- One prediction per list item.
Historical:
2021: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25594068
2020: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21802596
2019: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18753859
2018: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16007988
2017: none?
2016: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10809767
2015: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8822723
2014: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6994370
2013: none?
2012: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3395201
2011: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1970023
2010: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1025681
Money markets will go up and down surfing the good and bad news of Covid, but will cool off with the social cracks made by inflation and the timid “end of free” money. Bitcoin will go up but not reach 100k.
Tech’s gonna tech. Nothing profoundly new, the already big ones will continue to inflate and rake the money, sure they’ll get flak, fight a few big fines, make sure the right-to-repair plane lands of favorable ground. Their angst about the unknown future will increase but the bottom line will be great.
New hacks and leaks scandals, a roaring for a few weeks about it, nothing fundamental will change.
More “EVs surpassed ICE car sales” news, existing infrastructure will not be able to accommodate them and that will be mainstream news.
Shortages of things ( both legit and artificial) will continue and contribute to market instability and high prices.
When there’s instability among the people, the regimes tend to find a common enemy to save themselves. I fear the start of big wars in 2022, the west will pussy out because the cost is high and they aren’t willing to pay, the other parties know it. In the next years somebody’s gonna get too greedy and the cost will stop being too high.
Socially, people will realize things change but they mostly stay the same. They can change by refusing to not play the game, will they have the courage to live without the goodies they’ve learn to pursuit?
- 2022 a year of Linux desktop
- Dynamic typing becomes niche technology choice
- 'Green course' becomes less popular due high energy prices
- West decreases trade with China by a substantial amount
- Russia invades a country without admitting that
- Windows 11 becomes even more user hostile and less 'Pro'
- iPhone grabs more market share in developed world
- Laws around refugees become more strict internationally
- Matrix, Signal become mainstream. I think its close already and next year will be a breaking point.
- More substantial AI adaptation/innovation in audio engineering space
- More substantial AI adaptation/innovation in anti bot space in online spaces like social media
- Governments start to open more data
- The current cryptocurrency bubble will burst and most interest will evaporate. It will not go away completely though - it will be kept alive by the dream of getting rich with near-zero effort, like the casino and gambling industry, and there may even be another cryptocurrency bubble in a few years time.
2021: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25594068
2020: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21802596
2019: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18753859
2018: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16007988
2017: none?
2016: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10809767
2015: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8822723
2014: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6994370
2013: none?
2012: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3395201
- Russia will dispute eastern Ukraine, and cut gas supplies to Europe leading to extremely high energy prices in Europe and increasing the gap between living standards in the US and EU.
- Le Pen will narrowly lose to Macron in the second round of the French election, but the Zemmour + Le Pen total will be a majority.
- The Swedish Democrats will enter government in Sweden with the Moderates. But little will change in practice.
- The Republicans will win in the mid-term elections due to growing economic concerns.
- a huge worldwide economic downturn where the first tiny little domino is the price of those ape NFTs crashing
... but more realistically:
- The World Cup in Qatar will go ahead in November+December with fans, despite growing concern over a new emerging variant
- Queen Elizabeth to pass away
- Boris Johnson to somehow hang on as UK Prime Minister
The United States government will continue to not do much about climate change.
Starship will carry a payload into space and both stages will be recovered.
James Webb will produce some amazing images of things we've never seen before.
Fusion power will make slow, steady progress.
There will be at least one major exploitable security vulnerability that will adversely affect the day-to-day lives of a lot of people.
Wealth inequality will get worse. Confidence in democracy will go down. Authoritarianism will continue to be increasingly popular around the world.
Unusually large numbers of people will continue to quit their jobs. People who can will retire early.
Housing will continue to be really expensive. Homelessness won't get any less prevalent.
The summer will be really hot, with unusually serious droughts and wildfires.
* $NET up 75% to $133. Nailed this one, currently at $133.20
* AMD ramping enterprise adoption. Check.
* Apple $3T market cap. Pretty much hit this, currently at $2.92T
* G and FB unscathed by regulation. Check.
* TikTok expands to take on Snap and IG. Check, they're already bigger.
* A breach larger than Solarwinds. Arguable, but I think this is a check.
Predictions for 2022:
* $NET rolls out an enterprise database offering, and dramatically expands their analytics and logging products.
* $NET up 60% to $213 or more.
* $S up 30% to $68 or more.
* $CRWD up 20% to $251 or more.
* $PTON gets acquired or merged, likely by Apple.
* Red tsunami in 2022 mid-terms, Democrats trounced in both the House and Senate. Biden becomes a lame duck.
- One EU country will default (not Italy), the EU will bail it out
- China will enter a recession
- 2022 will be the year of the hottest and coldest temperatures on record
- and also highest CO2 produced on record, caused by huge fires in the Russian Taiga.
- More large companies will invest in Bitcoin, including Tesla who will purchase another $500 million worth. Tesla will also start accepting Dogecoin as payment.
- NFTs will continue to be hyped up along with Web 3.0 but there will be no actual progress. Once the crypto market crashes by 60-70% the companies which remain will start to truly build the future web technologies we will be using in 5-10 years time.
Housing market will continue to be pumped up by the U.K. government
Covid will be declared “over” in at least one major western country (probably UK)
Weather will keep getting worse.
Windows 11 will follow the same fate as Vista.
The WinUI team will be disbanded.
The GNU/Linux desktop will reach 3%.
More corruption trials will get archived.
War on the world will continue.
Europe will keep closing the borders to refugees regardless of the official message how human rights are taken care of.
Dictatorships will keep spreading around the globe.
I guess that will do as predictions.
Economies get rid of even more middle class layer. Ideally there is a bigcorp and a guy who still costs less than a robot.
Software developers, scenario 1) get paid x10-20 more than average, scenario 2) find a way to involve more people through some sort of simplification of their bullshit. My bet 95%/5% (thus I work for 2).
Neural networks cross few lines they weren’t expected to cross anytime soon.
Cryptocurrency becomes irrelevant because mass surveillance is a solved “problem”.
A regular person can’t understand the world anymore to have a reasonable voice in it.
The triggers will be multiple, unlike 2008. Crypto crash will play a big part, but also housing market crashes, the end of the retail stock boom, inflation-wage price spiral, structural problems with the Chinese economy, and geopolitics spilling into economics.
A good time to ensure you have savings to weather the storm, hopefully get ready to invest once the crash is done, and if you can then take advantage by taking time off, studying for qualifications, or starting a business (recession is a great time to start up).
Hang on to your hat and get your finances in order, even if that means downsizing your house.
- car manufacturers will start to phase out ice production
- all time low birth rates
- brexit and covid will still be major problems for politics
- worker shortage we saw in GB, will hit rest of West Europe
- major collapse of German pig farming after tonnies moving away
- rise of living costs will kill almost all of which was left of brick and mortar shops
- Elon says something so incredibily stupid that this time it affects his company's performance.
- The social media attention contest continues to be won by fakers, ex-addicts and felons. More non-family friendly content is being accepted from the overlords at FAANG. This has profound effects on society.
- More people from the left start identifying as intellectual right. There's a phaseshift happening and one day it's woke to be right and reactionary to be left.
- people will lose interest in NFTs, the bubble will deflate
- google chrome will decrease it’s market share
- Queen Elizabeth reigns for her Platinum Jubilee (February) marking 70 years on the throne, but abdicates before year end due to ill health.
- Big tech gets bigger, no large impactful legislation is introduced either sides of the Atlantic affecting any of the major players. One specific exemption is Roblox, which sees a major legal challenge relating to concerns over being unsafe for children.
- World Cup in Qatar will go ahead despite COVID and new boycotts. England will reach knockout stages but go out on penalties.
- A major tech company releases an AR/VR headset to a tepid consumer response.
- New, less severe, COVID variant spreads. Most Western governments don't lock down, most companies don't delay return-to-office plans, life resumes mostly to normal for the general population.
=====
~50%ish
- Reddit IPOs, a combination of increasing advertising and a new user influx pushes older users and communities away, several reddit-style alternatives pop up aimed at specific communities. Stock price initially pops and then steadily decreases to year end.
======
~25%
- James Webb Space Telescope makes front-page global news with a new discovery on exoplanets. (Scientific operations start summer 2022 so the timeline is tight, I might have to copy and paste this for 2023)
- HN finally implements a dark mode option
- US is hit by a major cyber attack affecting key infrastructure e.g. electrical grid
- [NOTE: Spoilers for Neal Stephenson's Fall or Dodge in Hell] An unknown activist/hacker/state-sponsored group stages a large-scale multi-vector "prank" convincing a large section of the US population something awful has happened (similar to the "nuking" of Moab in the aforementioned book). Motivation is to further divide society and spread distrust. Threads on discussion about it are the most commented and upvoted in the history HN. Even months after there exists heated debate between "truthers" and others if the event really happened or not.
NFTs will deflate as they're mostly useless and corps just want to build their own walled gardens anyways.
Bitcoin will go up as people continue to realize that a currency outside the grips of politicians is safer than any fiat in the long term.
ETH will successfully move to PoS and sharding to allow 100.000 transactions / second.
Water will be discovered on Mars.
Russia will further it's expansion, EU will send strongly worded letter.
- First completely port-less iPhone released (no sim slot, no lightning port).
- NYC's MTA increases fare price to $3. OMNY overtakes metrocard usage with the addition of weekly/monthly/unlimited passes. Reduced fair options are still available for those who qualify.
- Monero gets listed on a major crypto exchange (Coinbase, Gemini...).
- React server components are released causing another surge in JS frameworks.
- Democrats lose majority in House and Senate.
- Russia invades Ukraine with no push back.
- A Freak natural disaster hits in a completely unexpected place.
- Covid19 virus will mutate and people will be moderately compliant to recurring booster doses
- No significant climate change policies
- Housing prices will not go down yet people/entities will keep buying them
- America will invest heavily in arms deals and ignore investing in infrastructure and aid in local and foreign lands
- China and America will get involved in a proxy war - Fiat backed government issues e-cash will see greater push
- The NFT I made of the only known recording of my father's voice will remain unpurchased because I set a bonkers price (31.12 ETH, he died 3/11/98 which got rounded up by Rarible from 31.198), mostly having created it as a silly birthday gift to myself.
- Lots more inflation, largely due to supply chain issues.
- Employers continuing to struggle with employee retention, and filling empty positions.
- More Web 3.0 nonsense, with (hopefully) the bubble bursting and people coming back to their senses.
- Yet another 12341325 crypto currencies no one but pump and dumpers care about.
- Betty White celebrates yet another birthday, Ryan Reynolds still smitten.
- Used car prices continue to soar due to chip shortages for new production vehicles.
- Housing prices freefall most, or all and-then-some, of the gains from the past year-ish as people largely stop buying due to significantly higher grocery/other consumable bills.
* James Webb Telescope to fail.
* Republicans do well in midterms.
* Boris Johnson replaced in the summer by Michael Gove.
* Russian troops in Ukraine and perhaps other countries.
* Macron to lose; a far right candidate to become President of France.
* Starship to fly (eventually). But won't become orbital with landing this year.
* Telsa stock to tank.
* Stock market crash. High inflation. US recession.
* China to challenge Taiwan to test US resolve (which isn't there). Poss take control of islands near Taiwain and take control of waters around Taiwan.
* Biden ratings low.
* UK to recover best from pandemic. But UK GDP still to perform badly.
* Boeing to take astronauts to the ISS.
* Rocketlab to launch from the USA.
* China to launch new space station.
* Poss new anti-government protests in Iran.
* Full roll out of Tesla Full Self-Driving posponed.
* Argentina to win The World Cup.
* Mark Zukerberg to resign as CEO of Facebook.
* Elon Musk to step back from running Tesla. Poss new CEO.
* Polio to have close to 0 new cases.But, I'll do a prediction or two:
Climate: The climate continues to become more and more disrupted. We see beginnings of food and water unavailability in various places.
Coronavirus: 2022 will be like 2021, lockdown here, lockdown there, new variant near late autumn.
- Africa will catch up a lot with vaccines, but that process will continue into 2023.
- China will give up on their zero COVID approach and be the last country to experience a major wave, aggravating supply chain issues.
- The left will continue to worry about COVID and politicians will continue using it as a power grab. Many irrational COVID restrictions will remain as political theater.
- mRNA technology will have several breakthrough successes and stocks of companies developing mRNA technology will steadily rise.
- Russia will stop their saber rattling in Ukraine, realizing that they don't have enough leverage against NATO.
- Ukraine will join NATO.
- The price of Bitcoin will reach a new high around the middle or end of the year, but it won't last long.
- Joe Biden will be hospitalized and Kamala Harris will attempt to push through several extreme left policies, which will be met with violent pushback from Trumpers, while Trump will amplify his inflammatory public statements.
- Due to supply chain issues, there will be shortages of many consumer products around the world, stoking inequality and discontent.
- Several countries will announce digital nomad visas to capitalize on taxes from remote workers.
HN will have accessible and larger voting and parent/next/prev/root buttons/links that make usage on phones and tablets bearable.
HN will have larger fonts for better readability.
- Stronger priors / Pretraining for Neural Radiance Fields allowing photorealistic one-shot novel view synthesis.in static scenes.
- Scene Flow Fields or equivalent start just-about-working but weaker performance than unstructured video synthesis outside of rigid camera transformations.
- Some variant of WebGPT exposed to public, users realize it's already smarter than most people.
- Semi-parametric text generation gets terrifyingly good (eg 50x+ improvement for dense parameter equivalent model, not counting lookup table as params)
- Russia won't start any overt military operations in Donbass, let alone Ukraine proper.
- Modern GPU prices are still ridiculous.
- Europe's opinion on nuclear energy will become a tad more favorable.
- Ethereum won't shift to Proof of Stake.
- No major AI breakthroughs.
- James Cameron's Avatar 2 won't bring anything groundbreaking to the table.
- Apple won't release a VR headset.
China will experience an economic meltdown, starting in the real estate sector and exacerbated by the need to maintain the appearance of the triumph of Common Prosperity at any cost. Both Xi and the CCP will retain power domestically, but it will make life miserable for millions.
Australia will elect a Labour government. Nothing will change.
- The timing of Covid waves has impact on the US election. If things are under control, more members of the majority party at the given governmental level who can state their policies are working will win. If things aren't under control, there will be more upsets.
- Prosecutors charge Trump with crimes, likely with politically motivated timing. The result is a clusterfuck with people only digging into their current beliefs more.
- SpaceX's starship will have an orbital launch attempt within 3 weeks of FAA approval. The first three orbital attempts will have significant time between them, subsequent attempts will happen faster. Cargo will fly on Starship (likely Starlink, possibly others) while reentry and landing cause the majority of vehicles to be lost.
- I'd say less than 50%, but much higher than prior years: A major country (eg, India, Russia, Australia, a EU member) tries its luck pushing a major US tech company (Google, Amazon, Meta) too far with control, taxing, or fines, resulting in an interference of service.
- I personally have a better year than 2020 or 2021.
- We seem overdue for a cute cat or dog to become viral.
- Waymo expands service to another city. Tesla self driving continues to fail to materialize anything close to "full self driving".
- mRNA vaccine for something that isn't covid-19 is approved by the FDA.
Due to uncertainty related to the on going pandemic more and more teens start flocking to VR experiences.
The low price, good specs and availability of the Oculus Quest 2 helps the move.
A major fortnite-esque game is released for VR.
- Maine votes to support tax-funded education by private Catholic/Christian schools and other states rush to do the same
- "money is speech" broadens its appeal as new "Crowd PACs" set up crowdfunding campaigns for legislative prioritization / lobbying
- Hurricane season 2022 is the most destructive on record for the Gulf Coast, including Texas. Extended power outages combined with large unvaccinated populations lead to thousands of avoidable deaths and gun violence. Martial law is declared in multiple states, leading to violent uprising.
- Canadian team (prob Calgary) gets close to but does not win Stanley cup
Covid regulations increasingly flaunted, exemplified by pernicious flashing of the nostrils in public. A new type of streaking known as unmasking will take place somewhere and be a brief meme
- Biden popularity decreases leading to more fracturing of the usual fault lines as sides dig in. But because Democrats in power not as much civil unrest
- more real AI advances, along with a bunch of AI bullshitters acting as red herring
- web3 posting will cool down in first half
- a hyped up application of gpt3 will become a topic of speculation
- trend of bad east west relations continues
- the economic bubble bursts?
I'm looking forward to incremental progress in self-driving tech, fusion, quantum computing, AR and VR, chips, machine learning, healthcare.
EGS will start to make a difference in terms of technology choices. Significant number of Enterprises using Blockchain will move completely away from "PoW blockchains".
The China/Taiwan/US conflict will stay in the diplomatic arena.
Nvidia announces a 40X0 generation of graphics cards, but no one really notices because like 30X0 they can't be purchased.
(Warning: complete layman speculation about Covid) The Covid Pandemic ends. Or rather, the organized responses to the Covid pandemic ends. New variants occur but none that isn't targeted by the immune response from previous infections. Once a vast majority of people are both vaccinated and have past infection the infection waves look more like regular seasonal waves. Travel restrictions vaccine passes etc are with us for several years however.
NFTs will become completely toxic. Large brands and game developers will deny they ever planned to implement anything resembling NFTs. The term "web3" will fade completely with few people outside a place like HN having even heard it.
Nintendo announces the availability of their 5 year old console "Switch" for select customers.
The never ending debate between dynamic/weak and static/strong typing in programming languages isn't exactly settled but the up and coming compromise contender dynamic/strong has another good year.
Another massive security hole is found in some corner of some boring library everyone uses. My guess: supply chain attack in a compiler or build system.
Boris Johnson is ousted as prime minster. He is replaced by a either a man of some charisma or a woman without charisma, as that is the requirement.
- IOUs will become common again
Covid will keep going with at least one new variant of concern like Omicron, but governments in the west will not lock down for it. Not counting ANZ and the Far East.
Web3 will soak up more VC than ever.
England to reach the world cup final. Denmark will do well. Mbappe goes to RM with Haaland.
Rewrite it in Rust becomes official Linux mantra. Lol.
Hard to tell which way it will go, but for my sake as a non-homeowner, I hope there is a huge house price crash that significantly outpaces (or at least matches) company valuations.
2. Incremental improvements to self driving trucks are closed track systems. Little progress in self driving cars and open road systems.
(it's more blocked on regulatory approval, and SDCs are off-trend politically - pandemic/jobs/economy is what matters, and SDCs destroy jobs and give wealth to the 1%, no reason any politician would fight for SDCs right now)
3. More vaccine boosters, especially overseas. Disclosure: I bought MRNA and BNTX)
(Sure, Omicron is "mild" but it's still a major problem when the NYC subway, urgent care facilities etc are shutting down to staff sickouts... wait until Omicron comes to your town... Moderna etc will successfully target Omicron... I'm not forecasting whether Omicron mutates into a more-impactful variant: r0 is already crazy so a new variant would have to outcompete that OTOH there's 1B hosts with Omicron and we were surprised at the number of mutations in Omicron... mutation to being less deadly is NOT assured: look at 1918...)
3. Bitcoin 50+k and maybe 100k.
(Institutions are piling in, and while altcoins are outperforming and stealing marketshare/marketcap, BTC will continue to get allocated first)
4. China bails out its real estate sector. No hard crash.
(It's too big to fail and also too visible. It's a lot of money but CCP can afford it)
5. Trump continues to be marginalized.
(Out of office, he's just not relevant and the signal media bans kinda worked... not that I'm not predicting 2024, where he could easily win if he's up against low energy, uninspiring candidates)
6. AOC and Sanders continue to be marginalized
(don't offer practical solutions - people want careers, not handouts or band aids. Also, they offer no solutions at all to tricky problems like immigration, foreign relations, USG debt, etc etc)
7. NYC (continues to) recover nicely. Measure by GDP.
(it's singular in culture and entertainment, has diversified and integrated industries, and now has practical leadership both city, state & fed... note that it's still ruinously expensive and it won't be any easier for working families...)
8. Remote work remains. Back to office is tepid. Office to residential conversions happen but it's slow.
(Pandemic isn't over and the economics of remote work are simply too compelling. Video and adaptations worked well and continue to improve. I've been working remotely for decades and cut & executed billion dollar deals with people I never met: competitors schlepped on planes while my teams built compelling solutions and compelling demos. Office to residential conversions are slow projects and very expensive)
9. Amazon announces a split-up or parent company structure (e.g. Alphabet) of AWS vs e-commerce. (maybe 2023)
(The two businesses have little synergy... AWS is easily big enough to stand alone, and e-commerce should just be a customer under long term contract... Meanwhile AWS is giving up marketshare to numerous companies that can't use it because of fiduciary responsibility with Amazon e-commerce being a competitor... each division could design new partners e.g. Amazon e-commerce could leverage Google etc )
10. Rust and Python and JavaScript continue to gain marketshare __in open source projects__.
(Linux and Solana are major boosters for Rust: Solana alone is $54 billion bet that depends on rust... closed source continues to depend more on platforms i.e. Azure driving gains for C#)
11. SQL, PostgreSQL and sqlite continue to dominate
(SQL has a 25 year history of copying innovations from new database tech... PostgreSQL and sqlite are well architected, well packaged, well supported and no-nonsense licensing...)
12. UAP evidence continues to mount and point to extraterrestrial or time travel origins but no conclusive evidence.
(UAPs are very fancy tech requiring massive R&D and production... we've pretty much ruled out every current govt and military, leaving only "crazy" options... OTOH strong evidence that UAPs have been around for decades, which means a coordinated effort to release info slowly e.g. avoid panic... so my forecast that this pace continues... it would take an Arrival type event to be wrong, or UAPs to stop getting news coverage...)
13. 5g home internet grows quickly
(I have it: it's wonderful... if you have the budget, I recommend getting 5g + terrestrial and bonding them together with a <$100 load balancer => no more internet speeds drops... it's amazing...)
14. US housing prices in the suburbs and countryside flatten out but don't crash. Selected areas that got over-bought come down.
(See remote work and broadband... OTOH the COVID runup has played out...)
15. ESG grows in importance but does nothing material to slow global warming. Global warming disasters remain regional. Geo-engineering slowly gains traction as the solution but there isn't consensus yet.
(Combine the math and politics, and no way will voters tolerate the extreme conservation required to impact temperatures... It has to be geo engineering... but since there isn't a "complete" and practical solution, and since there's 50 years and leftist guilt-driven politics pushing conservation, I forecast this continues until it hits a wall... Meanwhile, climate change isn't a one year thing, and even if the Thwaites shelf collapses, Miami won't flood in 2022... but once it does finally flood and $862B of talk estate is toast, then we'll get serious about climate change, the emperors of conservatism will be shown to be wearing no clothes, and we'll be forced to try geo engineering even as unsavory as it seems... but that's definitely not 2022 and unlikely 2023...)
16. CBDCs continue to be researched, but no major economy announces one in 2022.
(Just takes time... they'll let the small countries test first... I'm guessing Estonia announces a CBDC in the next 1-2 years)
17. Hochul wins NYS governor.
(She's doing fine and no other candidate has brand name or reputation... just not enough pain to boot her for an unknown...)
18. Adams/Hochul successfully turns NY regulators around from being laggards in crypto to "saying the right things" and stopping the Luddites, even if sensible regulations take longer. That may ultimate result in more regulation, but at least it'll allow New York businesses to engage where today, major products like DeFi are blocked from NYS residents and businesses.
(New York is always about the money and business, and crypto is simply too big to pass up)
19. Metaverse grows but doesn't crossover.
(Still too hard for humans to interface with it... but Ready Player One pretty much nailed it: for millions, RL will suck and AR/VR will successfully dominate their attention, making virtual goods/services ever more valuable in $USD terms... Unclear if early winners today will preserve that lead when MV finally crosses over to mainstream, I'm guessing when AR hardware becomes practical...)
20. NYC continues to attract and grow in tech companies and startups.
(Always been a good place to do business, and now there's enough talent & influence to hold its own... Plus, NYC is making a major and coordinated bet on tech... California has natural beauty and weather, NYC has everything else... when you turn off your screen, NYC is a fantastic RL place to reside... Both are expensive...)
---
Note: I'm not opining on the midterms, which obviously will hurt the Dems but nobody knows by how much - too much depends on future events.
It will not be all over by end 2022, but it will be better. There is no sudden "back to normal" off-switch. 2019 is gone, never to return. If you want to know what the new normal is like, look around you. Some things will become slowly more like the old normal over time, some will not. leaders who are incompetent at dealing with COVID now, won't change, but might be removed from office.
With any luck, here will be improvements set in motion in how to handle and manage diseases on a global scale, as huge room for improvement has been exposed. e.g. Better global access to vaccines and treatments. It is said that armies prepare "to fight the last war", but fortunately this plan works better against another novel virus than it does against human foes. Virus ingenuity is amazing, but is blind.
I expect that I will get another (4th) anti-COVID-19 vaccination in 2022. It will most likely be:
- Just 1 jab (i.e. annual not every 6 months), as the 3rd jab increases immunity on the second, so the spacing can increase. it will not likely be "every 6 months, ongoing".
- A mRNA-based vaccine (Pfizer, Moderna or similar)
- A "second generation" vaccine that improves on the original, likely targeting Omicron or a later variant, or instead is broader in coverage of variants than the first generation anti-COVID-19 vaccines.
The graphics card bubble pops as eth implements pos.
Tiktok announces record ipo in the us.
Crypto: Some great innovation around decentralized organizations, not just in finance (e.g. VC funds organizing as D(A)Os that let crypto owners be LPs), but also in areas such as shipping, international trade, copyright etc. Also, the emergence of a "winner-take-all" Ethereum competitor, e.g. Solana, due to network effects resulting from its ecosystem.
Europe: Social Division due to Corona Measures. Economic struggles due to lack of innovation and economic activity over the last two years—inability to counteract this due to bloated bureaucracy.
USA: A move towards the political center, the decline of progressive left and alt-right. More even distribution of tech and economic activity from SF/NYC to across the country.
China: Increased focus on communism, reduction of economic freedom and centralisation of power.
Indo-China, Central India and Central Africa: Fast rise of innovation and internet enabled entrepreneurship, some major Bangalore, Hanoi and Lagos based startups.
Best Case Scenario for 2022: Russia and China stay peaceful, Omikron creates global immunity to Covid, pandemic ends and economies bounce back violently, thus ending inflation and making rising interest rates unnecessary.
Worst Case Scenario for 2022: Putin invades Ukraine. Minimal response from foreign powers emboldens China to take over Taiwan. The takeover of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing creates global chip squeeze that leaves western economies struggling. Western nations unable to counteract aggression due to crippling debt and continued economic decline.
- Google will buy Tiktok
- Meta/Facebook will release some VR solution that fail to gain traction
- Roblox will face legal pressure due to its use of child labor and child gambling
3. Most Blue States turn Red
4. Something akin to P2P Substack rises
5. Moderna's shares trade horizontally
6. Gold oz. price crosses 2k USD
* The beginnings of the burst of the housing bubble.
* A new military conflict associated with Russia.
* An extraordinary next act for Apple Silicon.
* Trump’s failure to reestablish himself as a political leader.
* an even greater worsening of symptoms from the climate crisis.
* covid will start to fade away due to a variety of factors.
* There will be a growing awareness between the mismatch in the heavy web dev build tools that were designed for the feature-starved browsers of the IE era and the reality of today’s evergreen browser landscape. New frameworks and build tools will show up to take advantage of what browsers can do now.
* Because almost nobody develops on 8 GB anymore and software keeps bloating, by the end of the year it will have become a bad idea to recommend 8 GB RAM PC’s even for casual use. 16 GB will become the minimum spec for futureproofing, but it will take another three years for the PC market to catch up.
* The climate will be a dominant topic again, thanks to the IPCC reports dropping and the petering out of the pandemic. Governments will fail to make progress on climate accords because the hope that technology will save the status quo will outmatch the pressure for societal change. The private sector will surprisingly start filling the gap. There will be massive private green technology investment but still few results in CCS and newgen nuclear, which will eventually turn out to only be small parts of the solution. If it is a record breaking year for severe weather, climate protests will turn grim.
- Biden will pass away, making another massive mess in the US
- Markets will see a crash event
- EU/US will yield to Putin on Ukraine
- China will up its efforts to absorb Taiwan
* Russia has not yet invaded Ukraine but continues to threaten to extract concessions. However now China in parallel amasses troops around Taiwan.
* interest rates raised from ~0 to 4%+ over 3 rate hikes. more expected to come in 2023 due to continued inflation concerns.
* 2 more covid variants of concern. vaccine immunity escape increases each time but they still do not release a new vaccine different than the original mRNA.
* Still see headlines like: "What doe the Tau variant mean and why are experts worried?".
* 4th boosters are approved but adoption rates are very low.
* Testing is still somehow back-logged and demand for covid tests remains high.
* Oculus continues to dominate VR space with record-breaking sales but top selling app is still just the 4-year-old Beat Saber.
* Tiktok continues its dominance. Older crowd gets into TT and young kids look for something else, but nothing else gain traction yet.
* Apple released iphone 14 which is somehow even more incremental than the iphone 13.
* Trump positions for 2024 run. Fox news continually runs story how Trump was not to blame for Jan 6.
* Biden reassures that he will run again against him.
* JWST releases images. they're only ~50% of what was planned capability due to technical issues but still groundbreaking.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21941278
Increase in adoption of non-scientific beliefs such as …anti-vaxx … as a counterbalance to the increased complexity of everyday life.
- Democrats lose the midterms
- Apple releases AR/VR goggles
- Crypto hasn’t imploded yet
- Starship suborbital launch
- First AI generated novel makes best seller list. Arguments about how ‘directed’ it was
- Covid is endemic, restrictions generally eased, covid boosters are treated like flu shots
- We get a new JS front-end framework that takes the hype from svelte
- Hottest year on record, wildfires everywhere, tornadoes, hurricanes, floods, dogs and cats living together. Despite lots of rhetoric, atmospheric co2 ppm still going up
- Many articles about how hybrid working doesn’t work. Many organisations give up on their ‘go back to the office’ plans and embrace ‘fully remote’. Lots of disruption in this space.
- Major domestic terror attack organised on Telegram and Signal
- Donald Trump does not go to jail
- Interactive Porn AI startups start doing very well
- Drones used in more conflicts, reaction is muted
- Reddit hobbles their API
China will continue and worsen it's bad behaviour. More aggression to neighbours, more oppression internally. The West etc will do nothing.
The same with Russia, no serious sanctions. Though the EU will accelerate moving away from reliance on them.
Maybe a stock market crash (long overdue) but it's unlikely as central banks won't permit it.
Continued but less severe inflation as people continue to demand goods (notable cars and houses) but supply starts to catch up.
- Someone will become a billionaire from NFTs.
- Joe Biden will die.
- Gay marriage will be legalized in at least one African or Asian country.
- Gas prices will go up.
- The UK will become a republic.
- An article written by a language model will slip past the editors of a major publication.
- Covid will disappear by the first half of February.
- Something racist will happen in the US and everyone will argue about exactly how racist it was.
- The Republic of China will recover the mainland.
- Transgender women will win every major women's sporting event, and men's as well.
- The UN will evolve into a federal world government.
- The dead will walk the earth again.
- A star will appear in the sky, and a child born under it will be destined to rid the world of suffering.
- Russia invades Ukraine.
- Economy gets worse.
- Unemployment or sub-employment get worse.
- There will be more scams involving Web3.
- There will be new scams involving Metaverse.
- People will be pushed into this Metaverse crap.
- Covid19 pandemic declared endemic.
- People are forced to take Covid19 vaccines so Big Pharma can make more profit.
- Surveillance will increase for the sake of safety.
- Democratic governments will accelerate towards totalitarianism.
- Cold war between US and China becomes official.
- The riches get richer.
- The poor get poorer.
- The number of climate disasters will increase.
- The number of people who die from hunger and preventable diseases will increase.
- JWST will work but impressive looking images that the public are hungry for will give way to purely scientific work that looks a little more mundane.
- Biden will subtly disappear from view as much as possible due to old age
- Governments will fail to relinquish their authoritarian mode of operation despite covid becoming endemic.
- I predict the world will be even further away from it's 2050 1.5 degree C target.
- Seriously dank memes
- Supply-chain issues will fade.
- inflation will slow.
- interest rates will go up slightly, almost nobody will care.
- asset prices will continue going up, but not as fast.
- Russia doesn't invade Ukraine.
- The cryptocurrency bubble will continue to inflate.
- things will largely go back to normal.
Just my guess...
Silent trade war between EU and China to maintain trade balance despite soaring energy prices.
Public opinion will shift on Natural gas and Nuclear energy as green energy.
-the research into COVID will have major rewards in producing flu and cold virus vaccines.
-GDPR fines will increase on major companies.
-Blockchain based tech like bitcoin, NFTs will suffer due to increasing legislation to handle environmental issues. If it turns out that countries can hit their mandated targets by outlawing bitcoin mining etc. it will happen.
-Someone will try to make an NFT competing solution that does not rely on the blockchain. Good chance of success.
- previous 2 points lead to failure of web3. This is a major problem for public intellectuals on the web because now the web3 term is polluted but they need to have some sort of next phase of the web otherwise how to justify their existence?
- There will correction on stock market. And solution is to pump it up even higher...
- 2-3 covid variants and we will still being doing this same approach then, with 5th dose of "vaccine"
* Omicron will be over by april.
* There will be more advanced large ai models.
* Protein based covid vaccines which lasts longer will be in common use.
- More people will turn into alternative forms of investment (coins through large exchanges) as inflation continue to rise.
- Regulations around NFTs will start to appear as tokens are generated for copyrighted material. It will take famous personality taking things to court.
- COVID: A vaccine shot every ~6 months will be introduced.
- An early A/R prototype will be revealed by a big phone player.
- React will remain the leading framework for web application development, but a push towards better server-side-rendering will make performance easier to achieve for average developers.
- Web3 will go nowhere, and the vibe around it will remain driven by an MLM like mentality