Quora: What Will Tech Look Like in Ten Years?

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Answer from Answer by Jeff Desjardins:

What technologies can we expect to be mainstream in the next 10 years? This is a challenging and complex question.

Things I am excited about seeing in the next ten years:

• Applications of the blockchain to many different industries (markets, insurance, smart contracts, identity, and many more).
• Dropping costs of renewables, batteries, and energy storage to create a tipping point for electric vehicles and other green tech.
• Growing applications of artificial intelligence (AI), including deep learning. This will continue to affect many industries from investing to autonomous vehicles.
• VR/AR will hit the mainstream.
• Autonomous vehicles will change how we live and commute.
• Space tech. Asteroid mining will happen, and Mars will happen - maybe not in ten years, but we'll have detailed plans by then.
• Material advances like graphene could finally hit the mainstream.
• The real emergence of big data, internet of things (IoT), and predictive analytics.
• Health and government - industries that are notoriously slow - are finally starting to adopt technological solutions. There will be big opportunities here.
• Gene editing (CRISPR).

One key area that it is imperative to be watching is automation (in general) and how it will affect the economy and jobs.

Here's one visualization that shows how it could change things:

What technologies can we expect to be mainstream in the next 10 years? originally appeared on Quora - the place to gain and share knowledge, empowering people to learn from others and better understand the world. You can follow Quora on Twitter, Facebook, and Google+. More questions:

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