1. [WILL BET $100 with one person] Energy management (e.g. battery research, energy infrastructure development) becomes a far bigger concern. The forcing functions of high population, increased well-being, and a world that cannot sustain that well-being with current techniques will mean new types of energy reserves will need to be found, tapped, and converted into material wealth. Whatever country develops a strategic advantage in this field will win the 21st century, just as the U.S. won the 20th century through the Texas oil boom (with a little help from 2 world wars).
2. [LIKELY] A harder world will mean the increased rise and stay of authoritarianism and totalitarianism despite attempts to check it. The 1990s, with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the rise of the U.S. as the sole hyperpower was an abnormal state, and the 2020s will see the world finishing a decades-long readjustment to a truly multilateral world, with independent military pacts and spheres of influence by 2030.
3. [LIKELY] The United States' brightest days will still be ahead of it. The U.S. dollar will remain the world's reserve currency, and the U.S. market will still be the world's largest, unified, open commercial market, with a more-or-less natural balance of producers and consumers. There may be a recession or even depression, increased political polarization, and maybe even a major war between great powers, but tight federal policing over states, the lack of any militarily strong neighbors, resource availability, strong communications, and simple inertia will mean no serious discussion of systemic weaknesses on the scale of decolonization or secession like those held in the U.K.
4. [STRETCH, and I'll bet $50 with one person] The first JavaScript hardware stack will become commercially available. JavaScript becomes the new x86. Due to Moore's Law flatlining, as well as increased cloud dominance and serious work done behind a protocol, more and more companies will want JavaScript portability with high performance. The first company to embrace this wretched reality and deliver a JavaScript hardware stack that performs as well as a Chromebook may find demand to be higher than expected.
5. [LIKELY] Industrial IoT becomes synonymous with big data. Blob storage tasks like streaming media will be too fractured with proprietary technology to build a tooling ecosystem to get shared gains, and other tech like VR will still need to create the market, and sell to skeptical consumers with steadily decreasing median purchasing power. Enterprise remains a solid market, and more devices will get wired in the name of convenience over security and more analytics will be required out of every connected device.
6. [LIKELY] The Linux desktop finally becomes a thing. Please.
7. [HOPEFULLY] I'll be married to somebody I love and have kids :)
1. [WILL BET $100 with one person] Energy management (e.g. battery research, energy infrastructure development) becomes a far bigger concern. The forcing functions of high population, increased well-being, and a world that cannot sustain that well-being with current techniques will mean new types of energy reserves will need to be found, tapped, and converted into material wealth. Whatever country develops a strategic advantage in this field will win the 21st century, just as the U.S. won the 20th century through the Texas oil boom (with a little help from 2 world wars).
2. [LIKELY] A harder world will mean the increased rise and stay of authoritarianism and totalitarianism despite attempts to check it. The 1990s, with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the rise of the U.S. as the sole hyperpower was an abnormal state, and the 2020s will see the world finishing a decades-long readjustment to a truly multilateral world, with independent military pacts and spheres of influence by 2030.
3. [LIKELY] The United States' brightest days will still be ahead of it. The U.S. dollar will remain the world's reserve currency, and the U.S. market will still be the world's largest, unified, open commercial market, with a more-or-less natural balance of producers and consumers. There may be a recession or even depression, increased political polarization, and maybe even a major war between great powers, but tight federal policing over states, the lack of any militarily strong neighbors, resource availability, strong communications, and simple inertia will mean no serious discussion of systemic weaknesses on the scale of decolonization or secession like those held in the U.K.
4. [STRETCH, and I'll bet $50 with one person] The first JavaScript hardware stack will become commercially available. JavaScript becomes the new x86. Due to Moore's Law flatlining, as well as increased cloud dominance and serious work done behind a protocol, more and more companies will want JavaScript portability with high performance. The first company to embrace this wretched reality and deliver a JavaScript hardware stack that performs as well as a Chromebook may find demand to be higher than expected.
5. [LIKELY] Industrial IoT becomes synonymous with big data. Blob storage tasks like streaming media will be too fractured with proprietary technology to build a tooling ecosystem to get shared gains, and other tech like VR will still need to create the market, and sell to skeptical consumers with steadily decreasing median purchasing power. Enterprise remains a solid market, and more devices will get wired in the name of convenience over security and more analytics will be required out of every connected device.
6. [LIKELY] The Linux desktop finally becomes a thing. Please.
7. [HOPEFULLY] I'll be married to somebody I love and have kids :)