Self-driving cars ought to be big, though. Sooner or later, someone will get it right.
The Next Big Thing is probably wind and solar + batteries. Bye bye, gasoline industry. In twenty years, you may need to plan out a route in advance to be sure of finding an open gasoline station. Heating oil will last longer.
VR has gone from 0.3% to 1.5% of all users on Steam in one year, and still rising. I'm old enough to remember people saying that both mice and gfx cards weren't worth the money and never would be. Dismissing VR as a "dud" is... well, foolish :-)
VR isn't "3D TV". It's only going to become more commonplace as the tech and UX improves.
Based on limited experience, albeit going back about 30 years, VR won't become popular before visual and proprioceptive inputs can be synched. And I doubt that'll be practical before direct brain input works well.
About blockchain, it'll succeed once users don't know that it's there. I mean, how many understand how HTTPS certificates work?
Funny you mention HTTPS certificates because there's a blockchain-based protocol that's trying to create a decentralized certificate authority. It basically aims to shift the root of trust from CAs to the blockchain https://handshake.org
Orchid creates multi-hop VPN connections using servers from multiple providers. It uses a private blockchain cryptocurrency to ~anonymously distribute value from users to VPN providers. That's useful because users don't need to trust any single VPN service.
Loki is an onion network. Currently the Session messaging app is the only service implemented, but I gather that there will be others. Loki uses a private blockchain cryptocurrency to hinder Sibyl attacks. That's useful because users will less likely get pwned by malicious nodes.
If those work out, there's no reason why most users would need to even know that blockchain cryptocurrencies were involved.
> In twenty years, you may need to plan out a route in advance to be sure of finding an open gasoline station. Heating oil will last longer.
Huh, why? In many countries you're not allowed build new homes with oil heating systems, and there are plenty of government scheme to get rid of existing examples. And of course in highly urbanized countries heating oil barely exists anyway (it hasn't made sense for a long time if mains gas is available).
Self-driving cars ought to be big, though. Sooner or later, someone will get it right.
The Next Big Thing is probably wind and solar + batteries. Bye bye, gasoline industry. In twenty years, you may need to plan out a route in advance to be sure of finding an open gasoline station. Heating oil will last longer.