Quantum bubble, next after AI.
this post was submitted on 23 Mar 2026
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Yeah no doubt. It can be pitched as solving all the world's problems immediately, and fear mongered as "breaking all security instantly". There's no defined end product yet, so the goalposts can move.
Like AI, it can be a test of the debt market more than of tech
It can be marketed that way, but mathematically, a LOT of encryption that's used is already "quantum proof".
Of course nothing is perfect, but we're pretty confident that the existence of quantum computers won't break the internet.
Oh yeah, to be clear, it'll break incredibly old and weak encryption, which is already not that hard to break.
I think quantum will have some cool specific use cases in science and math modeling, but will be over hyped like the AI bubble as a total game changer.
The UK govt announced £162m in cuts to research council funding last month, then this month they announced £2bn for a massive quantum computing project. I'm all for blue sky research but the field is basically a giant money pit. £2bn would have bought multiple general purpose supercomputers that could have been used for biology, materials science, astrophysics etc. The quantum computing research is inevitably going to yield a quantum processor with less than 1kb of memory that can only run for a few nanoseconds. The government is disproportionately funding this stuff because of the siren song promise that quantum computing will help them break encryption, but the field has taken so long to materialise anything useful that we now have quantum-resistant classical encryption algorithms. Also, plenty of physicists are now skeptical of the idea that quantum computers will be intrinsically faster than classical computers for most tasks.
Also, plenty of physicists are now skeptical of the idea that quantum computers will be intrinsically faster than classical computers for most tasks.
Tbh, this isn't really that new of an idea. Quantum computing requires temperatures less than 3 Kelvin. It doesn't matter how efficient your processor is, getting anything down to that temperature requires a lot of cooling equipment, so much that it's utterly impractical for general use.
It's kinda like analogue computing, aka comuting with analogue signals instead of digital. You're able to solve problems extremely fast, on par with (if not superior to) quantum computing. The downside is that the circuits have to be custom designed for the use case, making it impractical for most tasks.
At the time people thought that you might build new supercomputers with an on-site cryostat (or something like that) housing a bunch of QPUs.
You haven't even finished this one yet.
Honey finish the bubble on your plate before starting another one please
Looks like "Private Credit" is next but who knows.
We've not done Tulips in a while.
Housing bubble, again.
They said next bubble, not one of the 4-5 current bubbles.
Fyi, this is meant to be light hearted. I considered adding "/s", but it doesn't quite fit
Plastics. That bubble is going to pop if this Iran thing doesn’t get fixed.
We get plenty of plastic feedstock from shale, and it's super cheap because it's considered a by-product of extracting the natural gas. So cheap that it's severely hampered the adoption of recycling plastics, even the easy stuff.
If plastic feedstock goes up in price, then recycling starts becoming economically viable and limiting how high it can go, creating a soft price ceiling
Water
Food.
All the bubbles you have pointed out have sprouted from the latest revolution: the information revolution. Did it start with the transistor or the computer? It doesn’t matter, it’s part of the same technological progression.
So what’s next in the IT world? My guess is that compute power is only going to get higher, faster, more efficient. If we can manage to make chips on a diamond substrate instead of silicon for instance, the thermals dissipation gains will be absolutely huge.
The next bubble is going to be about how to use that huge amount of compute power with no tangible added value for the common people, just like cryptos, NFTs have been. (It’s unclear to me if AI is adding value or not).
Metaverse has already died before being born so I can’t bet on that anymore. Like others have said, maybe something related to quantum chips though my previous thought makes it dead on arrival as well.
Whatever is going to solve the upcoming energy crisis I guess.
Collapse?
Could be nuclear fusion if China keeps making progress and is fine to keep pumping cash into it
There's a bunch of US companies hyping it, too. A free claiming they'll be selling power as soon as 2028 (such as Helion in their deal with Microsoft)
Haha whats the old saying? "Its just 30 years away"
Yes that's the joke because saying decades means you're not close and can't really guess as to how far of you are.
Usually, saying it's 2 years out, means they have something workable but scaling to production is still in progress.
We'll have to see if this is just marketing hype or not.
Oh i know i was just referencing the old saying. China has a lot to prove and is hungry, so could be very interesting
I predict (from my unlimited wisdom):
Personal Avatars.
Since the chat messaging apps must become interoperable now, people will create their virtual "self" across different platforms.
I'm out of the loop, how do chat applications have to become interoperable?
Metaverse 2.0?
I would say probably more likely to be a personal AI assistant, that handles all PC/cell phone interactions for you. Like Star Trek: "Computer, do my taxes!"
Of course that relies heavily on AI becoming more reliable then it is now.
No one wants an AI summery of their e-mails if it's full of hallucinations, or their tax returns to get them into prison.
Oil bubble.
We can always hope.
Simulations, Future-prediction machines
I could make a lot of money if I knew. I just don't and neither does anyone else.
Lemmy