Asklemmy

• Phones won't start including a Linux desktop.
• Browser apps will be a thing of the past, you'll need to install either a mobile or desktop app to use YouTube or Netflix or whatever.
• Sites like YouTube will also probably remove the subscriptions feed (which only like 1-2% of people use).
• Vendor lock-in efforts will be more forceful.
• I think more people will start touching grass.

And putting AI aside is a bit weird since it's the big news story so:

• Companies will replace workers with generative AI, and as a result essential services will be worse (but more profitable).
• Generative AI will outside of the above be used as a (low-reliability but low-effort) search engine, for memes, and in animation.

Things will remain as they are for now. People in control don’t want you to look away from your phone.

AR is coming around a bit but the innovations I have been following with it are less individual consumer based. The absolutely crazy one my company was trying to implement was for an area that deals with fairly dangerous chemicals and had a lot of complex piping so with the glasses they would be synced to the equipment so you could track pipes, see through walls, and see plant conditions while just wearing some AR glasses.

I know they have also talked about trying to do something similar in surgical fields as well

I personally think the cost to make a good AR interface is just way to expensive to justify the consumer market right now, like for our AR system if it stopped a single incorrect discharge it would mostly pay for itself as that could be millions of dollars/ loss of life but for an average person who might use it to see overlays of fun fact esque things while they walk around a $1000/mo cost just doesn’t make sense

We'll pay more for less in terms of software, and we'll pay more for more in terms of hardware, but nearly everybody would happily buy less. For example, the cheapest phones will be $1k+ but with unused bells and whistles, and there will be a subscription paywall to use Google maps.

We'll have less privacy and security. Our devices will be used to spy on us even more than now.

PlayStation 6 will come out. The next Xbox will have a really fucking stupid name. Call of Duty will be a 250GB game.

It will become more feasible to implement battery tech in your home. Generators will give way to a big battery for power outages. Areas with variable power rates will see people supplement their home power with battery during the day and charge them back up at night. EV adoption will continue to rise. Self driving tech will not change in a meaningful way. Fusion power will be commercially implemented, but barely break even, which is fine because that's how new tech takes early steps to optimize.

China will be far and away ahead of the US in terms of infrastructure, daily consumer tech, and overall happiness. The US will pretend otherwise and launch a targeted propaganda campaign to keep its people too dumb and busy to notice how badly they're getting fucked. But even worse than now, though.

Healthcare tech will expand. But not in the US. Not for the working class, anyway. Measles outbreaks will come in waves. Flu and a new covid strain will be devastating within 18 months. Polio will pop back up like measles currently is. Maybe TB too. Mental health will continue to get stigmatized if not fully ignored.

Physical media will be basically gone. Disc drives will as rare as actual audio CDs are in everyday life.

Lab grown meat will be more affordable, and it will bring a culture war with it.

Y'know how things have mostly gotten worse for the past five years, with most innovation going towards corporate control, and nearly all tech services moving towards enshittification?

Yeah five more years of that.

trigger happy police drones - I Can't Believe It's Not A Real Cop (TM)

Probably contains "AI", though.

We will see more and more ridiculous subscriptions. I’m talking about $200+ a month. It could be cloud services (AI or not) streaming bundle, phone plan, car entertainment plan, etc.

Top 10% accounts for 50% of consumer spending. This trend only gets worse, and soon enough, companies will stop caring about poor people and tailor their services to the rich.

AI may well be done it's explosive growth anyway. Assume all my predictions in that case are "x existing application continues to expand".

I actually think AR is still coming - it just needs really specialised hardware to work and have acceptable battery life.

The issue with mobile OSs on desktop is that they're designed to depend on conventional OSs right now. There's no way to develop an Android app on Android, and debugging your Android from itself is possible, but only as a hack.

On to my own predictions. I'm limiting this to computers, not all technology, which I think was intended.

The fediverse slowly grows.

Geopolitics significantly weakens the US tech monopolies. FOSS benefits, although they probably are replaced by more commercial platforms for the most part.

More likely than not somebody actually mandates cryptography backdoors. It's a boondoggle, although it might not fully unravel in the window given.

There's a chance crytographically-significant quantum computing comes early and causes pandemonium. Bitcoin becomes (nearly?) worthless.

Okay, I will mention one AI thing. It's going to find a place in rendering pipelines for videogames.

The trend to heterogeneous computing continues. Analog and reversible chips become part of the mix.

Nix-type immutable systems become daily driveable.

Restrictive OSs and stuff will become the new normal, essentially stripping us of our freedom, more things will become 1st Party only and moving your data will be even harder than ever, essentially becoming cultural houses, basically what apple has already done

I don’t think much will change in 5 years that is not AI.

Everything is focused on AI right now. So just more powerful hardware that is geared towards running ai is all I think that will happen.

I think it will keep following the cycles of "Make small gadget larger ---> Make larger gadget smaller ---> Make small gadget larger again ..." and "Turn several gadgets into one ---> Turn one gadget into several ---> Turn several gadgets into one again ..." to make sure you have to replace your gadgets for new gadgets at regular intervals. They probably will find some new annoying feature to add to all your appliances once everything from your phone to your kitchen sink has a touchscreen and a WIFI connection.

Lots of technology has reached a good-enough plateau, so I think we'll start to see some left-field ideas. I'm just going to say realistic robot pets.

Open source devices will become more mainstream as a push back by consumers against enshitifcation, privacy invasion, disposable products, ever rising subscription costs.

Not just things like phones and laptops but things like mice, keyboards, headphones, even tvs and kitchen appliances. I know some of these are possible now, I use a ploppy trackball and qmk based keyboards but a wider spread of these across the home and more than just hobbyists like myself.

Large chunks will be 3D printed, moving the large component parts of manufacting to the local area. Plus things will be endlessly fixable and upgradable.

Less bulky wearable technology, I hope.

I really like my dumb watch and have yet to find a wearable -- that isn't a watch -- that isn't clumsy or bulky

AR is not dead but it will take much longer than expected to be as light and comfortable as a pair of sunglasses.

I’m hoping to see a lot of progress in display tech. We’ve already seen first transparent screens but there is still work to be done. I would love to let my monitors „disappear“ when not in use. Also flexible displays are maturing, this could get interesting.

Year of the linux desktop for sure

Everyone has a powerful computer in their pockets but isn't able to use them to their full potential.

Android Desktop is actually pretty nice, the thing that makes it useless is that basically no android apps have desktop mode or hotkeys and mouse support (Chrome is half-assed and Firefox is wearing assless chaps) plus a lot of standard I-just-want-linux things are going to be wonky. If you're considing buying any hard-ware for the purpose of Android Desktop, you're almost always better off buying a laptop at the same $100-$400 price.

AR is pretty much dead on arrival for at least a decade because everyone willing to make the tech to back it up wants to give you a walled garden of ads (like replacing billboards with their own adds, adding animated ads to whatever blank surface you see, and whatever app you're using) and the only people who are willing to buy it at >$1000, 1>lbs, and early adopter quality only want it for business/hacker/utilitarian/gamer/influencer reasons who have a very low tolerance for ads and login-with-your-big-brother-account-walls meaning the supply/demand chart is like 5 total sales for actual Homo Economicus.