Winter Rant

The Cloud was probably the last “next big thing” from the world of software and computer technology. Before that it was the Social Network and the iPhone before that. I will also throw in eCommerce, streaming, Big Data and SaaS in there. And all of this came after the mother of all big things: the internet.

By itself, that is an impressive list. Since then though, it has been a trail of duds.

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Web3 and Cryptocurrency was supposed to change the world of finance. The blockchain would entirely reimagine contracts in a digital-first world.

Virtual and Augmented Reality were supposed to create entirely new universes that redefine the way we consume entertainment and make us walk around the real world with information at our beck and call.

Remember 5G? How about driverless cars? Don’t get me started about ride-sharing and the gig economy.

Smart speakers and virtual assistants were supposed to help us get rid of our phone screens and go hands-free. That grift continued with the likes of Humane Pin and Rabbit R1. A lot of that was probably inspired by the dream of wearable technology and devices.

And now AI is supposed to reimagine entire economies by making us all more productive, putting some/many of us out our jobs, while creating entire new job categories that do not exist today.

At some point, it is worth asking what the tech industry is doing here.

The industry is a victim of its own success. The first decade and a half of this century saw a lot of useful breakthroughs — both commercial and technological. Those breakthroughs made the companies in SF and Seattle a lot of money. It also gave these companies a lot of confidence to shape and remake the world in their vision.

But all that money, confidence and this never-ending itch to invent something new every five years, has now given us some very bad and useless stacks of “technology” that we don’t really know how to use, nor do we know how to make money with in the real world.

That is how we find ourselves in the situation where tech companies are tinkering with the idea of recommissioning Three Mile Island, without a business plan.

And I am afraid that we are smack dab in the middle of “the next big dud” era of the tech industry. And this era of “the big dud” will linger on for a while because the companies are sitting on piles of cash that they are happy to burn in the incinerator of bad ideas … all while making our lives miserable and frustrating.

In this new world of failed promises, I am going to make some predictions about what the next big duds are likely to be. These will be hailed as the next big waves of technology, but will amount out to nothing (if we are lucky).

1. Robotics. Especially personal (and delivery) robotics. This segment of duds will go the way of smart speakers like Alexa and Home Pods.
2. Gaming. When AI does not pan out, we will be left with a surplus of GPUs. Expect someone (big tech) to figure out a way to sell us all on streaming games out of GPUs originally meant for AI training, hosted in massive data centers.
3. Automated Healthcare. I anticipate that someone will make an attempt at automating away primary healthcare consultations, or at least different parts of our healthcare industries and supply chains. It will be sold as a means of streamlining processes and patient experiences (cue a massive eye roll). This is especially likely if AI agents (however you define them) are even moderately successful. I cannot express how much I am praying that this never comes to pass.
4. Sports Betting. While this is already a thing, I anticipate that gambling will become far more mainstream. The smartphone will be the primary delivery vehicle for this junk and will likely be very successful as long as laws and AppStore rules don’t get in the way. And I also anticipate this going beyond sports — betting and gambling apps of all kinds will become commonplace. Of course, this will be terrible for ballooning consumer debt, already vanishing attention spans and the penchant for instant gratification.
5. Pay-per-view Journalism. You think it’s bad now for journalists and people subscribing to news? Imagine having to spend ten cents every time you view a news article. And you pay another ten cents if you hit refresh on that browser tab that is showing you the article. Monthly subscriptions will be replaced with pay-as-you-go news paywalls. Most of that crud will be AI-generated.
6. Homeschooling as a Service. Or HaaS for short. Expect tech to encourage parents to homeschool more, and expect businesses to emerge around delivering personalized, AI-based tutors, lesson plans, and quizzes/tests. Stuff like this and the automated-healthcare booms will be more about bad applications of AI to devise lucrative business plans. So they won’t be technology waves, in the strictest sense.
7. Software-defined Energy Grids. I expect tech to show up in the energy sector in a big way and with big promises. Anyone remember software defined networks? It was/is a wave of tech where we can configure computer networks with software stacks. To the geeks out there, think JSON and YAML files, but instead of configuring computer networks, they will be setup to manipulate power grids. Imagine being able to bring down the power supply for London with a bad software patch pushed to the cloud . Think that’s too far fetched? Think again.
8. Flying cars. Enough said.

I admit that I am not creative enough to come up with dumber and more outlandish ideas than these.

My hope is that industries outside of tech would invent (or discover) something meaningful and/or big that will distract the current batch of tech investors … just long enough that tech gets out of this rut that it finds itself in.

There are brilliant people in tech doing meaningful things everyday, but I am afraid that they are getting drowned out by carnival barkers with money.