[HN Gopher] 2022 Predictions from 2012
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2022 Predictions from 2012
Author : edent
Score : 32 points
Date : 2022-05-07 11:50 UTC (11 hours ago)
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| ttoinou wrote:
| why do you need the time on your microwave ?
| shrimp_emoji wrote:
| Mine just reads `PF` since it's not hooked up to a UPS. ;p
| jjulius wrote:
| >I'm kinda surprised that this hasn't happened. Food thermometers
| are a thing - where's the same thing for flavours? Why can't I
| stick something in my curry to see if it needs more spice?
|
| Because taste is wholly subjective and far more nuanced and
| varied than anything like what this posits could account for. I
| am surprised by this person's surprise.
| spoonalious wrote:
| Who has some good predictions to read from 5/10/15 years ago? I'd
| say world events have blown a lot of this out of the water.
| morsch wrote:
| Traffic jams.
|
| Nope, still there; no major changes from what I can see:
|
| https://www.tomtom.com/en_gb/traffic-index/ranking/?country=...
| (compared to 2019)
|
| https://www.adac.de/verkehr/verkehrsinformationen/staubilanz...
| (just highways; seemingly much worse, possible twice as many
| hours spent compared to 2012) Attracting a bar-
| tender's attention.
|
| Nope, technical solutions to that "problem" are a curiosity, I
| think. Would immediately classify a place as less-classy in my
| eyes. Maybe that's just me, and maybe it's widespread in more
| futuristic parts of the world. Honestly, wasn't that big a deal
| in 2012. Resetting a microwave's clock after a
| powercut.
|
| Nope. In addition, you get to update the firmware of your fridge
| and troubleshoot its wifi. I just got a microwave without any
| kind of display. Replacing used up items
| (toothpaste, butter).
|
| Nope. Tasting a dish to see if it's salty or
| spicy enough.
|
| I don't understand why you'd expect a "solution" to this
| "problem" to come up now. What's changed? What kind of technology
| is on the horizon for this? Who would even buy a gadget that
| purports to tell you something you can find out with a spoon?
| Recharging gadgets.
|
| Nope. More gadgets, more recharging. Waiting
| for a taxi.
|
| Nope. Apps instead of a phone call, that's the major change. And
| a percentage going to tech companies, of course. Though you could
| order a cab with an app in many places in 2012, and can't order
| one with an app in many places in 2022. Personally, I still call.
| Flossing, deodorising, and most manner of personal hygiene.
|
| Again, why on Earth would you expect a solution to this arrive
| anytime soon? How would that even work, for something as general
| as "most manner of personal hygiene". Monthly
| billing cycles.
|
| Nope. Many providers try to trick you into yearly contracts, but
| I don't think that's what was meant.
| hiccuphippo wrote:
| Does anyone actually set the time in their microwave? I always
| thought it was a useless feature.
| mrwh wrote:
| Salt sensor (2009!): https://foodchannel.com/2009/salt-sensor-
| introduced-to-help-...
|
| ...so one of the predictions pretty much already existed, at
| least by the terms the author seems to be grading themselves
| (5/10?).
|
| But then no one is good at predicting the future. So let's try.
|
| Some predictions for 2032:
|
| 1. Smartphones are still ubiquitous and still look like black
| rectangles. They haven't been replaced by smart glasses or
| whatever.
|
| 2. Half the cars on the roads in the west are electric, and half
| of regular commutes are majority self-driving.
|
| 3. Self-driving taxis are a thing but barely profitable.
|
| 4. Actually profitable just-in-time grocery delivery services do,
| just about, exist.
|
| 5. Huge climate-change-related migrations of people. Politics
| gets even uglier.
|
| 6. Everyone is talking about conflict with China, and conflict
| between China and India. The leaders of China and India are the
| leaders we have in 2022.
|
| 7. London gains a couple more gaudy towers but otherwise look
| exactly the same. Ditto New York.
|
| 8. Popular music: pick a decade, it sounds like that. No music
| made in 2032 couldn't have been made in 2022 (or 2012).
|
| 9. There is no general AI, but a lot of people say that there is.
|
| 10. No human has been to Mars.
|
| I'm going to put these in a Google calendar entry for 2023/05/07
| - and hopefully get a laugh then.
| Parzival99 wrote:
| Not a bad attempt.
|
| And I know this is all just a bit silly fun, but I'd prefer
| such predictions to reflect a world view/philosophy of how one
| thinks society will be designed (same or different) in that
| future. Some of these are too niche to reflect this - e.g.,
| that London/New York will look the same. That doesn't really
| say much. Much more interesting would be some ideas about urban
| centers more broadly rather than cherry picking 2 which have
| already been relatively stagnant for a while.
|
| And some are just not specific enough such that I'm actually
| confused. e.g., what does it mean to say that the leader of
| India in 2032 will be the same as in 2022. Do you literally
| mean that Modi will be India's PM? While India doesn't have a
| term limit for the PM, Modi will be ~82 in 2032. Or do you mean
| that the BJP party will still be in power? If so, do you mean
| that a RSS member of the BJP will be in power or a non-RSS
| member? Will the BJP be in power with a relative majority like
| it currently is, or with a particularly large coalition like in
| say the early '00s under Vajpayee (when the BJP won less than
| 24% of the vote but formed a coalition of 13 parties, as
| opposed to right now where the BJP has over 50% of the seats
| alone). The answers to these mean _very_ different things about
| India's direction come 2032.
| pharmakom wrote:
| 11. Google Calendar still exists and you still use it
| mrwh wrote:
| Hehe, yes. And let's add: my most stable address is still my
| Gmail one.
| FinnKuhn wrote:
| we all know that Google will have abandoned and replaced all
| of their services at least 3 times until than
| hervature wrote:
| I'm going to piggyback off this.
|
| 1. Smartphones are ubiquitous, some are foldable.
|
| 2. Half the cars on the roads in the west are electric. Of
| those, Tesla is not even in the top 5. Self-driving is just
| lane-assist and adaptive cruise control rebranded.
|
| 3. You still cannot get a self-driving taxi from any major
| international airport (more than one terminal) to your hotel at
| any hour during the day.
|
| 4. Just-in-time grocery delivery services exists at 3 national
| grocers (e.g.: Whole Foods, Walmart, Costco).
|
| 5. Mass migration due to sea level rise is still 2 decades
| away. China and India to bear the brunt.
|
| 6. China, having hit peak population in 2023, struggles to grow
| the economy. Exacerbated by the aging population, cracks in the
| CPC begin to form.
|
| 7. Texas almost surpasses California for most populous state.
|
| 8. Latin American influence due to shifting demographics
| results in many "firsts" for Spanish songs at the Grammys.
|
| 9. No general AI but one AAA game is made where the
| quests/dialogue/storyline/world are generated by AI according
| to player inputs. Game becomes #1 meme generator within a month
| of launch.
|
| 10. No human has been on Mars. People are pushing for 2035
| mission as Earth and Mars are at its closest.
| qgin wrote:
| Curious about #3. 10 years is a long time for Cruise or Waymo
| to get to SFO. Any particular reason?
| UnpossibleJim wrote:
| I'll agree with all of these except maybe number 10... with a
| caveat. They won't have been there, no. But the mission is
| setting up the groundwork. They will be sending the modules,
| support systems and return craft necessary for such a system to
| work. The shortest flight time (six months I think) only comes
| around every two years or so (26 months, technically).
| gpsx wrote:
| I like the saying that people overestimate what will happen in a
| short time and underestimate what will happen in a long time. 50
| years or longer would be a more interesting period of time to
| measure changes.
| rossdavidh wrote:
| At first, I thought it was going to be a commendable willingness
| to admit when one was incorrect with predictions about future
| technology, by showing how the author got 0 out of 10. But then
| it went a whole different direction...
| MailleQuiMaille wrote:
| That looks like fun. Let's make a few predictions of things that
| will most likely be outdated in 2032, in no particular order :
|
| -Faxes
|
| -The notion of privacy when I leave my house
|
| -Escape games as we know them
|
| -Offline dating
|
| -Not having some sort of drone /robot inside one's home
|
| -100% Solo video games
|
| -Not eating bugs
| TillE wrote:
| > Not eating bugs
|
| I've been reading cutesy articles about this for 25+ years, and
| the obvious response is just, why aren't you simply eating
| lentils or beans for protein? Cattle farming may be an
| ecological disaster, but conventional plant agriculture is
| about as good as it realistically gets.
| hiccuphippo wrote:
| -Faxes: Japan won't let them die
|
| -The notion of privacy when I leave my house: that's already
| lost
|
| -100% Solo video games: indies won't let them die
| TillE wrote:
| I think even if we heavily narrow the prediction to AAA games
| only (ignoring not only the indies, but all the mid-tier
| studios like Larian or Obsidian as well), it won't be
| anywhere near true. We're already pretty deep into the era of
| the "live service" business model, and it's big but it's not
| all-consuming.
|
| Look at everything Nintendo for starters, look at the Total
| War games, all the focused narrative action-adventure games.
| None of this is going in a direction which will exclude
| offline solo play.
|
| If the prediction is just EA and Ubisoft and maybe
| Activision, yeah ok, that's a little more realistic.
| shrimp_emoji wrote:
| > _Offline dating_
|
| What's that?
| 4bpp wrote:
| It seems to me that both this person's own predictions and the
| predictions of past futurists that he criticises fundamentally
| fail in the same way: they assume that the faddish ambitions of
| the day will play out on exactly the timeline that the marketeers
| tasked with procuring funding for them claim, and largely ignore
| advances in all other fields. For a century up until the turn of
| the millennium, the faddish ambition in pursuit of funding was
| generally spaceflight or AGI, and so authors followed the herd
| with overly optimistic predictions about that; in 2012, instead,
| it was everyday convenience tech (as pushed by myriads of
| startups) and the renaissance of a certain high modernism in the
| US regarding transit and urban planning.
| jamesrom wrote:
| > Why can't I stick something in my curry to see if it needs more
| spice?
|
| Spoons exist though.
| raffraffraff wrote:
| I have to say, that's one of the stupidest ideas I have ever
| heard in my life. Cooking is like playing music, there is no
| "right" way to do it. No two chefs flavour their dishes exactly
| the same way, and if they did, I don't think I'd ever eat out
| again. There is no such thing as: "BZZZZZZ! YOUR CURRY IS
| INCORRECT! ADD 5MG TURMERIC!", and part of the joy of cooking
| is allowing the flavor in a soup, sauce or curry develop the
| way you want it to as you taste it, think "hmmm, needs
| amchoor/hing/whatever" and take it in the direction you want.
| biryani_chicken wrote:
| As someone who doesn't like cooking, guides with actual
| strict measures (and then tools to strictly measure) would be
| nice. I never know how much does a tiny bit of olive oil
| means.
| mejutoco wrote:
| I would try a good cooking book (one with measures in
| grams, etc) recipe verbatim, without any deviation. From
| there you can use that as the baseline and
| adjust/experiment everytime you cook it, or just stick with
| it.
| humanistbot wrote:
| The electric spiciness detector sounds like it is straight out
| of HBO's Silicon Valley
| lsb wrote:
| If it's hugged to death, archive link: https://archive.ph/8vwVB
| mejutoco wrote:
| Here are a few ways to attract a bartender's attention:
|
| - Give a big tip, so next time they prioritize you
|
| - Wait
|
| - Choose a less crowded / with nicer bartenders place.
|
| I don't think this is a technical problem.
| sixQuarks wrote:
| I like how the author gives himself a 5 out of 10. That's BS. At
| most it's a 1 out of 10 (waiting for a taxi).
|
| I hate it when "futurists" cherry pick an outlier situation and
| say their prediction was accurate - like the bartender example.
|
| When people Read these predictions, they assume it's going to be
| a widely occurring instance, not some cockamamie example
| [deleted]
| newobj wrote:
| This person was like 0/10. I almost spat out my coffee when
| they said 5/10. I could not have predicted that
| rossdavidh wrote:
| One might greet it with "hoots of derision", though.
| karaterobot wrote:
| I wanted to say the same thing. He moved the goal posts from
| things which "would draw hoots of derision from an audience
| from the year 2022" to things which there has been some
| marginal, unevenly distributed, incremental change to in the
| last 10 years, then said he got it about 50% right.
|
| More generally, this is the issue I have with futurists: they
| get things wrong, and then just keep making more predictions. I
| suppose that's okay for them to do, unless they try to get
| people to believe them, and make decisions based on their
| guesses.
|
| Maybe I should say this is really a problem I have with people
| who give any credence whatsoever to the foretune telling
| industry, to which "future studies" seems at least practically
| related.
| chillacy wrote:
| Reminded me of the ray kurtzweil predictions: extremely
| generous grading.
|
| This issue of grading fuzzy predictions is somewhat
| applicable to political pundits and stock market gurus as
| well.
|
| There's an entire body of knowledge on how to create
| objectively measurable predictions (the book Superforecasting
| covers), but the mainstream isn't there yet.
| PheonixPharts wrote:
| Not only that but most of his correct "predictions" would have
| _been true in 2012_ using is very definitions of success. It
| doesn 't really count as a prediction if it's already existing
| and adoption is growing before your eyes.
|
| - _traffic jams_ : GPS was widely used well before 2012, and by
| 2012 iphone adoption was already quite high. Plenty of people
| were already using google maps for directions with traffic
| info.
|
| - _Attracting a bar-tender 's attention._ The ipad came out in
| 2010 and I definitely recall a few novelty "order with an ipad"
| applications popping up right away. Sure the penetration wasn't
| that deep, but it existed and still isn't anywhere near
| universal today.
|
| - _Recharging gadgets._ This has probably changed the most
| since 2012, but USB ports were already starting to show up in
| airplanes and hipper hotel rooms.
|
| - _Replacing used up items_. Sure instacart was just starting
| out in 2012, but Task Rabbit had been around for a few years,
| and at least in SF, was used by a fair number of people.
|
| - _Waiting for a taxi._ Uber was founded in 2009, and I
| distinctly remember it had already dominated SF by that point.
| Sure it hadn 't expanded to other cities yet, but taxis in the
| Bay area where already widely replaced. Uber was arguably
| _better_ in SF in 2012 than it is in 2022
| thewebcount wrote:
| Regarding this one:
|
| > - Attracting a bar-tender's attention. The ipad came out in
| 2010 and I definitely recall a few novelty "order with an
| ipad" applications popping up right away. Sure the
| penetration wasn't that deep, but it existed and still isn't
| anywhere near universal today.
|
| Just before the pandemic my spouse and I went to a TGI
| Friday's for the first time in about 15 years. Every table
| now has an iPad where you can request drink refills, dessert,
| etc. and the kids can play games. It was super distracting,
| flashing at us the entire time. We ended up turning it around
| so we didn't have to see it. But apparently all the
| restaurants like that (Chili's, Appleby's, Olive Garden,
| etc.) have these now. They are ubiquitous if that's the type
| of place you eat. (Granted, it's not at a bar, but at a
| restaurant.) It is much more convenient than trying to get
| your server's attention when you want a water refill or
| whatever, but like I said, also really irritating to have it
| constantly demanding your attention.
| jamesrom wrote:
| I'd go 0 out 10. Waiting for taxi/uber/etc is still very much a
| thing.
| andrelaszlo wrote:
| My predictions for 2023:
|
| - A is just like now.
|
| - B is just like now, but faster.
|
| - Nobody is doing C anymore. Well, maybe some backwards people,
| but certainly not anyone who reads D (people still read D!).
|
| - E, that scientists has been trying to warn us about for
| decades, is still happening.
|
| - Teens are doing something that older people are either outraged
| by, or are trying (poorly) to emulate.
|
| - The rich are richer and the poor are poorer.
|
| - Nobody saw F coming. That was something... it really changed
| life in small but irreversible ways.
|
| - The market has been fluctuating.
|
| - People sometimes look back at 2022 - how simple things were
| back then.
| lfpeb8b45ez wrote:
| Excellent list, I'll add a few:
|
| - X will be greeted with hoots of derision
|
| - Breathless reporting on conspiracy theories will make them
| grow in popularity
|
| - Y will not taste nearly as good as it used to
|
| - The multiverse marks the beginning of the end of Marvel's
| cultural stranglehold
|
| - Poverty, now called Z, will still exist
| g-unit33 wrote:
| What are some predictions you all have for 2032?
| coldcode wrote:
| (1) Cobol is still necessary (2) Panic has not set in yet even
| though unix time ends in 6 years (3) Elon is still not making
| money with twitter (4) The multiverse is still not important
| (5) Everything is a blockchain even though it still makes no
| sense
| beepbooptheory wrote:
| The food taster thing is a little silly IMO, Jacques Pepin taught
| me long ago the single most indispensable tool for the kitchen is
| the tongue.
|
| Its akin to inventing a machine for a sculptur, which bounces
| sound across the thing they are working on to tell them what it
| looks like.
|
| Edit: couldn't you test for acidity with a simple pH strip?
| jjulius wrote:
| The acidity level you want would change with each dish, and
| with each person eating it. So technically, yeah, but it's not
| gonna really do one any good unless you know _you_ love X dish
| at Y pH.
|
| But to learn what pH you like in a dish, you'd have to taste
| test it yourself, using a spoon and your tongue. And what if
| maybe tonight you don't want as much lime? Or more?
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