People love being in control.
Tech people love telling other people about their vision of the future. Careful to never cross the rubicon of certainty and always adding just enough alternate outcome, mixed with some ‘well, you know’ and ‘although this is the case, anything is possible’ and always with a Penn & Teller magic hand wave, a quick eye roll or knowing smile.
But, what is the true future of tech? What is the ‘next big thing’?
It is actually very easy. The Internet of things (IOT), as it relates to our homes will slowly grow and provide additional functionality in terms of our entertainment options, climate control and our shopping requirements.
Websites, similar to e-mail, will prove a pesky and inconvenient human requirement. Very similar to the way in which email is dismissed as important tech today, websites will still be around in the next decade. (It is patently obvious that e-mail itself will still be around basically forever)
Fancy artificial intelligence and AI search engine technology will be too scary, invade our privacy too much. it will simply be too much for the average imperfect human creature to use or to take seriously. We will use AI, but we will not trust it enough to do everything for us. We will consult and interact with AI up to a certain point, but thereafter it simply will be too perfect for imperfect human beings. We like convenience, we like imperfect things, it suits us as we are imperfect beings. In fact, evolution is founded upon the non perfect, the non precise and the thing we call ‘possibility’
The more predictable possibility becomes the less likely the human race is to survive.
As any serious student of cryptography will gladly discuss in great detail, there are very few random things. Even those things considered random is actually not all that random.
Entropy is core to the survival of the human race and the future of your children.
Recently I down graded my smart phone, to a cheaper lower functional model and I am not alone. The new phone still does everything I need and runs all my apps. There is newly discovered freedom in not being tracked that much. Freedom in everyone not being able to reach me immediately and not being or feeling ‘on call’ 24/7
Plus now I have a reason to buy a new digital camera and spend time taking that perfect photograph…