What's your strongest tech prediction for this decade?
Displaying poll results.11752 total votes.
If a camel is a horse designed by a committee, then a consensus forecast is a camel's behind. -- Edgar R. Fiedler
If a camel is a horse designed by a committee, then a consensus forecast is a camel's behind. -- Edgar R. Fiedler
We already have flying cars. (Score:5, Insightful)
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...and they are heavily regulated in the United States by the FAA. Complying with the regulations is expensive, so the cost will keep the idea of flying cars for the average consumer from "taking off."
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Interesting, but stupid (Score:2)
Both the poll and the comment to which I'm replying.
Starting with the minor "wasted" comment, helicopters are dangerous as hell. I actually encountered two helicopter pilots when I was working on my pilot's license. Not saying I'm a jinx, but both of them died within a week of our encounters. "Inexpensive" Robinson helicopters turned out to be insufficiently regulated. The first pilot was a careful old pro, though the second was a young fool and based on my own encounter I suspect he was hotdogging (but it
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I flew in a lot of choppers when I was in the service, and I would NEVER compare a chopper to a car.
I believe most, if not all, of the current proposals for flying cars would fall under the FAA definition of rotorcraft, and would consequently be treated like a helicopter by the FAA.
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No, most flying car designs will probably be categorized as powered lift.
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Yes, you are right - powered lift, not rotorcraft. So, stricter regulation than for rotorcraft?
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s/flaw the helicopter/flaw in the helicopter/
I still dislike typos, even my own.
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And not complying with the regulations tends to kill you and the people below you.
You think the FAA is there as a joke? Helicopters are expensive because they are expensive to keep safe.
And then there is the noise.
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Sure. Same as we already have a man on Mars. Well, at least we have one in the same solar system.
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I came here to say almost the same thing: They're called airplanes.
Airplanes are far more fuel efficient than helicopters, and rather safer than them as well. Anything that hovers (like a drone or helicopter) is going to be very inefficient, and will therefore not be terribly useful in the future.
Land vehicles, even ones that hover a few inches off the ground, are much more efficient than the most frugal airplane. We need to improve our land vehicle tech, in my not-so-humble-opinion.
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There are a lot of neutral buoyancy (or reduced buoyancy) drones out there. Most use helium, but there are a few that use good ol' hot air, and a couple that use LTA partially-evacuated spheres. Indoor use ... mostly. That said, there's a number of newer models out there designed for outdoor use (e.g. Plimp). They can hover *very* efficiently. Energy output for stationkeeping is essentially equal to windspeed.
There was a military prototype a couple of years back - rotor - that massed ~300 Kg, and had
Re: We already have flying cars. (Score:3)
Not in Calabasas.
Flying cars need self-driving cars first (Score:2)
Drones are the most likely contender. The blades are protected and the quad-copter design makes them far more stable than a
e) None of the Above (Score:2)
No way any of the first four will happen, so it must be e).
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My prediction would be that tech companies will take over the world and prevent the governments from having any meaningful control.
Which means that we will end up in a world similar to what Max Headroom depicts.
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This is less a prediction and more historical commentary at this point, wouldn't you say?
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Which means that we will end up in a world similar to what Max Headroom depicts.
I would rather live in a world similar to what Mad Max depicts
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I think William Gibson had it right: we will live in a world where the mega-corporations think they're atop the hierarchy but in reality AIs that they've created and forgotten about will control things.
you doubt self driving cars? (Score:2)
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Re: e) None of the Above (Score:2)
I'm fairly confident that there will be a Mars mission but sadly it will be a one way trip either by design or something going wrong. Nobody's coming back alive from Mars this decade and probably the next. Space is really really hard.
I'm not as excited for that as I was for the Moon mission.
Self driving cars won't happen unless regulations are in place and standards set for dedicated lanes with highly visable road markings. AI is still decades possibly a century away from solving the last 5% needed for leve
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This decade is a stretch for a Mars mission, but mostly because of the limited launch windows. I think we'll see the initial unmanned prep flights this decade to Mars, landing several Starships and a fuel processing factory. I don't think Starship is big enough for a manned flight to Mars, as I think we'll end up wanting artificial gravity for a trip that long. Two Starships docked and spun up would work, size wise, but that would take a lot more structural engineering. If Falcon Heavy is any guide, "ju
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Yep that's how I did it.
We can provide some ordering though... (Score:2)
Year of the Linux Desktop (Score:4, Funny)
Those of you who answered... (Score:3)
"Facebook, Google, Amazon will each be broken up", that's a joke, right?
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breaking up facebook won't solve the problem - what is needed is to require an api for federation so that users on competing systems can interact with facebook users. but the last thing the powers that be in this country want is real competition...
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Great idea, which is why it'll probably never happen. OTOH, it might be possible to approximate that kind of functionality with management tools like HootSuite or Tweet Deck. The problem would be visibility from within the various target platforms. Seems like you'd need a "meta-app" to see everything, unless FB and the others choose to play nice and cooperate.
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Let me get this straight. Facebook is a problem because advertisers and enemy government ators abuse it, and now you want to INCREASE access??!!
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Facebook is a problem because it's effectively a monopoly, but regardless of the reason, increasing access from federated systems allows a diaspora from Facebook, *reducing* usage. And any federated access is going to require controls.
that's what would happen (Score:2)
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I suspect the internal security is not as robust as would be needed for federated access, but it would be an interesting starting point...
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Re:Those of you who answered... (Score:4, Interesting)
Nope, it's a prediction.
People during the railway baron age and oil baron age or telecom baron age couldn't imagine those being broken up either.
We are products of our own times, with our own filters that blind us.
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Nope, it's a prediction.
People during the railway baron age and oil baron age or telecom baron age couldn't imagine those being broken up either.
We are products of our own times, with our own filters that blind us.
Except we have a precedent in our era for tech giants: Microsoft, who was the Biggest of the Big. And they weren't broken up. I highly doubt the Googles and Facebooks will be, either.
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AT&T was borken up and now we have ... AT&T. SO was broken up, but the big piece was Esso, which became Exxon and now we have ... SO again.
It's rather pointless.
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Yes, like Sears
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Yea, they won't get broken up either. But they could go the way of MySpace and lose all their relevance. Amazon probably won't, but people might abandon the retail side and their entire business would only be AWS.
I do think it's a possibility to see the decline of the big players. Sears was the Amazon of the 1900s and look at it now. We could see them potentially gone in a decade.
Prediction (Score:2)
Technology will finally be able to tell people that the decade is not over yet.
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Hand in your geek-card. True geeks start counting at zero.
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From wiktionnary:
Although a decade may refer to any group of ten years, it often particularly refers to the informal ten-year periods of the calendar whose last digits run from 0 to 9. Some style guides may prefer that decade refers exclusively to such calendar periods while decennium, decennary, &c. refers to ten-year periods in other contexts.
It should be noted that the method of computing a decade is distinguished from the proper computation of centuries and millennia, which run from 1 to 0. The 1st
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This is cargo cult pedantry - you're constructing a fake millennium party full of people made of grass and coconuts to "amm akshually" at. That moment where you knew there was no year zero and the hoi polloi didn't, and that meant something is gone. Let it go.
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It means they are all dead and wouldn't give a toss how we name our decades anyway.
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Normally I would say that's not right that the years should be 0-9 but there is no 0 AD just goes to show how messed up our calendar is (leap years, etc...)
actually (Score:2)
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Exactly.
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2020 is the last year of the current decade.
No.
There is no year zero
We don't care.
All good writing is clear thinking. This is neither.
Agreed.
Thre is no higher authority in language than shared usage. Our usage is prevalent, usable and arguably useful. Yours is none of those. Case closed.
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> So the year 2000 was not the start of the new century?
No, 2001 was the start of the new century
> 1950 was the last year of the 1940's?
No, 1949 was the last year of the 1940's
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out of date pedantry (Score:2)
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That's just the "1" child policy.
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There's a reason Arthur C. Clarke chose "2001" as the year we made contact our progenitors, and it wasn't because that's where the dart landed.
old calendars (Score:2)
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The first decade is from 1 to 10, the second from 11 to 20 etc. Otherwise the first decade would only have 9 years, and that's nonsensical.
The 1900s is from 1900 to 1999. But the 19th century is from 1801 to 1900. The current century is from 2001 to 3000.
The current decade is from 2011 to 2020.
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And if the question in the poll had asked "what will happen in the 2020s" you would have a point.
The question was about a "prediction for this decade"
A decade is any group of 10 consecutive years.
The exercise is thus to find out which one of all possible decades is meant by "this" one.
Considering the nature of predictions concerning the futrure exclusively, the predictions applying to an entire decade, a well established convention of named decades adhering to the number of tens when the year is expressed in base-10, combined with the current date, the only rational conclusion is that the"this decade"
Safari will be replaced (Score:2)
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The technologies involved are too fundamental and important to trust to others.
And yet Apple's browser (and now Microsoft's) are just window frames around Chromium. When Google decides to kill off a useful feature (like, say, the hooks adblockers need), Apple and MS are both going along for the ride.
Slashdot will make good polls again (Score:2)
You insensitive clods
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That one seems even less likely. Although worse polls are not really a possibility either.
"Self driving death machines will be everywhere" (Score:3)
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Impressive. How can you generate this extreme level of fear with that small a basis for it?
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He can't. He's a crazed old man. Everyone that bothers to research a little knows that statistically self-driving cars are much, MUCH better than humans, and will only get better. Even if they regularly killed people on accident they would still be better than human drivers.
Let him yell at the clouds. He's a fucking moron.
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"Self driving death machines will be everywhere"
Hmm... apparently Slayer predicted this in their song Epidemic: Death machine infest my corpse to be! Ok, I'm really stretching that, since the song is most likely about a pandemic. But you know... a pandemic of self-driving cars ;-)
Obviously 1 2 4 not happening (Score:3)
So, obviously, it's 3.
Mars (Score:2)
I can see Elon Musk getting lucky in the next 10 years. Everything else was so asymptotically close to zero that I couldn't help but laugh. At least you can see a little space between the curve and the axis with Mars.
None of the above (Score:2)
Is this a contest to see who is most stupid, or what?
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Safari will add support for 4K YouTube videos
4k will eventually become common enough they'll have to else listen to people complain, the rest I seriously doubt.
A human on mars (Score:2)
poor options (Score:2)
Global Warming will be over (Score:2)
It will be cancelled by Nuclear Winter
that doesn't add up... (Score:2)
flying cars 2%
self driving cars 32%
google facebook amazon antitrust 12%
human on mars 20%
safari 4k support 32%
total 98%
Flying cars are the transportation of the future (Score:2)
and they always will be.
All "*JUST* outside chance" (Score:3)
"Flying cars" really depends on your definition. We'll never have Back to the Future or Blade Runner style "primary ground vehicles that can also fly". The currently-under-development "readable aircraft" I'm 90% sure will actually start deliveries this decade, though. And small self-flying air taxis are probably inevitable, too; although I'd say "this decade" is a stretch.
"Self driving cars will be everywhere" also depends on your definition of both "self driving" and "everywhere." Limited self driving are ALREADY all over the place. But if you mean 100% level 5 autonomy no human driver required in any circumstances - no. I give it a decent shot that there will be full production vehicles with "just shy of" it by the end of the decade, but they won't be even half of all new cars made in 2029, much less "everywhere/most cars on the road." But that last 1% of self-driving will be a ridiculously tough nut to crack.
Facebook, Google, Amazon each broken up - zero chance of all three being broken up by government entities. I'd say 50/50 that one of them breaks up due to market forces, and about 1-in-3 that *one* of them is broken up by a governmental order. And about 1-in-10 that one of them completely goes under (or is bought out by a different company.)
Human on Mars - The most definitive of the statements, either a human lands on Mars by the end of the decade or not. I'm certain that a human will land on Mars "soonish", but by the end of the decade is pretty much the close cutoff. Much as SpaceX/Boeing's Commercial Crew is *JUST* missing out on the 2010s decade, it's very reasonable that human Mars landing will slip to *JUST* in to the 2030s. But I could also very reasonably see it happening this decade. Possibly even mid-decade (2024-2026.)
Then there was the absolutely ridiculous, not at all meant to be taken seriously Cowboy Neal option.
More wars in the Middle East (Score:2)
Flying cars and space exploration have to be put on the backburner. We have regimes to change in the Middle East that threaten our "greatest" ally.
Flying Cars (Score:2)
All of the others are fanciful pipe dreams.
Self-driving cars (Score:2)
Anybody that lives in a place that has a real winter knows that self-driving cars are a pipe dream.
Electric cars (Score:2)
Self Driving Cars (Score:2)
Self Driving Cars? (Score:2)
Self driving cars? 33%?! Really?
How many of you are actual software engineers. Self driving cars are and incredibly difficult problem. We will definitely not see them this decade. In fact, I don't think you can have safe self-driving vehicles without General Artificial Intelligence; and unless they have the mental capacity and loyalty of dogs, they're not going to be happy driving us around everywhere.
It would cost less money and be easier to lay down rail tracks in every major city and standardize car to r
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Well it has to be more probable than self driving cars.
It's not a documentary, "genius" (Score:2)
You're projecting (or, charitably, just grossly misinformed). You might find it interesting to read https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org].
IQs have been steadily rising for as long as we've been testing it (over a century, now), across all types of measured intelligence. The effect has been observed globally and across socioeconomic strata. The strongest improvements have been bringing up the bottom of the range, though the high end improved as well. There's some evidence that the top end h
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Idiocracy is fiction, and using it (or any other fiction, really) to predict the future is idiocy.
Then explain why the world seems to be turning dumber. I get what you're saying, today's kids are so much smarter than we were.
BUT....
As a whole, we're dumber. We're not questioning authority. We accept what comes out of the tv, pulpit and internet without question and accept it as Truth.
Those who *do* question are branded as nazis and worse.
So yes, we're headed to Idiocracy, IQs of individuals be damned.
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Wait until the GOP passes the Womb Protection Act, where anybody with a womb will be put into protective custody to protect their womb from... stuff
Re: Pigs will fly before ... (Score:2)
Youâ(TM)d either need drivers that are better trained and qualified (read: pilotâ(TM)s license), or flying cars that successfully use automation to reduce the skill level needed to avoid accidents. Or, you could just allow crashes to occur and let natural selection find a new equilibrium, although that seems unlikely in the US.