheap as smartphones?
A new physical A/V format for when the streaming market implodes?
Even more “Smart” devices that only exist to steal personal info and die when the corpo servers go down?
Trend-following bots that automatically generate and sell merchandise on demand in response to viral posts (probably already exists)?
“Smart Agents”, software that promises to use AI to simplify the already dumbed-down apps everything uses these days?
Eh, I’m not putting any money on that. Part 1 of Stross’ “Accelerando” already ran the concept of smartclothes into the ground before smartphones were even a thing, and nobody wants a vest that’s also a storage and compute cluster that sends passive-aggressive emails to your smartglasses when its simulated personality gets lonely.
Running an electric cooler creates heat, the weight of the batteries to run an electric cooler means the wearer would need to do “more work” which creates even more heat, batteries generate heat when used, solar panels soak up heat from sunlight, etc. So after a short amount of use the wearer would be generating more heat than the device could cool off. Perfect, “3~5 years away”, vaporware.
The technology for VR is there but the business landscape just isn’t. For VR to take off, there’d have to be a cheap (like game console price) VR set that works for most people, so game developers making games for them can sell to more than a handful of tech hobbyists. But all the tech companies want to sell premium VR sets because that’s where they make money.
The only ways I see for VR to become a thing are either:
some company starts mass producing cheap VR sets until they become widely available (just a strategic blunder for the company that does it)
some company makes a VR console and produces their own exclusive games for it (would’ve worked during the console wars, but Nintendo is the only company still playing this game, and it doesn’t sound like the Switch 2 is going to be this)
Well VR also has the multichannel audio/5.1 problem of: not everyone wants to make space for all that, and also yeah shit got more expensive instead of less. Acer AH101 was like $200 what happened to that?
I’m thinking it’s going to be security/military-themed. Governments are spending money on war and police and spies like drunk sailors and many beaks are going to get wet putting NATO on the Blockchain, selling spy-detection apps or building automatic AI-powered disinformatskaya-filters.
Consumers will be drawn into this paranoia capitalism as well, buying technological fixes for homeless people being nearby, people touching their cars or cyber attacks bringing down modern society.
I genuinely think there’s way too much money in crypto that there’s no way they don’t somehow try to force fetch to happen. I massively fear a world where crypto has so much wealth buy-in that one of the more dominant coins finds itself getting a major nation to back it, or allow it as lawful exo-currency. The united states is specifically on a cultural, political, and economic precipice and I absolutely see the coming imperial crises causing an opening with which this horseshit permanently embeds itself in the economy. The blockchain is a god-sent to the security state, having a permanent, un-falsifiable record of all transactions would make any letter agency data twat salivate
there’s very real reason to think that crypto-bros are gonna find a way into a kind of unescapable legitimacy. The groundwork is being laid socially already, even if there’s not a lot of buy-in, it’s something a lot of people are at least nominally aware of, and all it takes is some kind of economic catastrophy, which is likely in the short-mid term, and with their ear already bent to our completely for-sale government, it’ll become normal and just the way it is (“ugh I hate having to open my crypto wallet!!! web 3 sure is worse than web 2!!” they whine as they make their peace with how things are yet again, doing nothing about it)
I basically predicted elon musk would turn twitter to the right, and everyone would thrash and whine and mostly give up and carry on just because the platform is too valuable - that’s a victory for him, even if he lost some people - they’re all peoplegroups outside of the world he wants.
This is the way of forcing shit down people’s throats, and i just don’t think crypto is done yet, and i fucking hate it. I’m trying to get myself in a position to more seriously drop out if/when it happens
The next bullshit “killer app” in tech probably follows from historical trends.
Crypto and NFTs were essentially a rerun of the 2001 e-commerce bubble, then Generative “AI” was a combination of 80’s chatbots and the predictive text algos of the last 15 years. So the next big thing in tech is probably something from the early 90’s with some modern twist all buried under a fresh coat of marketing hype.
My mones is on wearables by way of Lorawan or IOT. The jacket that tells you when it stops being wet or whatever.
Eh, I’m not putting any money on that. Part 1 of Stross’ “Accelerando” already ran the concept of smartclothes into the ground before smartphones were even a thing, and nobody wants a vest that’s also a storage and compute cluster that sends passive-aggressive emails to your smartglasses when its simulated personality gets lonely.
Solar powered cooling vest.
Too useful
Very useful, but impossible.
Running an electric cooler creates heat, the weight of the batteries to run an electric cooler means the wearer would need to do “more work” which creates even more heat, batteries generate heat when used, solar panels soak up heat from sunlight, etc. So after a short amount of use the wearer would be generating more heat than the device could cool off. Perfect, “3~5 years away”, vaporware.
Alas I think VR is too cooked
A new a/v format would be comedic however given that 4K blu doesn’t sell
Doesn’t seem likely to me either, but they would be amusing futures.
Personally, I think we’ve got another year or three before GenAI finishes running its course.
I want it to be Joever already
The technology for VR is there but the business landscape just isn’t. For VR to take off, there’d have to be a cheap (like game console price) VR set that works for most people, so game developers making games for them can sell to more than a handful of tech hobbyists. But all the tech companies want to sell premium VR sets because that’s where they make money.
The only ways I see for VR to become a thing are either:
Well VR also has the multichannel audio/5.1 problem of: not everyone wants to make space for all that, and also yeah shit got more expensive instead of less. Acer AH101 was like $200 what happened to that?
I’m thinking it’s going to be security/military-themed. Governments are spending money on war and police and spies like drunk sailors and many beaks are going to get wet putting NATO on the Blockchain, selling spy-detection apps or building automatic AI-powered disinformatskaya-filters.
Consumers will be drawn into this paranoia capitalism as well, buying technological fixes for homeless people being nearby, people touching their cars or cyber attacks bringing down modern society.
I genuinely think there’s way too much money in crypto that there’s no way they don’t somehow try to force fetch to happen. I massively fear a world where crypto has so much wealth buy-in that one of the more dominant coins finds itself getting a major nation to back it, or allow it as lawful exo-currency. The united states is specifically on a cultural, political, and economic precipice and I absolutely see the coming imperial crises causing an opening with which this horseshit permanently embeds itself in the economy. The blockchain is a god-sent to the security state, having a permanent, un-falsifiable record of all transactions would make any letter agency data twat salivate
there’s very real reason to think that crypto-bros are gonna find a way into a kind of unescapable legitimacy. The groundwork is being laid socially already, even if there’s not a lot of buy-in, it’s something a lot of people are at least nominally aware of, and all it takes is some kind of economic catastrophy, which is likely in the short-mid term, and with their ear already bent to our completely for-sale government, it’ll become normal and just the way it is (“ugh I hate having to open my crypto wallet!!! web 3 sure is worse than web 2!!” they whine as they make their peace with how things are yet again, doing nothing about it)
I basically predicted elon musk would turn twitter to the right, and everyone would thrash and whine and mostly give up and carry on just because the platform is too valuable - that’s a victory for him, even if he lost some people - they’re all peoplegroups outside of the world he wants.
This is the way of forcing shit down people’s throats, and i just don’t think crypto is done yet, and i fucking hate it. I’m trying to get myself in a position to more seriously drop out if/when it happens
I keep forgetting that there are still people who use crypto and twitter. XD