15 ms·

What’s Next in Computing?

300 points by MichaelAO 11y ago

jedberg 11y ago
I think the author is right about cars being next. There is a lot of work by a lot of people in this area, and one of them is going to get it very right (my personal bet is on Tesla or Apple).
- melling 11y ago
  There are more people working on mobile, there's a lot more revenue, and a lot more opportunity for iteration. Mobile and the desktop converge: https://h4labs.wordpress.com/2016/02/21/the-convergence-of-mobile-phones-and-desktop-computers/ https://h4labs.wordpress.com/2016/02/21/the-convergence-of-m...
- wr1472 11y ago
  You're choosing Apple over all the existing car manufacturers? What have done in this space other that carplay?
  - ianamartin 11y ago
    What did they do in the music player space before the iPod? What did they do in the phone space before iPhone? What did they do in the tablet space before the iPad? How about the watch? If Apple makes a car--and I'm not totally convinced they will--the "they aren't just going to come in here and do this thing they've never done before" response is sounding awfully stupid these days. That's sort of their thing.
    - icebraining 11y ago
      Apple's Newton platform ran on multiple devices with touchscreens, including phones and PDAs which could connect to the Internet and send/receive text messages. In fact, the current VP of iPad Product Marketing was one of the Newton's marketing product champions.
  - jedberg 11y ago
    > You're choosing Apple over all the existing car manufacturers? Yes. Much like smartphones and tablets, they hadn't done much in the space until they exploded on the scene after sitting back and watching everyone else get things wrong. That's what they're really good at -- seeing what others do wrong and not repeating those mistakes. Unlike tablets though, it's a lot harder to hide when you're making a car. They've already secured a test track and they're hiring vehicle engineers.
    - icebraining 11y ago
      Apple had always been involved in that space. The Newton, the eMate, the collaboration with Motorola, and (obviously) the iPod, were all in the same type of device. The latter even had scheduling, contacts and downloadable games which you could buy the iTunes Store, before the iPhone was released.
  - tim333 11y ago
    Apple are very good at the shiny brand thing. Most cars over $20k work just fine these days and a lot of why people pay 2 or 3x that is for status. I can see that working for Apple.
Sven7 11y ago
DARPA's SyNAPSE and then the self powered brain of an ant. That's computing. Everything else could find place on what's next in consumerist garbage.
- rwallace 11y ago
  The 'consumerist garbage' is what's paying to build the factories that make the chips that power the exciting research stuff.
dfischer 11y ago
Something that has been on my mind lately is are we near the end of viable startups in apps? I mean this in a multi-platform approach not just mobile. But for apps in general I am starting to feel what's possible has been done and we are nearing a point where the big guys are already doing it and you might as well just join FANG instead of building something on your own. Maybe I'm getting jaded though. There are always new niches coming out... And there are reinvented cycles. Like how many big dating apps have been there since the 90s? Quite a bit actually. Can there really be another dating app in current internet app standards between desktop and mobile? Probably not. Maybe the next dating app will be in VR and AR. In fact I guarantee it. But I'm feeling that we are getting tapped out on app ideas before the next flood. Makes me a little sad because I'm more entrepreneurial than anything and not feeling many problems to solve lately. Maybe it's just me. Anyone else feel similar?
- deegles 11y ago
  More platforms = more opportunities. The Kim Kardashian game on Android/iOS made $200 million dollars in 2014. You don't have to come up with a new niche to be wildly successful, you can innovate on execution. That being said, I believe there is huge potential for new types of voice-only apps on the Amazon Alexa platform.
  - sdenton4 11y ago
    Yeah, there's a huge problem with discovery and new apps, though, which kardashian has a huge leg up on. Other challenges are that people tend to spend 80% of their time on 3 apps, and that people are likely experimenting with new apps much less than they were a few years ago, as they've already got their goto apps at this point.
- Can_Not 11y ago
  If AR, VR, and IoT kick off simultaneously, I wonder what the malicious exploit, microtransaction heavy crapware, and indie game scenes are going to be like.
- rwallace 11y ago
  I think this is true at the current tech level. That is, if your product idea is a website or a phone app (as opposed to using these things to solve a problem in some other domain), it's unlikely to be worth doing. I think the next big opportunities will come with the next technological breakthrough (Internet of things, robotics, AI, nanotech, whatever) and that's the direction to aim for.
AndrewKemendo 11y ago
I am biased as an AR developer, but I think Chris underplays the impact of AR as a computing and communications platform. AI - and eventually AGI - is an application of computation. It's revolutionary and I think will transform everything but it's not a computing platform. That is, AI itself doesn't have an interface, so it still needs a platform to run on. AR and eventually BCI and wetware are the platforms for interfacing with it. Cars aren't a computing platform either - they will certainly utilize and be transformed by new waves of computation capabilities, but cars aren't a replacement for a personal computer. Same with Drones and IOT. I think wearables will fall to AR as well - or rather integrate with it as a peripheral. So when asking what is next for computing, in the context of the evolution of interface/platform from Mainframe to Micro computer to Smartphone, AR is unquestionably "next" as a platform.
- karmacondon 11y ago
  What's the killer app for AR? speadsheets:computing, email:internet, ____::AR?
  - sdenton4 11y ago
    One of my hopes is facial recognition, to help me remember who this person is who send to remember me so well. Maybe a couple notes on the person that I keep on the side as well... I often totally fail to recognize people outside of the contexts and places where I usually see them. So a fix would be amazing.
    - AndrewKemendo 11y ago
      That use case is very intermittent though. A killer app would be something that you use 5-10x a day like maps, camera or email. I think it will be contextual based on what you are doing. At home it will be assistance (search, instructional) and entertainment based. At work it will replace monitors. In transit it would replace phone/dashboard GPS.
  - AndrewKemendo 11y ago
    Not sure if there is a single one, just like there is not one killer app for the smartphone - though arguably it was the integrated camera that was the breakthrough for the iPhone. We are betting the killer app for mobile AR is for e-commerce/shopping.
eva1984 11y ago
I think people need to pay more attention to the current AI status. It is rapidly maturing and offering surprises every year. Most of the progress didn't make to the news, as AlphaGo level, but it is going to have bigger impact to our lives, even our jobs. like: http://arxiv.org/abs/1512.00965 http://arxiv.org/abs/1512.00965
- amelius 11y ago
  It would be nice if there were a searchable blog about AI and its applications. That way, even people like me who are not so interested in the algorithms behind deep learning, can still see where this technology is heading.
  - Pamar 11y ago
    DataTau (http://www.datatau.com/news http://www.datatau.com/news) is a clone of HN dedicated to Data Science. Maybe something similar for AI?
    - Houshalter 11y ago
      DataTau seems somewhat abandoned. I would suggest the subreddits https://www.reddit.com/r/machinelearning https://www.reddit.com/r/machinelearning or https://www.reddit.com/r/thisisthewayitwillbe https://www.reddit.com/r/thisisthewayitwillbe
  - eva1984 11y ago
    Reddit has excellent machine learning sub. Worth looking.
    - bonoboTP 11y ago
      I don't think it's excellent at all. It's mostly for and by novices in their first weeks or months after really starting learning about it and many zeroday beginners who think it sounds cool and post the nth deep learning news article and ask how they should start learning about this stuff. There is very little advanced discussion there. And the advanced questions and topics usually have very few comments.
DrNuke 11y ago
All front-end everywhere without programming imho.
fizixer 11y ago
The scene is from Terminator 2 (1992) not The Terminator (1984).
Geee 11y ago
I think the general trend is that computers start to understand and be aware of physical world, rather than just numbers entried by humans. And not just understand, but manipulate, which means that you can go to forest and run forest.foreach(tree => { if(tree.length > 5) cut() }) I.e the world becomes computable (or rather manipulatable).
- chm 11y ago
  The world is already this way, just not accessible in such a concise and precise manner. When you ask a lumberjack to cut down all trees greater than 5 meters tall, you're effectively doing the same thing as in your example. The execution model, runtime, etc are not the same, but the point still stands.
  - Geee 11y ago
    Yup, that's true, but computers also used to be people who did computing.
    - chm 11y ago
      Indeed, and that was my main point. "Computing" in a general sense is as fundamental as any physical law (if one wants to make a distinction between those). We have reduced computing to its essence, and are now building up complex systems in a "rational" way. The Universe already "knew" about the essence of computing, and just let things happen.
- crdoconnor 11y ago
  The trend seems to be more to insert humans into an automation process - e.g. mechanical turk, amazon package fulfillment, uber, etc.
ocdtrekkie 11y ago
I suspect we will finally reach the point where enough is enough on proprietary cloud, and we'll start to see decentralization taking a strong forefront again. A lot of big companies are driving this AI talk, but by and large it helps them more than it helps the rest of us.
- pixl97 11y ago
  >but by and large it helps them more than it helps the rest of us. Correct. If you have 10,000 employees and you could replace 5,000 of them with 'computerized smarts' you shift a huge amount of liabilities. They don't require health insurance that seems to go up in cost every year. No retirement fund is needed. In theory the costs of using AI will go down over time per unit of work accomplished. As for an individual it is difficult to see how AI will decrease our workload, increase our happiness, or increase our wealth.
  - jedberg 11y ago
    > As for an individual it is difficult to see how AI will decrease our workload, increase our happiness, or increase our wealth. You have to be the guy or gal creating the AI. :)
Animats 11y ago
Coming up next: - If your job involves sitting at a desk, and your inputs and outputs come in via phone or display, expect to be automated. - Automatic driving. - AIs which sell. These will be annoying but effective. - Big Brother will be much more effective. - Within ten years, an AI running some investment will fire a CEO. Probably not important: - Virtual reality. Other than for games, it won't be big. - Internet of Things for the home. Home remote control is a niche product. It's been available since the 1980s and never got much traction. Not yet: - Robots for routine unstructured tasks. Still a hard problem, from both a hardware, software, and cost perspective. - Nanotechnology (excluding surface chemistry stuff)
- gnaritas 11y ago
  > Virtual reality. Other than for games, it won't be big. Why? Effective and realistic VR has reach far beyond games, it could nearly eliminate most business travel and recreational travel. No need for a real office or commuting when a company can have a virtual office that feels real enough for workers to collaborate with presence. No need to blow large amounts of money travelling to real places that are either perfectly imitated in VR or blown away by cooler places that only exist within VR. VR ain't just for gaming.
  - logicrook 11y ago
    Yes. VR is for porn.
    - gnaritas 11y ago
      lol, that too.
    - jhallenworld 11y ago
      AR will also be for porn.
    - deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
  - 11y ago
kordless 11y ago
I wrote a hypothesis [1] on the cause and effect of the cycles Chris mentions. With those assumptions about the separation of user and their data in mind, I make the following near term technology predictions: - a swing back to private cloud will be kicked off by container/microkernel technologies, starting the largest cycle we've seen to date in terms of growth and value - public cloud computing growth will slow slightly and will have to refocus on lower privacy needs use-cases (or die trying) - IoT and cloud computing will start to merge as a market, where the compute resources of your IoT devices are used to operate on the data other IoT devices nearby - cryptocurrencies and the blockchain will finally find a home in securing the processes behind cloud provisioning of what was known previously as SaaS software - cryptocurrency deployments make open source project's revenue models sustainable - open source hardware, including circuitry, becomes ubiquitously available via physical printing processes, which then drives the IoT and cloud computing markets even higher. - the digital nomad lifestyle explodes as a result of the changes to the open source model - startups and the VC culture in Silicon Valley will be forced to retool their financial strategies and software business models for accessing decentralized markets - a meltdown of global financial markets will be the only thing which enables bringing positive, decentralized change to those financial markets. As John Chambers, chairman of Cicso said a few years back, "You're going to see a brutal, brutal consolidation of the IT industry". Better buckle up. [1] https://medium.com/@kordless/an-ecology-of-cloud-1cedfa326b8c https://medium.com/@kordless/an-ecology-of-cloud-1cedfa326b8... BTW, there is only one thing that will make me stop coming to HN and participating in the community, and that's when I see people's opinions on something downvoted. Downvote if you must, but keep in mind it's a game of blame if the post you are downvoting is someone's opinion or view on something, which itself is blameless.
- eitally 11y ago
  All of the points subsequent to your first one conflict with that conjecture, that we'll see a huge swing back toward private cloud & on-premise DCs. Speaking from where I saw the industry [when I was a part of it] and now from what kinds of CIO/CTO conversations I see the GCP AMs/SEs having, I don't think we're remotely close to a swing back. Enterprise Capex budgets move VERY slowly most of the time, and it will take a multiple years to alter current momentum, which has finally reached the point where it's almost a foregone conclusion for many industries that on-prem DCs no longer make sense. This opinion is driven almost as much by the increasingly compelling portfolio of enterprisy SaaS products like Netsuite and a plethora of workforce management, CRMs, analytics/visualization, sooooo much more of what has historically been internally developed business productivity apps.
ianamartin 11y ago
whenever I see a headline of the formula, "What's next in X" I immediately think to myself, "probably not what this article thinks it is." That said, yeah, some of the handwriting is on the wall. I think IoT will be the next big hit, not because people want it or will use any of it, but because that's all anyone is going to be selling. Samsung, LG, GE, et al. aren't going to give us a choice. It won't be a big dramatic change like self-driving cars. It will be a slow trickle of toaster fridges that we don't notice until we are out trying to replace a washing machine one day and can't find one without a self-ironing board attached that wants to connect to our bed to know when to wake up the coffee pot that makes your egg-white substitute omelet and makes sure your shirt is wrinkle free at exactly the moment your shower dries you off and combs your hair. And while all of us nerds are busy disabling all that crap so we can just clean some underwear, Wall Street will be declaring that IoT is here and winning! What they won't mention is that it's winning because there's nothing else left to buy.
- dzhiurgis 11y ago
  What you've ironically described is home automation facilitated by IoT. Cheap IoT devices can be installed just about any manufacturing and agricultural device. Heck, you'll be able to monitor each individual plant health. Your car will be able to notify of failing components before they actually failed (FFT and irregular frequency monitoring).
  - ianamartin 11y ago
    Well, that's the dream IoT is selling. But the reality is that most of it won't work. The big brands that the vast majority of consumers recognize and are willing to buy and can afford are simply not competent to deliver the dream. They will make the devices work just well enough to gather your personal data and stop there. For most of the rest of our lifetimes, IoT will be the same shitshow of incompatible nightmares as plug-and-play was for Windows throughout most of the 90s. But it will win, and it will be the next big thing for a similar reason: not because it's good or because it works well, but because that's all anyone is selling.
    - 11y ago
deleted 11y ago
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amatic 11y ago
Plastic analog neural networks. Here is a bit : www.billpct.org
ronnier 11y ago
What if there's an upper limit on what can be created and what if we are mostly there. What if we never really progress much beyond where we are other than gradually getting faster, longer battery life, and more storage. Games and movies and TV shows are now mostly sequels and rehashed versions. A 2006 car vs a 2016... Basically the same.
- nwjtkjn 11y ago
  There were no self-driving cars in 2006, and electric cars seemed like a far off dream.
  - marvin 11y ago
    Moreover: We're talking about a decade here. It's not a very long time. For more than 99.9% of human history, you would expect one decade to be pretty much identical to the previous. But you could make a pretty long list of the changes in life from each decade to the next since 1900, so at this point I think the onus is on the people who want to prove that the next decade will not be materially different from the current. I'd certainly bet on change, and probably accelerating change.
  - ocdtrekkie 11y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_EV1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_EV1 - Available to consumers (for lease, and they were recalled) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARPA_Grand_Challenge_%282005%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARPA_Grand_Challenge_%282005%... - Competitions of self-driving cars for over a decade We really haven't taken the magical leaps some people believe we have. We just learned to market them better. :)
    - nwjtkjn 11y ago
      So since the "internet" existed in the 70's, nothing exciting happened in the 90's?
- tim333 11y ago
  Self replicating robots? We're not there on that one but it seems possible. Then you can have 10,000 of them build a Taj for you. That would be different.
bholdr 11y ago
"Post hoc ergo propter hoc" (Latin)
mastax 11y ago
> Of particular importance are GPUs (graphics processors), the best of which are made by Nvidia. Don't let any gaming forums see this, they'll be arguing for weeks afterward
dcw303 11y ago
I had a Windows Mobile phone in 2005 (One of the earlier O2 XDA models, from memory) and it certainly fell into the gestation phase. Email was passable if you were connected to an Exchange server, but tapping out long responses with the stylus was a chore. It was definitely possible to browse the web, but the prevailing Windows-style point and click interface combined with a low res screen made it more trouble than it was worth. At the time, I couldn't imagine how to make mobile easier to use, but once I experienced an iPhone it was very obvious that the Touch UI fundamentally changed things. I say this because I got an Oculus DK2 a couple of years ago, and after a month of enthusiastic use it got cast aside. I know it doesn't affect everyone, but I suffered from some nausea which soured me quickly. Queasiness aside though, There was a bigger problem. When I tried a demo, there was an obvious wow factor at the start, but it wore off quickly. Just attaching VR to standard 3D game was not as exciting as I had hoped. The first television programs were essentially radio shows with a camera put in front of the presenter, until someone was able to use video to harness the story telling possibilities. The first web sites were glorified electronic newspapers, and then someone figured out how to integrate interactivity that was impossible in print. All new media forms intially imitates the old. As McLuhan said, the medium is the message. I think it will take an as-yet unknown paradigm shift to make VR compelling.
- skewart 11y ago
  That is a really good point. I suspect in 20 years we will look back and laugh at how today's VR apps kind of MIS the point of what you can do with it. I think VR has tons of potential for office/enterprise apps because the richer spatial experience can enable new ways of visualizing and working with information.
- hellomrjack 11y ago
  I am actually looking for people who are susceptible to VR motion sickness, I worked on a VR project where we tried to make it as accessible as possible. It would be really useful for me to see how it is for people who are particularly affected by it. You can grab it from https://share.oculus.com/app/super-turbo-atomic-ninja-rabbit-experience https://share.oculus.com/app/super-turbo-atomic-ninja-rabbit... (I defiantly agree that a lot more work needs doing to work out how to tell stories effectively with VR).
Houshalter 11y ago
How did he miss robots? He talked all about AI and self driving cars, but missed robots. Robots have been pretty good for decades, but waiting for AI to get good enough to take advantage of it. This is just starting to happen.
crb002 11y ago
Processors in memory like Micron's Automata http://www.micronautomata.com http://www.micronautomata.com Von Neuman arch is dead for a lot of simple compute tasks. CISC central CPU will only be used for very specific workloads that need custom circutry like floating point units. Also, every CPU will come with a small FPGA stock, not just the on die GPU that AMD offers.
greendestiny_re 11y ago
Predicting the future is a thoroughly thankless task. I just wish the author of this article elaborated more on the financial side of the AI revolution, rather than just mentioning it at the start and then dropping it completely.
vannevar 11y ago
My own prediction is that in terms of personal computing, the hardware will start to fade into the background, along with the OS. AI will take over consumer mindshare. Windows, iOS, and Android will give way to Cortana, Siri, whatever Google comes up with, and Amazon's Alexa. Probably something similar from Facebook as well. The consistent user experience with any of them will be available everywhere. It won't be important to carry a particular device, the hardware around you will recognize you. I already catch myself trying to ask Alexa for something in my car. I'm sure Amazon will make that a reality sooner rather than later.

300 points by MichaelAO 11y ago

I think the author is right about cars being next. There is a lot of work by a lot of people in this area, and one of them is going to get it very right (my personal bet is on Tesla or Apple).

melling 11y ago
There are more people working on mobile, there's a lot more revenue, and a lot more opportunity for iteration. Mobile and the desktop converge: https://h4labs.wordpress.com/2016/02/21/the-convergence-of-mobile-phones-and-desktop-computers/ https://h4labs.wordpress.com/2016/02/21/the-convergence-of-m...
wr1472 11y ago
You're choosing Apple over all the existing car manufacturers? What have done in this space other that carplay?
- ianamartin 11y ago
  What did they do in the music player space before the iPod? What did they do in the phone space before iPhone? What did they do in the tablet space before the iPad? How about the watch? If Apple makes a car--and I'm not totally convinced they will--the "they aren't just going to come in here and do this thing they've never done before" response is sounding awfully stupid these days. That's sort of their thing.
  - icebraining 11y ago
    Apple's Newton platform ran on multiple devices with touchscreens, including phones and PDAs which could connect to the Internet and send/receive text messages. In fact, the current VP of iPad Product Marketing was one of the Newton's marketing product champions.
- jedberg 11y ago
  > You're choosing Apple over all the existing car manufacturers? Yes. Much like smartphones and tablets, they hadn't done much in the space until they exploded on the scene after sitting back and watching everyone else get things wrong. That's what they're really good at -- seeing what others do wrong and not repeating those mistakes. Unlike tablets though, it's a lot harder to hide when you're making a car. They've already secured a test track and they're hiring vehicle engineers.
  - icebraining 11y ago
    Apple had always been involved in that space. The Newton, the eMate, the collaboration with Motorola, and (obviously) the iPod, were all in the same type of device. The latter even had scheduling, contacts and downloadable games which you could buy the iTunes Store, before the iPhone was released.
- tim333 11y ago
  Apple are very good at the shiny brand thing. Most cars over $20k work just fine these days and a lot of why people pay 2 or 3x that is for status. I can see that working for Apple.

Sven7 11y ago

DARPA's SyNAPSE and then the self powered brain of an ant. That's computing. Everything else could find place on what's next in consumerist garbage.

rwallace 11y ago
The 'consumerist garbage' is what's paying to build the factories that make the chips that power the exciting research stuff.

dfischer 11y ago

Something that has been on my mind lately is are we near the end of viable startups in apps? I mean this in a multi-platform approach not just mobile. But for apps in general I am starting to feel what's possible has been done and we are nearing a point where the big guys are already doing it and you might as well just join FANG instead of building something on your own. Maybe I'm getting jaded though. There are always new niches coming out... And there are reinvented cycles. Like how many big dating apps have been there since the 90s? Quite a bit actually. Can there really be another dating app in current internet app standards between desktop and mobile? Probably not. Maybe the next dating app will be in VR and AR. In fact I guarantee it. But I'm feeling that we are getting tapped out on app ideas before the next flood. Makes me a little sad because I'm more entrepreneurial than anything and not feeling many problems to solve lately. Maybe it's just me. Anyone else feel similar?

deegles 11y ago
More platforms = more opportunities. The Kim Kardashian game on Android/iOS made $200 million dollars in 2014. You don't have to come up with a new niche to be wildly successful, you can innovate on execution. That being said, I believe there is huge potential for new types of voice-only apps on the Amazon Alexa platform.
- sdenton4 11y ago
  Yeah, there's a huge problem with discovery and new apps, though, which kardashian has a huge leg up on. Other challenges are that people tend to spend 80% of their time on 3 apps, and that people are likely experimenting with new apps much less than they were a few years ago, as they've already got their goto apps at this point.
Can_Not 11y ago
If AR, VR, and IoT kick off simultaneously, I wonder what the malicious exploit, microtransaction heavy crapware, and indie game scenes are going to be like.
rwallace 11y ago
I think this is true at the current tech level. That is, if your product idea is a website or a phone app (as opposed to using these things to solve a problem in some other domain), it's unlikely to be worth doing. I think the next big opportunities will come with the next technological breakthrough (Internet of things, robotics, AI, nanotech, whatever) and that's the direction to aim for.

AndrewKemendo 11y ago

I am biased as an AR developer, but I think Chris underplays the impact of AR as a computing and communications platform. AI - and eventually AGI - is an application of computation. It's revolutionary and I think will transform everything but it's not a computing platform. That is, AI itself doesn't have an interface, so it still needs a platform to run on. AR and eventually BCI and wetware are the platforms for interfacing with it. Cars aren't a computing platform either - they will certainly utilize and be transformed by new waves of computation capabilities, but cars aren't a replacement for a personal computer. Same with Drones and IOT. I think wearables will fall to AR as well - or rather integrate with it as a peripheral. So when asking what is next for computing, in the context of the evolution of interface/platform from Mainframe to Micro computer to Smartphone, AR is unquestionably "next" as a platform.

karmacondon 11y ago
What's the killer app for AR? speadsheets:computing, email:internet, ____::AR?
- sdenton4 11y ago
  One of my hopes is facial recognition, to help me remember who this person is who send to remember me so well. Maybe a couple notes on the person that I keep on the side as well... I often totally fail to recognize people outside of the contexts and places where I usually see them. So a fix would be amazing.
  - AndrewKemendo 11y ago
    That use case is very intermittent though. A killer app would be something that you use 5-10x a day like maps, camera or email. I think it will be contextual based on what you are doing. At home it will be assistance (search, instructional) and entertainment based. At work it will replace monitors. In transit it would replace phone/dashboard GPS.
- AndrewKemendo 11y ago
  Not sure if there is a single one, just like there is not one killer app for the smartphone - though arguably it was the integrated camera that was the breakthrough for the iPhone. We are betting the killer app for mobile AR is for e-commerce/shopping.

eva1984 11y ago

I think people need to pay more attention to the current AI status. It is rapidly maturing and offering surprises every year. Most of the progress didn't make to the news, as AlphaGo level, but it is going to have bigger impact to our lives, even our jobs. like: http://arxiv.org/abs/1512.00965 http://arxiv.org/abs/1512.00965

amelius 11y ago
It would be nice if there were a searchable blog about AI and its applications. That way, even people like me who are not so interested in the algorithms behind deep learning, can still see where this technology is heading.
- Pamar 11y ago
  DataTau (http://www.datatau.com/news http://www.datatau.com/news) is a clone of HN dedicated to Data Science. Maybe something similar for AI?
  - Houshalter 11y ago
    DataTau seems somewhat abandoned. I would suggest the subreddits https://www.reddit.com/r/machinelearning https://www.reddit.com/r/machinelearning or https://www.reddit.com/r/thisisthewayitwillbe https://www.reddit.com/r/thisisthewayitwillbe
- eva1984 11y ago
  Reddit has excellent machine learning sub. Worth looking.
  - bonoboTP 11y ago
    I don't think it's excellent at all. It's mostly for and by novices in their first weeks or months after really starting learning about it and many zeroday beginners who think it sounds cool and post the nth deep learning news article and ask how they should start learning about this stuff. There is very little advanced discussion there. And the advanced questions and topics usually have very few comments.

DrNuke 11y ago

All front-end everywhere without programming imho.

fizixer 11y ago

The scene is from Terminator 2 (1992) not The Terminator (1984).

Geee 11y ago

I think the general trend is that computers start to understand and be aware of physical world, rather than just numbers entried by humans. And not just understand, but manipulate, which means that you can go to forest and run forest.foreach(tree => { if(tree.length > 5) cut() }) I.e the world becomes computable (or rather manipulatable).

chm 11y ago
The world is already this way, just not accessible in such a concise and precise manner. When you ask a lumberjack to cut down all trees greater than 5 meters tall, you're effectively doing the same thing as in your example. The execution model, runtime, etc are not the same, but the point still stands.
- Geee 11y ago
  Yup, that's true, but computers also used to be people who did computing.
  - chm 11y ago
    Indeed, and that was my main point. "Computing" in a general sense is as fundamental as any physical law (if one wants to make a distinction between those). We have reduced computing to its essence, and are now building up complex systems in a "rational" way. The Universe already "knew" about the essence of computing, and just let things happen.
crdoconnor 11y ago
The trend seems to be more to insert humans into an automation process - e.g. mechanical turk, amazon package fulfillment, uber, etc.

ocdtrekkie 11y ago

I suspect we will finally reach the point where enough is enough on proprietary cloud, and we'll start to see decentralization taking a strong forefront again. A lot of big companies are driving this AI talk, but by and large it helps them more than it helps the rest of us.

pixl97 11y ago
>but by and large it helps them more than it helps the rest of us. Correct. If you have 10,000 employees and you could replace 5,000 of them with 'computerized smarts' you shift a huge amount of liabilities. They don't require health insurance that seems to go up in cost every year. No retirement fund is needed. In theory the costs of using AI will go down over time per unit of work accomplished. As for an individual it is difficult to see how AI will decrease our workload, increase our happiness, or increase our wealth.
- jedberg 11y ago
  > As for an individual it is difficult to see how AI will decrease our workload, increase our happiness, or increase our wealth. You have to be the guy or gal creating the AI. :)

Animats 11y ago

Coming up next: - If your job involves sitting at a desk, and your inputs and outputs come in via phone or display, expect to be automated. - Automatic driving. - AIs which sell. These will be annoying but effective. - Big Brother will be much more effective. - Within ten years, an AI running some investment will fire a CEO. Probably not important: - Virtual reality. Other than for games, it won't be big. - Internet of Things for the home. Home remote control is a niche product. It's been available since the 1980s and never got much traction. Not yet: - Robots for routine unstructured tasks. Still a hard problem, from both a hardware, software, and cost perspective. - Nanotechnology (excluding surface chemistry stuff)

gnaritas 11y ago
> Virtual reality. Other than for games, it won't be big. Why? Effective and realistic VR has reach far beyond games, it could nearly eliminate most business travel and recreational travel. No need for a real office or commuting when a company can have a virtual office that feels real enough for workers to collaborate with presence. No need to blow large amounts of money travelling to real places that are either perfectly imitated in VR or blown away by cooler places that only exist within VR. VR ain't just for gaming.
- logicrook 11y ago
  Yes. VR is for porn.
  - gnaritas 11y ago
    lol, that too.
  - jhallenworld 11y ago
    AR will also be for porn.
  - deleted 11y ago
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kordless 11y ago

I wrote a hypothesis [1] on the cause and effect of the cycles Chris mentions. With those assumptions about the separation of user and their data in mind, I make the following near term technology predictions: - a swing back to private cloud will be kicked off by container/microkernel technologies, starting the largest cycle we've seen to date in terms of growth and value - public cloud computing growth will slow slightly and will have to refocus on lower privacy needs use-cases (or die trying) - IoT and cloud computing will start to merge as a market, where the compute resources of your IoT devices are used to operate on the data other IoT devices nearby - cryptocurrencies and the blockchain will finally find a home in securing the processes behind cloud provisioning of what was known previously as SaaS software - cryptocurrency deployments make open source project's revenue models sustainable - open source hardware, including circuitry, becomes ubiquitously available via physical printing processes, which then drives the IoT and cloud computing markets even higher. - the digital nomad lifestyle explodes as a result of the changes to the open source model - startups and the VC culture in Silicon Valley will be forced to retool their financial strategies and software business models for accessing decentralized markets - a meltdown of global financial markets will be the only thing which enables bringing positive, decentralized change to those financial markets. As John Chambers, chairman of Cicso said a few years back, "You're going to see a brutal, brutal consolidation of the IT industry". Better buckle up. [1] https://medium.com/@kordless/an-ecology-of-cloud-1cedfa326b8c https://medium.com/@kordless/an-ecology-of-cloud-1cedfa326b8... BTW, there is only one thing that will make me stop coming to HN and participating in the community, and that's when I see people's opinions on something downvoted. Downvote if you must, but keep in mind it's a game of blame if the post you are downvoting is someone's opinion or view on something, which itself is blameless.

eitally 11y ago
All of the points subsequent to your first one conflict with that conjecture, that we'll see a huge swing back toward private cloud & on-premise DCs. Speaking from where I saw the industry [when I was a part of it] and now from what kinds of CIO/CTO conversations I see the GCP AMs/SEs having, I don't think we're remotely close to a swing back. Enterprise Capex budgets move VERY slowly most of the time, and it will take a multiple years to alter current momentum, which has finally reached the point where it's almost a foregone conclusion for many industries that on-prem DCs no longer make sense. This opinion is driven almost as much by the increasingly compelling portfolio of enterprisy SaaS products like Netsuite and a plethora of workforce management, CRMs, analytics/visualization, sooooo much more of what has historically been internally developed business productivity apps.

ianamartin 11y ago

whenever I see a headline of the formula, "What's next in X" I immediately think to myself, "probably not what this article thinks it is." That said, yeah, some of the handwriting is on the wall. I think IoT will be the next big hit, not because people want it or will use any of it, but because that's all anyone is going to be selling. Samsung, LG, GE, et al. aren't going to give us a choice. It won't be a big dramatic change like self-driving cars. It will be a slow trickle of toaster fridges that we don't notice until we are out trying to replace a washing machine one day and can't find one without a self-ironing board attached that wants to connect to our bed to know when to wake up the coffee pot that makes your egg-white substitute omelet and makes sure your shirt is wrinkle free at exactly the moment your shower dries you off and combs your hair. And while all of us nerds are busy disabling all that crap so we can just clean some underwear, Wall Street will be declaring that IoT is here and winning! What they won't mention is that it's winning because there's nothing else left to buy.

dzhiurgis 11y ago
What you've ironically described is home automation facilitated by IoT. Cheap IoT devices can be installed just about any manufacturing and agricultural device. Heck, you'll be able to monitor each individual plant health. Your car will be able to notify of failing components before they actually failed (FFT and irregular frequency monitoring).
- ianamartin 11y ago
  Well, that's the dream IoT is selling. But the reality is that most of it won't work. The big brands that the vast majority of consumers recognize and are willing to buy and can afford are simply not competent to deliver the dream. They will make the devices work just well enough to gather your personal data and stop there. For most of the rest of our lifetimes, IoT will be the same shitshow of incompatible nightmares as plug-and-play was for Windows throughout most of the 90s. But it will win, and it will be the next big thing for a similar reason: not because it's good or because it works well, but because that's all anyone is selling.
  - 11y ago

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amatic 11y ago

Plastic analog neural networks. Here is a bit : www.billpct.org

ronnier 11y ago

What if there's an upper limit on what can be created and what if we are mostly there. What if we never really progress much beyond where we are other than gradually getting faster, longer battery life, and more storage. Games and movies and TV shows are now mostly sequels and rehashed versions. A 2006 car vs a 2016... Basically the same.

nwjtkjn 11y ago
There were no self-driving cars in 2006, and electric cars seemed like a far off dream.
- marvin 11y ago
  Moreover: We're talking about a decade here. It's not a very long time. For more than 99.9% of human history, you would expect one decade to be pretty much identical to the previous. But you could make a pretty long list of the changes in life from each decade to the next since 1900, so at this point I think the onus is on the people who want to prove that the next decade will not be materially different from the current. I'd certainly bet on change, and probably accelerating change.
- ocdtrekkie 11y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_EV1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_EV1 - Available to consumers (for lease, and they were recalled) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARPA_Grand_Challenge_%282005%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARPA_Grand_Challenge_%282005%... - Competitions of self-driving cars for over a decade We really haven't taken the magical leaps some people believe we have. We just learned to market them better. :)
  - nwjtkjn 11y ago
    So since the "internet" existed in the 70's, nothing exciting happened in the 90's?
tim333 11y ago
Self replicating robots? We're not there on that one but it seems possible. Then you can have 10,000 of them build a Taj for you. That would be different.

bholdr 11y ago

"Post hoc ergo propter hoc" (Latin)

mastax 11y ago

> Of particular importance are GPUs (graphics processors), the best of which are made by Nvidia. Don't let any gaming forums see this, they'll be arguing for weeks afterward

dcw303 11y ago

I had a Windows Mobile phone in 2005 (One of the earlier O2 XDA models, from memory) and it certainly fell into the gestation phase. Email was passable if you were connected to an Exchange server, but tapping out long responses with the stylus was a chore. It was definitely possible to browse the web, but the prevailing Windows-style point and click interface combined with a low res screen made it more trouble than it was worth. At the time, I couldn't imagine how to make mobile easier to use, but once I experienced an iPhone it was very obvious that the Touch UI fundamentally changed things. I say this because I got an Oculus DK2 a couple of years ago, and after a month of enthusiastic use it got cast aside. I know it doesn't affect everyone, but I suffered from some nausea which soured me quickly. Queasiness aside though, There was a bigger problem. When I tried a demo, there was an obvious wow factor at the start, but it wore off quickly. Just attaching VR to standard 3D game was not as exciting as I had hoped. The first television programs were essentially radio shows with a camera put in front of the presenter, until someone was able to use video to harness the story telling possibilities. The first web sites were glorified electronic newspapers, and then someone figured out how to integrate interactivity that was impossible in print. All new media forms intially imitates the old. As McLuhan said, the medium is the message. I think it will take an as-yet unknown paradigm shift to make VR compelling.

skewart 11y ago
That is a really good point. I suspect in 20 years we will look back and laugh at how today's VR apps kind of MIS the point of what you can do with it. I think VR has tons of potential for office/enterprise apps because the richer spatial experience can enable new ways of visualizing and working with information.
hellomrjack 11y ago
I am actually looking for people who are susceptible to VR motion sickness, I worked on a VR project where we tried to make it as accessible as possible. It would be really useful for me to see how it is for people who are particularly affected by it. You can grab it from https://share.oculus.com/app/super-turbo-atomic-ninja-rabbit-experience https://share.oculus.com/app/super-turbo-atomic-ninja-rabbit... (I defiantly agree that a lot more work needs doing to work out how to tell stories effectively with VR).

Houshalter 11y ago

How did he miss robots? He talked all about AI and self driving cars, but missed robots. Robots have been pretty good for decades, but waiting for AI to get good enough to take advantage of it. This is just starting to happen.

crb002 11y ago

Processors in memory like Micron's Automata http://www.micronautomata.com http://www.micronautomata.com Von Neuman arch is dead for a lot of simple compute tasks. CISC central CPU will only be used for very specific workloads that need custom circutry like floating point units. Also, every CPU will come with a small FPGA stock, not just the on die GPU that AMD offers.

greendestiny_re 11y ago

Predicting the future is a thoroughly thankless task. I just wish the author of this article elaborated more on the financial side of the AI revolution, rather than just mentioning it at the start and then dropping it completely.

vannevar 11y ago

My own prediction is that in terms of personal computing, the hardware will start to fade into the background, along with the OS. AI will take over consumer mindshare. Windows, iOS, and Android will give way to Cortana, Siri, whatever Google comes up with, and Amazon's Alexa. Probably something similar from Facebook as well. The consistent user experience with any of them will be available everywhere. It won't be important to carry a particular device, the hardware around you will recognize you. I already catch myself trying to ask Alexa for something in my car. I'm sure Amazon will make that a reality sooner rather than later.