Biggest Tech Trends and Predictions for 2018

Hello Steemit!

2018 is finally upon us so I thought it would be fun to go over some tech trends and predictions that I think are gonna happen in 2018.

I've got about ten different things so you can also let me know what you think if I'm completely wrong if you agree with me we can all talk about that down in the comments so let's get started first of all self-driving cars now there was a lot of attention with self-driving cars in 2017 you know uber kind of started doing their own self-driving car test Google's been doing it for a while but I think 2018 is gonna be the year where we might start to see maybe at least till the end of the year where self-driving cars actually get put into real service now I'm not so sure it's gonna be so quick where it'll be completely autonomous where our car will go on every road but I do think it will be the case where maybe in closed environments like I don't know college campuses or maybe only certain parts of a city like a bus route that those cars will be able to completely drive autonomously within a confined and predefined area so I think that'll come a lot sooner than people think and probably 2018 will be that year because I mean we already have self-driving cars they just don't work perfectly yet and especially with AI and machine learning making a lot of progress I think we're gonna see it pretty soon all right the next trend I think we're gonna see a lot more of blockchain and crypto currencies in the end of 2017 we've been seeing a ton of buzz about Bitcoin whether it's in a bubble who knows but it has gotten a crap ton of attention and you can't deny that and I think with all the new technologies with other coins coming out not just Bitcoin I think there's gonna be a lot of new companies major companies that are gonna get in on the game and even if a lot of these don't end up sticking around you know I think there's gonna be a lot of exploratory new technology people doing a lot of experimentation it's gonna be very exciting to see what kind of blockchain uses we come up with in 2018 and maybe even crypto currencies starting to be used in real life who knows okay third prediction and I kind of touched on this before with the self-driving cars I think artificial intelligence and machine learning is gonna make a lot more progress than they have already I mean there was a lot of buzz about AI this year but it still kind of sucks right especially with you know the YouTube algorithm using machine learning to figure out what's ad friendly it's been a disaster and then they've been using self-driving cars with AI which has gotten better but it's still not great I think that it's still in its infancy but over the course of the next year it's gonna get a lot better and we might even see it not
necessarily in the foreground where everyone's gonna be knowing they're using AI but it'll stick in the background and things will just gradually get a lot and a lot better as time goes on to the point where we won't even notice how bad things were before and some of these uses aren't stuff you think about immediately so one really good example Google did earlier in 2017 was they had a picture through a chain-link fence and they used machine learning to remove the chain-link fence and rebuild what the picture actually looked like without it so that's the kind of stuff that I think is going to be super useful where our brain is really good at it but computers kind of suck so if you're looking through a chain-link fence in that example our brain is pretty good at understanding what's behind it and knowing what is there even though there was a chain-link fence in front of it and the computers haven't been able to do that but I think we're gonna be able to do that pretty soon next prediction number four I think we're gonna get a lot more smart home devices Internet of Things even if it's completely unnecessary stuff I think companies are gonna try and at least push for it you know we saw a lot of new virtual assistants with Google home Amazon echo all the companies are coming out that even Siri with Apple and this is going to be especially so I think with Bluetooth 5 coming out you may have seen my previous video talking about Bluetooth 5 and how they kind of upgraded the protocol where it's not just gonna be one-to-one connections that's very clunky it'll be used a lot more for smart devices that can receive information without connecting directly and possibly even using local GPS like indoor GPS to triangulate where positions of objects are so if you lose something you can literally detect exactly where it is using bluetooth that sort of crazy stuff I think we're gonna see a lot more of in 2018 assuming that it does get more adopted we know that bluetooth is usually introduced every year the new version in new phones so it might take a year to before people actually start to be able to use it even if it's introduced in new devices but we're gonna definitely see that I think by the end of 2018 ok trend number 5 I think we're gonna see a lot more focus on cyber security potentially the removal of passwords and some other type of paradigm introduced because you know last year we saw a ton of hackings the Equifax breach was a total disaster and I think people are starting to realize their data is probably not as safe as they think it is you put something online there's a pretty good chance it might get hacked one day so I think especially the big companies are going to be pushing for not just passwords being used with maybe some kind of biometric security and in general I think the whole mindset has to change to really assume that you will be hacked your accounts will be hacked and that's why probably two-factor authentication is going to make a big move in 2018 so people are gonna think well I'll just assume that this company's going to be able to protect me and people are going to start to realize that's not the case they're gonna have to start using different paths or it's stronger passwords two-factor authentication and even then don't put stuff up online if you don't want it to be hacked ok prediction number six this is just a personal prediction and that is that I think we're gonna get a new generation of virtual reality headsets whether it's for gaming or Windows mixed reality which I talked about before and if it's not a totally new version released to the public will at least get an announcement because it has been about two years since the HTC vive and the oculus rift were released so I don't think these companies want to really alienate customers who are just buying it now especially since it's taking a long time for VR to take off but it is slowly and gradually increasing so I think we're gonna start to specially see headsets specific we'll be using inside-out tracking so right now what you see is headsets that have cameras that you set up and they have sensors on them and then the cameras detect where the devices are and then it puts that into the computer but I think we're gonna eliminate that need where the headsets just use depth sensing cameras kind of like hololens and the mixed reality headsets from Windows that do work really well because what those do is literally don't need tracking devices but rather analyze the environment in front of it and use that to figure out how you're moving and it does work really well I think that is definitely the future it's gonna make things a lot more portable a lot easier to set up and they work just as well especially with the hand controllers – works fine kind of going off this by the end of 2018 we might start to see a little bit of augmented reality hololens if you've not heard me talk about it before is truly amazing technology it's really what Holograms should look like like in the sci-fi it's what you would expect just the field of view isn't quite there and it's very expensive but Microsoft is apparently working on a new version so I think we'll start to see improvements in that range not quite consumer ready but it's getting there okay next 5g you've heard that talked about before what exactly is it well 5g is basically just gonna be a lot faster cellular connection obviously but I think it also is going to allow not just cell phones to use cellular connections but also maybe smaller devices like just items around your home will be able to use the maximally increased bandwidth of the cellular connections that are capable on 5g so that it won't be so crowded so you can introduce smaller devices and really everything won't need to be connected to Wi-Fi anymore maybe it'll have its own internet connection that'll be pretty crazy to think about at the moment but you know it's gonna happen and actually 5g spec was just recently finalized so while it might not be implemented into carriers maybe it'll be implemented in the coming year but we won't see it in devices until 2019 but it's getting there the next two predictions also have to do with phones difficult own hardware and the first of those two is that I think 2018 is going to be the year of high refresh rate phone screens so this past year it was all about like OLED screens and big screen to body ratios and I think this year it's gonna be high refresh rate it's the natural next upgrade we kind of have done everything previously we got HDR all that high resolution screens are capable but fret refresh rate is something that is an easy upgrade or logically at least not may be technologically where it's something that consumers will immediately see an improvement and will think wow this looks really good because if you've never used a high refresh rate monitor it is night and day and you really can't go back so I think it's something that is easy to impress people with and it's the natural next thing that especially phones are gonna have and we already know that Apple put a 120 Hertz refresh rate screen into the iPad pro so I would be very very surprised if it wasn't in the next iPhone and other phones as well and next prediction number nine I think we will start to see phones that are able to have in screen fingerprint readers now there was rumor that Apple was trying to do this and put both touch ID and face ID in the iPhone X but they weren't able to figure it out I really don't like that they don't have the fingerprint sensor in the iPhone X I think it would be great if they had both we're not going to talk about that anymore because I know I've rambled on it in other videos way too long but I do think at least one company is gonna figure it out and put it in a phone and it's gonna be awesome it'll allow the huge screen of body ratio and allow a fingerprint sensor that is completely invisible though I would be interested to see if Apple would put it into their next phone if they were able to or if they don't want to embarrass themselves and have to go back on their word that face ID is so much better than touch ID because if they put that in there well I'm sure they could spin it somehow but I don't know we're gonna get at least one phone and it'll be interesting to see how the market reacts because do people want that fingerprint sense or do they not care all right finally number 10 this is just gonna be kind of a crazy big prediction that I'm making myself you can let me know what you think about it but I think we're gonna get a big change in what we use in terms of social media I think we're gonna get maybe a big new social media network that could rival Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and the reason for that is I don't know if you've been kind of being on the pulse of all the news lately but it seems like YouTube Twitter Facebook, all these big tech companies have become obsessed with social justice warrior crap and they've literally started censoring users with anything that is remotely edgy or maybe offensive to some people with the ad pocalypse they're kind of removing videos that talk about anything that doesn't fit their little narrative and I think people are gonna start to get tired of it and this is compounded with the fact that I don't know about you but I don't really use Facebook anymore you go on Facebook you look at the timeline it's nothing from your friends anymore it's just a bunch of garbage from BuzzFeed and stupid clickbait videos and it's just all trash and I think there's gonna be a big paradigm shift maybe these companies will buy up the next social media site who knows but I think there's gonna be something new that needs to replace all this garbage that we've been seeing lately because it is becoming very very useless if it never was before so it's either gonna be a completely new social media network or maybe these tech companies will chill out and realize that it's not the end of the world if that's a little bit edgy because you know people like edgy stuff especially if it's edgy humour but apparently that the people at the top don't like it and it's really unfortunate because it's really stupid the stuff they get worried about they're letting the vocal minority flip out and get their way even though it's stuff literally no one cares about so you can let me know what you think about that so yeah those are just some predictions and not just let me know about the last point but all the points we can talk about that down in the comments section and if you have predictions as well because I know that these are not gonna be the be-all.