I'm 90% confident that the cinematic uncanny valley will be crossed in the next decade. The number applies to movies only, it doesn't apply to humanoid robots (1%) and video game characters (5%).

Edit: After posting this, I thought that my 90% estimate was underconfident, but then I remembered that we started the decade with Jar-Jar Binks and Gollum, and it took us almost ten years to reach the level of Emily and Jake Sully.

A killer application for augmented reality is likely to be the integration of communication channels. Today's, cellular phones annoy people with constant accountability and stress, not to mention spotty coverage, but if a HUD relay over life can display text messages as they are sent and invite fluid shifts to voice conversation. When video is engaged and shared, people could also see what their potential conversation partner is doing prior to requesting attention, giving distributed social life some of the fluidity and contextual awareness of natural social life. These sorts of benefits will motivate the teenagers of 2020 to broadcast much of their lives and to interpret the absence of their friend's data streams as a low intensity request not to call. Archival will at first be a secondary but relatively minor benefit from the technology, but will ultimately widen the divide between public and private life, a disaster for privacy advocates but a boon for academic science (by normalizing the publication of all data). Paranormal beliefs will also tend to decline, as the failure to record paranormal events and the fallibility of memory both become more glaring.

One word: subcultures.

I think we'll see an expansion to most of the First World of the trend we see in cities like San Francisco, where the Internet has allowed people to organize niche cultures (steampunk, furries, pyromaniacs, etc.) like never before. I think that, by and large, people would prefer to seek out a smaller culture based on a common idiosyncratic interest if it were an option, not least because rising in status there is often easier than getting noticed in the local mainstream culture. I think that the main reason the mainstream culture is presently so large, therefore, is because it's hard for a juggling enthusiast in Des Moines to find like-minded people.

I expect that over the next 10 years, more and more niche cultures will arise and begin to sprout their own characteristics, with the measurable effect that cultural products will have to be targeted more narrowly. I expect that the most popular books, music, etc. of the late 2010s will sell fewer copies in the US than the most popular books, music, etc. of the Aughts, but that total consumption of media will go up substantially as a thousand niche bands, niche fiction markets, etc. become the norm. I expect that high schoolers in 2020 will spend less social time with their classmates and more time with the groups they met through the Internet.

And I expect that the next generation of hipsters will find a way to be irritatingly disdainful of a thousand cultures at once.

For the next decade: Videoconferencing.

Next Year

• Holiday retail sales will be below consensus forecasts leading to some market turmoil in the early part of the year as the 'recovery' starts to look shaky (70%).
• A developed country will suffer a currency crisis - most likely either the UK, US or one of the weaker Eurozone economies (60%).
• A new round of bank failures and financial turmoil as the wave of Option ARM mortgage resets starts to hit and commercial real estate collapses including at least one major bank failure (a 'too big to fail' bank) (75%).
• A major terrorist attack in the US (50%)

My second prediction is that the largest area of impact from technological change over the next decade will come from increasing communications bandwidth. Supercomputers a hundred times more powerful than those that exist today don't look revolutionary, while ubiquitous ultra-cheap wireless broadband makes storage and processing power less important. Improvements in small scale energy storage, tech transfer from e-paper and lower power computer chips will probably help make portable personal computers more energy efficient, but for always-on augmented reality (and its sister-tech robotics) in areas with ubiquitous broadband computing off-site is the way to go.

Better than even odds that in 2020:

1. GDP per capita at purchasing power parity for Singapore will be more than US$80,000 in 2008 dollars.

2. GDP per capita for China (PRC), will be more than twice 2009 GDP

3. Tourism to suborbital space will cost less than $50000.

Within ten years either genetic manipulation or embryo selection will have been used on at least 10,000 babies in China to increase the babies’ expected intelligence- 75%.

Within ten years either genetic manipulation or embryo selection will have been used on at least 50% of Chinese babies to increase the babies’ expected intelligence- 15%.

Within ten years the SAT testing service will require students to take a blood test to prove they are not on cognitive enhancing drugs. – 40%

All of the major candidates for the 2016 presidential election will have had sam... (read more)

We will end the decade with some mobile energy storage system with an energy density close to or better than fat metabolism.

ETA: I mean in the context of electronics.

Atleast one asian movie will exceed $400 mn in worldwide box office gross before the end of the decade.

It will most probably not be a wuxia movie. My guess of its genre is urban action or speculative fiction.

I estimate 90% odds that Emotiv's EPOC will fail like the Segway did.

I have one of these puppies. It's the most fickle device I've laid my hands on. It's useless for anything except gaining nerd status points. Hey, do you guys want me to post a detailed review? :)

For the next decade:

I'd bet about a 2:3 odds that energy consumption will grow on a par or less than population growth.

Any rise in average standard of living will come from making manufacturing/logistics more efficient, or a redistribution from the very rich to the less well off. There is still scope for increased efficiency by reducing the transport of people and more automation.

I predict a 10% chance that I win my bet with Eliezer in the next decade (the one about a transhuman intelligence being created not by Eliezer, not being deliberately created for Friendliness, and not destroying the world.)

In an analysis that does not account for any health-care reform bill, the Department of Health and Human Services projected that health care expenditures would double from the 2009 level of $2.2 trillion (16.2% of 2009 GDP) to $4.4 trillion in 2018 (20.3% of projected 2018 GDP). This provides us a baseline from which to predict the cost-control effectiveness of health care reform.

I'm somewhat bullish on the potential of the pilot programs and the excise tax to lower med costs for a given level of health outcomes, although I'm not supremely confident in th... (read more)

I get into UC Berkeley - 70%

I expect that Brain-Computer Interfaces will make their way into consumer devices by the next decade, with disruptive consequences, once people become able to offload some auxiliary cognitive functions into these devices.

Call it 75% - I would be more than mildly surprised if it hadn't happened by 2020.

For what I have in mind, what counts as BCI is the ability to interact with a smartphone-like device in an inconspicuous manner, without using your hands.

My reasoning is similar to Michael Vassar's AR prediction, and based on the iPhone's success. That doesn'... (read more)

By 2020, an Earth-like habitable extrasolar planet is detected. I would take a wager on this one but doubt anyone would give me even odds.

Will anyone give me even odds if the bet is by 2015?

I am 99% confident that AGI comparable to or better than a human, friendly or otherwise, will not be developed in the next ten years.

I am 75% confident that within ten years, the Bayesian paradigm of AGI will be just yet another more or less useful spinoff of the otherwise failed attempt to build AGI.

Carry-on luggage on US airlines will be reduced to a single handbag that inspectors can search thoroughly, in 2010 or 2011.

I would say better-than even chances that sites like intrade gain prestige in the next decade

and betting on predictions will become common ( 90% that there is a student at 75% or so of high schools in 2020 that will take bets on future predictions on any subject, 40% that >5% of US middle class will have made a bet about a future prediction)

naive guesses based largely on http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2009/11/case-for-climate-futures-markets-ctd.html

I predict further that I will continue to post on LW at least once a month next year (90%) and in 2020 (50%)

• By the end of 2013: Either the Iranian regime is overthrown by popular revolution, or there is an overt airstrike against Iran by either the US or Israel, or Israel is attacked by an Iranian nuclear weapon (70%).

• Essentially seconding mattnewport: the price of gold reaches $3000USD, or inflation of the US dollar exceeds 12% in one year (65%).

• The current lull in the increase of the speed at which CPUs perform sequential operations comes to an end, yielding a consumer CPU that performs sequential integer arithmetic operations 4x as quickly as a modern 3G

The second estimation in each paragraph is conditional on the first.

By 2020 some kind of CO2 emissions regulation (cap and trade) will be in place in the US(.85). But total CO2 emissions in the US for 2019 will be no less than 95% of total CO2 emissions for 2008 (.9).

Obama wins reelection (.7). The result will be widely attributed to an improving economy (in the media and in polls and whether or not the economy actually improves) (.85)

By 2020 open elections are held for the Iranian presidency (no significant factions excluded from participation) (.5). The president (or some other position selected through open elections) is the highest position in the Iranian state (.5)

For the next decade: collaborative filtering.