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Ask HN: What projects are 20 years ahead of their time?
- qubex 9y agoHopefully my grandmother's funeral arrangements.
- noblethrasher 9y agoI'm editing the obituary for my grandmother right now, which is due to the funeral home in 2½ hours.
- qubex 9y agoSuddenly my smart-alec quip is revealed to be very unfunny. I apologise and you have my condolences.
- noblethrasher 9y agoHeh, it's all good; I didn't take it as a quip at all, and I also hope that you have many more years with your grandmother (call her often). Thank you for your condolences.
- TurboHaskal 9y agoAPL comes to my mind.
- icen 9y agoAs in, it is still 20 years ahead of its time, or was it's moment somewhere in the 80s?
- romanovcode 9y ago20 years ago they redesigned already built products to make them more consumer friendly (nothing wrong with that, pretty cool). Now it's mostly lagging behind and making their products less consumer friendly.
- TurboHaskal 9y agoWoah dude I meant the programming language.
- TurboHaskal 9y agoThat it was ahead of its time when it came out (1964).
- zshrdlu 9y agoHad some considerable influence on the development of Lisp, too.
- kazinator 9y agoReally? Seems to me that Lisp has strongly resisted adopting any syntactic sugar whatsoever for terse array manipulation. I can hardly imagine where in any mainstream dialect this APL influence is palpable.
- ghuntley 9y agohttps//reactiveui.net
- miguelrochefort 9y agoGotta love Paul Betts' work.
- fiftyacorn 9y agoDriverless cars and a lot of AI - to me these technologies are beginning, and Im expecting to see a lot of bad AI in the coming years before it settles down
- Anthony321 9y agoI think that here you will find the information you need https://paperap.com/ https://paperap.com/
- contingencies 9y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_Society_and_Its_Future https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_Society_and_Its_Fut...
- carsongross 9y agoWell, intercooler.js is 20 years behind its time: https://github.com/LeadDyno/intercooler-js https://github.com/LeadDyno/intercooler-js Does that count?
- Raphmedia 9y agoAnything VR / AR. It did exist but the world and the tech wasn't ready. Hell, both still aren't.
- angryasian 9y agoAR I can see becoming a part of everyday life. VR not so much. I think the challenges, primarily locomotion will not be solved without a big investment. VR will succeed as arcades and amusement park settings.
- ENGNR 9y agoWith a high resolution I could see full VR being pretty great for programming, considering how hard developers often try to remove distractions and go deeper into the problem, and how useful multiple monitors are Just a pitch black room, full body tracking, voice and gesture interface, probably a few keyboards around the room (glowing within the headset) if you want to those for some tasks
- owebmaster 9y agoIndieWebCamp: https://indieweb.org/ https://indieweb.org/
- AndrewDucker 9y agoLook back 20 years to 1997. Before Windows 2000 brought together the home and server codebases. Before the internet was available on mobile phones. Heck, back then the internet was used by less than 2% of the global population. What was 20 years ahead of its time then? What would you have looked at and thought "That'll be massive in 20 years"? About the only thing I can think of is VR. Which Sega tried to launch in the late 90s, and only now is selling over a million units.
- SideburnsOfDoom 9y ago> What would you have looked at and thought "That'll be massive in 20 years" I was on the internet in the early/mid 90s, and was told that "the web" was growing massively and was going to be huge. This was more common knowledge by 1997. The kind of DNA sequencing that 23andme sells to people for £150 now? It's not "millions of units" massive yet, granted.
- jrm5100 9y agoIt may be millions of units by now- it was 1M about 2 years ago (https://www.genomeweb.com/microarrays-multiplexing/1m-customers-genotyped-23andme-continues-consumer-genomics-rebound https://www.genomeweb.com/microarrays-multiplexing/1m-custom...). Minor nitpicking: the 23andMe kits use microarrays for genotyping, not DNA sequencing. It's an older and more limited technology but it is much cheaper than sequencing.
- ams6110 9y agoMany of the web startups in the late 1990s had good ideas but were about 20 years too early. A lot of things that have succeeded today were tried then and failed either because the technology couldn't scale, or the bandwidth wasn't there, or because people just weren't ready for it.
- rjsw 9y agoI worked for two startups in the 1980s that were doing online hypertext and searching multiple online databases. Failure reasons were the ones you list plus lack of TCP/IP provision.
- tylerruby 9y agoLilium - The world’s first electric vertical take-off and landing jet. (https://lilium.com/ https://lilium.com/) Neuralink - Develops high bandwidth and safe brain-machine interfaces. (https://neuralink.com/ https://neuralink.com/) Magic Leap - Mixed Reality (https://magicleap.com https://magicleap.com) Crispr-Cas9 - A unique technology that enables geneticists and medical researchers to edit parts of the genome by removing, adding or altering sections of the DNA sequence. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CRISPR#Cas9 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CRISPR#Cas9) This is a great question. The acceleration of technology has made it important for entrepenuers to look further ahead than ever when deciding where they want to make their impact in the world. Tomorrow's successful leaders in business will be the ones that peered into the most obscure places of the future to find it's problems and it's solutions.
- cousin_it 9y agoLilium and Magic Leap are fake, idk about the others.
- wrcwill 9y agoWhat do you mean by fake? I'll admit everytime i checked out magic leap it seemed very unspecific and vague, without any actual demos. Are you saying the company doesnt even exist or just that it has unrealistic goals? And if their goal isn't even to release a product what is it?
- ricardobeat 9y agoLilium test flight: https://www.theverge.com/2017/4/20/15369850/lilium-jet-flying-car-first-flight-vtol-aviation-munich https://www.theverge.com/2017/4/20/15369850/lilium-jet-flyin...
- tpeo 9y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Xanadu https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Xanadu I want to believe.
- therealmarv 9y agoyes me too. Maybe too far ahead for most people. But the concept is unbelievable good.
- ativzzz 9y agoFunny how I encountered one of the problems this tries to solve. My smartphone died so I booted up my trusty Samsung Galaxy S (yea that's S without a number on it) and went about trying to flash a newer version of android to it, only to find about 90% of download links to the necessary programs to be dead. This is only 6-7 years ago. Imagine how much of the internet becomes useless so quickly.
- donclark 9y agoThe phone I currently use, is a Samsung Galaxy S III - which is 7 years old runs better than it ever has. It runs Android 7 via LineageOS. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samsung_Galaxy_S_III https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samsung_Galaxy_S_III https://lineageos.org/ https://lineageos.org/
- Tritrin 9y agoIt can't be 7 years old, it was released 2012.
- tim333 9y agoNuclear fusion? I can see this thing in 20 years http://news.mit.edu/2015/small-modular-efficient-fusion-plant-0810 http://news.mit.edu/2015/small-modular-efficient-fusion-plan...
- maze-le 9y agoNuclear fusion energy is always 40 years before beeing production ready, at least since the 1950s.
- tylerruby 9y agolol
- tim333 9y agoThere have been some advances with REBCO magnets that may change that though. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KkpqA8yG9T4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KkpqA8yG9T4 has info.
- adrianN 9y agoNuclear fusion is mostly some amount of investment away. It's never been funded at the levels that predict "30 years away". In fact, funding has been continuously reduced: http://imgur.com/sjH5r http://imgur.com/sjH5r
- tomxor 9y agoFusion is not ahead of it's time... The future of energy has to be simple scalable and safe, fusion at terrestrial scales is extremely complex and very limited in fuel source, even if sustainable fusion is cracked that will always be true just like fission, it just has different complexities and different fuels.
- majewsky 9y ago> very limited in fuel source You mean deuterium? Because plain hydrogen is quite easy to obtain. > fusion at terrestrial scales is extremely complex Lockheed Martin is allegedly working on a fusion reactor about the size of a truck payload: http://www.lockheedmartin.com/us/products/compact-fusion.html http://www.lockheedmartin.com/us/products/compact-fusion.htm... - But of course, I cannot judge from such a webpage whether that is real in any way.
- PeterStuer 9y agoI was doing autonomous mobile robotics in the 1987-1996 era, does that count?
- conception 9y agoCrypto currencies probably. I could see taking a generation for them to be mainstream and understood by the public the way the internet is today.
- cm2187 9y agoI very much doubt that. Tech people love it as a nice invention with a libertarian twist. But what is the incentive for my grand-mother to use it over regular cash?
- diggan 9y agoImagine the same thing with your grand-mother and the web 20 years ago, she would have no reason to visit it. But now, everyone is there and she can see pictures of grand-children via the web. I could imagine similar reason for your grand-mother to use crypto-currencies in 20 years.
- cm2187 9y agoWell, exactly. She can see the picture of her grand-children. But what's the equivalent of the grand-children incentive for using bitcoin over her credit card or cash? "Because we won't give her the choice" isn't the way bitcoin is going to go mainstream.
- headcanon 9y agoIf you can figure that out, let me know and maybe I'll loop you in on the billions generated :) Seriously though, most people could not conceive of what the internet of today would have looked like 20 years ago, so I'm thinking it's going to be something similar for crypto. Remember that some, like ethereum specifically, are applications platforms for running arbitrary code in a distributed way. Exactly what applications will come of that I really don't know, but I'm sure they will be figured out, and by that time the value will be obvious.
- 9y ago
- MK999 9y agopositron dynamics
- bsenftner 9y agoBack in 2002, I started working on "automated digital doubles of real people" with an eye on automated actor replacement. I'd been working in VFX, with a history in 3D development going back to the early 80's. Long story short: started with a stellar team and I wrote and was awarded a global patent on automated actor replacement in filmed media. The company, patent and seed funding all come together just as the financial crisis at the end of Bush's term climaxed. Team scattered, I went it alone building a freelancer tiny team. Pivot to a game character service. I was never able to achieve more than a half way decent game character creation web API, which no one would pay to use. All that is left now is 1) the twitter account https://twitter.com/3davatarstore?lang=en https://twitter.com/3davatarstore?lang=en, and of course I still have all the tech. I use it for facial recognition now, and no longer make avatars. It's even better now, but even when contacted by interested parties, no one want to pay for it, at all.
- DonbunEf7 9y agoThe various object-capability projects alive right now, like Tahoe-LAFS, Monte, Cap'n Proto, Sandstorm, and Genode, are all very much future technology. Imagine: * No accounts, no passwords, just secret keycaps * Instead of messy and complex role-based tables, capabilities always know exactly what they are capable of doing * No more confused deputies * Fine-grained trust
- jonjacky 9y agoHere is a book of case studies of object-capability projects in the 1960s 70s and 80s, including several products from big computer companies: http://homes.cs.washington.edu/~levy/capabook/ http://homes.cs.washington.edu/~levy/capabook/
- Jtsummers 9y agoI didn't know you were on HN. Tangential to the discussion, thanks for your book The Way of Z. That was one of the first books I read in my efforts to understand and formal methods and specifications.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- js8 9y agoAntropogenic Global Warming. I am being sarcastic. But it's very hard to see, today, any technology that could make my life significantly better (at least than fixing climate change).
- SideburnsOfDoom 9y agoSome current things are either going to be huge, normal, mainstream and just work in a boring way in 20 years time, or they are current fads which will pass. Cryptocurrencies. 3d printers.
- spodek 9y agoMine: to motivate people to choose to lower their pollution and greenhouse gas emissions (significantly, not just raising awareness or things like using electric cars instead of driving significantly less). People can do it but they prefer living the way they do, which is what is causing the problems, knowing in principle that they should change their behavior but not actually doing so. Miami flooding more and more is not enough of a burning platform yet. Nature will provide it if we don't choose to change ourselves.
- boramalper 9y agoNetscape Enterprise Server and Server-Side JavaScript (SSJS) https://stackoverflow.com/questions/18350910/netscape-enterprise-server-and-server-side-javascript-ssjs-vs-node-js https://stackoverflow.com/questions/18350910/netscape-enterp...
- MichaelGG 9y agoMicrosoft had ASP with JScript, and it was faster than VBScript. Never really popular from what I can tell.
- est 9y agoI'd say IE5.5. All those dHTML shit, like DirectX, MIDI, .htc (Javascript Components), <img dynsrc> for videos, a sane CSS box model, css and inter-page transformations, VML for vector graphics, VRML for VR (buzzword), XML islands (influenced e4x and later JSX), the original xhr object, native cryto APIs, etc. You can even program jscript on server side with asp, or execute standalone with ActiveScript, even control native GUI like customizing your folder, the browser can be morphed to the file explorer. You can make apps with few kb of jscript unlike 55MB electron install bundle. The Windows help files (CHM) are like thousand years better than macOS counterparts and linux man files. CHM was the de facto ebook format back then and it works really well with features like indexable topics and full text search. We now have to use devdocs.io or dash. yes it has its quirks and worms, but it was way ahead of its time.
- killercup 9y agoWow that all sounds awesome! Can you link to the Github repos with the code and spec? </sarcasms> <!-- sorry -->
- est 9y agoGenerally, reading MSDN docs is a much nicer experience than reading most OSS sources, or specs, not to mention collecting workarounds from the ocean of issue tracker comments. However I do agree OSS is important and great, especially when times that you do need to debug & trace into source code. Disclaimer: I have't developed around M$ platform for 10+ years now, not sure if the situation has changed
- owebmaster 9y agoThe situation sure changed a lot. I'd blindly disagree if you say that Windows Server (or azure) development has more and better docs than Linux. And MSDN platform performs very poorly imo compared with "comparable" OSS platforms like Github, Linux development, GNU development.
- killercup 9y agoThat was actually specific to the IE 5.5 feature set and that era's Microsoft in general. Microsoft has been doing some amazing stuff in the last years, with many of them being open source and community-driven.
- otterley 9y agoNot quite 20 years too soon, but Six Degrees pioneered social networking in 1997: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SixDegrees.com https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SixDegrees.com
- auganov 9y agoDatomic when it first came out probably. Meaning still over 10 years ahead of its time.
- DocSavage 9y agoMaking significant impact on psychiatry via brain simulations. https://www.humanbrainproject.eu/en/medicine/ https://www.humanbrainproject.eu/en/medicine/ I could see this happening within 20 years, but not in the confines of the current project.
- richardthered 9y agoThe Long Now Foundation and their 10,000-year clock. http://longnow.org/clock/ http://longnow.org/clock/ It's a clock. A physical clock. Designed and built to run, accurately, for 10,000 years without human intervention.
- angus-prune 9y agoIts not without human intervention, it is with only bronze age (iirc) level maintenance.
- d--b 9y agoWhat does that really mean? Do you mean projects that are being worked on right now and that will be delivered in 20 years? Or projects that are finished now and that will be understood in 20 years? Or projects that people thought wouldn't be possible before 20 years? 1: VR, self driving vehicles, nuclear fusion, artificial photosynthesis, quantum computers, robots that can manipulate things like men, wave energy harvesting, colonize mars, cure cancer, cure Alzheimer's disease. 2: no idea! 3: drones, deepmind, blue led, electric sports cars, flyboards, voice activated assistants, smart wearables...
- otterley 9y agoThe AT&T video phone (1992): http://www.nytimes.com/1992/01/07/business/company-news-consumer-videophone-by-at-t.html http://www.nytimes.com/1992/01/07/business/company-news-cons...
- TACIXAT 9y agoFPV Drone Racing - While automated flight is making great progress, there are some amazing pilots out there. Something about a person standing in a field with goggles and a controller feels so future to me. 3D Printing - This is going to be the main way to manufacture things in the future. The lab that is 3D printing houses with concrete. That makes me terrified for home values going forward. It will likely shift all the value into the land. The house will just become something you tear down and reprint every 10 years. CRISPR - s/shitty gene sequence/perfect gene sequence/g That's insane. It's like an anti-virus product for the body (irony intended). We're going to live a very long time and be practically disease free pretty soon. I'm planning on living until 150 (27 now). It's placing a big bet on medical science, but I feel like we're on the edge of some huge things.
- majewsky 9y ago> The 1% are going to live a very long time and be practically disease free pretty soon. FTFY (I try very hard to have a more optimistic outlook on our midterm to longterm future, and I consistently fail.)
- mcphage 9y ago> That makes me terrified for home values [...] The house will just become something you tear down and reprint every 10 years. The idea of me moving all my shit out of my house every 10 years is terrifying enough on is own...
- 9y ago
- bikamonki 9y agoWhatever Elon is working on...
- headcanon 9y agoI'd say most of the ethereum-based startups, like swarm city or golem. Right now they're going a Cambrian explosion of different business models, many of which require everyday people to be using cryptocurrencies on a regular basis. Current prices are due to speculation for this eventuality, and personally I'm bullish on crypto, but this feels too much like the 90s was for the internet. Not that that's a bad thing, it's just the natural cycle of innovation.
- merrickread 9y agoyup, the vast majority of these unregulated ICO's are borderline fraud and stand only to hurt the ecosystem which they're trying to enrich. I expect there will be a heavy correction towards the end of 2017.
- halis 9y agoUh if you look at what is happening today, OBVIOUSLY Javascript was 20 years ahead of its time. You're welcome.
- srinivasang87 9y agoBreakthrough Starshot / Nano spacecrafts - much more than 20 years ahead
- candiodari 9y agoHomomorphic encryption. Software that is secure, based purely on the software itself, and can still be secure even on compromised hardware. This will enable real cryptocurrencies and zero-trust state-like entities.
- srinivasang87 9y ago1. Breakthrough Starshot / Nano spacecraft - much ahead of its time 2. Wireless power transmission of electricity / space based solar farms
- sunstone 9y agoSpaceX self landing rockets. "I'm on a barge!"
- baybal2 9y agoCybikos?
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- erik998 9y agoJames Orlin Grabbe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Orlin_Grabbe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Orlin_Grabbe His Digital Monetary Trusts https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Monetary_Trust https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Monetary_Trust The End of Ordinary Money https://www.memresearch.org/grabbe/money1.htm https://www.memresearch.org/grabbe/money1.htm Cyc an artificial intelligence project that attempts to assemble a comprehensive ontology and knowledge base of everyday common sense knowledge, with the goal of enabling AI applications to perform human-like reasoning. The project was started in 1984 by Douglas Lenat at MCC and is developed by the Cycorp company. Parts of the project are released as OpenCyc, which provides an API, RDF endpoint, and data dump under an open source license. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyc Prolog, Backward chaining, forward chaining, opportunisitic reasoning.
- skdotdan 9y agoSpaceX. Of course they still need time, work and funding. But they have a working product ahead of their competitors that clearly shows a path to the future of space exploration and colonization.
- jonrgrover 9y agoAny project that works with information inside a computer program as well as data has a chance to be 20 years ahead of its time. Current software development supports information very poorly, and supports data very well. Right now the most we can do to work with information is to extract it after the fact using Data Analytics. If we could work with information inside a program that would be a huge leap from where we are now.
- arisAlexis 9y agoMaidsafe
- the_common_man 9y agoDefinitely https://cloudron.io https://cloudron.io. I dream of a world where everyone has their own server to go with their smartphone. Also, sandstorm as has already been mentioned elsewhere