Ask HN: What is the next big thing?
This question is asked every few years. Now that we are in 2025 and AI/ML/LLM is moving full steam forward with something new and/or revolutionary popping up every week.
What "new" do you think is gonna be emerging in 2025?
After AI dies down, the next buzzword will be quantum. C3 will change their domain from C3.ai to C3.quantum and every product that relies on quantum physics will have quantum somewhere in the name.
Also 3D TVs will come back. Stereoscopic video and AI seem to be on alternate cycles. I have a projector that was manufactured just before the start of the last 3D TV cycle, and has some random feature branded as using AI.
I am am apostle for "advanced manufacturing" which is a longer term theme.
The north star is that there are some people on Mars who know that the stream of supplies from Earth will stop and that their children having a future is contingent on being able to manufacture everything from metal to plastics to microchips and pharmaceuticals with as small a population and industrial base as possible.
Closer to home and more urgent are problems such as decarbonization, relocalization, etc. If a doctor on Mars needs a synthesizer which can make mRNA, peptide and protein-based drugs for any condition, so does a doctor in Rwanda. Drexler's program in
https://www.amazon.com/Nanosystems-P-K-Eric-Drexler/dp/04715...
has definitely not progressed. Maybe we can't make a 1kg machine that can make itself and everything else, but could we shrink the manufacturing base such that a population of 1M people could be self-sufficient at a high technology level? Can we make all the things that we depend on and be carbon neutral? Can we continue the miniaturization of electronics?
Getting just part of the way to those goal could pay rich dividends.
H5 bird flu