7 things that will become obsolete in the next 10 years
“Not within a thousand years will man ever fly” — Wilbur Wright (1901)
But quickly after their invention in 1902, before and during 1920s, aircrafts were able to cross the Atlantic. If it was not for the world wars, they would have become commercially mainstream in just two decades.
Every disruption does not begin with invention of novel, disruptive product. It also needs thrust of a void — a gaping chasm between existing solutions and demand. In case of aircrafts, this void was created by exceeding demand on navy due to warring, ultra-ambitious nations.
In tech, seven things are waiting for major overhaul over the next decade. Purpose? Make way for better products and solutions that can leverage full potential of latest innovations.
# 1 - Phones:
Phone calls and messaging are already taken over by IP, and your phone numbers are mostly needed to identify you in Whatsapp database. Many companies on the planet are already operating on business editions of messengers: Slack, Skype, MS Team, Zoom and their ilk.
Dialing a call exists merely because old school salespeople think it should.
More than a century of their invention, telephones rightly deserve vintage status.
But looking at dwindling numbers of saturation, it looks like mobile devices will catch up in their downfall soon. Looking at the overdose of innovation in packaging it as a single accessory (and hence the pressure on pricing), device manufacturers will soon need their graceful replacement.
Mobile phones will be split into products based on their utility category:
- Productivity + Fitness + Calling / Messaging (cellular smartwatch)
- Entertainment + Camera (media players: iPod et al)
- Work + Browsing (tablets, mostly contained within office / home space)
While in theory, future smartwatch can handle all the above tasks by itself, media player and tablets will be needed to provide better usability in their respective functions.
# 2 - Digital Cameras (also print albums)
While Kodak’s fall marked the end of photo films as a must-have stationary, digital camera industry is also counting decades, if not years.
While there are serious attempts to embed as much software into smart-sensor cameras, mobile cameras are catching up at faster pace. Availability of machine learning to optimize picture/video quality, combined with filter range simply tilts the balance in favor of digitally achieved solutions.
Not necessarily because of superior quality, but because of smartphone companies’ execution speed + mass market adoption.
Professional photographers have already announced mirrorless as the future, and DSLRs are no longer the computers they used to be — smartphones have taken their place.
# 3 - Programming books (at least, print copies)
Computers are those rare devices that can be mastered using themselves (without other devices) - instructors notwithstanding.
Cheap and flexible, always available tutorial websites have ensured that Gen Z is less likely to read books than millennials. It’s quite easy and pragmatic to copy paste code from forums / repos & make mistakes than to spend your weekend reading a programming book. I am not saying they both provide the same value, but perceived value + availability of online learning is much higher than that of a book.
Ebooks would still have chance because of low cost, shareability and flexibility in reading during breaks.
# 4 - Mini Storage (USBs, memory cards et al)
Seriously? Not in 10 years, but in 20 years they will surely see serious decline. By then, 5G rollout would have stabilized across developed countries. With blazing internet, there will be little need to store anything that can be retrieved online.
Personal storage will be replaced by Mass storage on cloud + transmission on personal device.
Personal Cloud storage solutions by Apple and Google will remain, but are likely to be challenged by competitive storage pricing.
Even governments in developing countries are rapidly adopting paperless office concept. Digitization will lesson citizen’s burden for storing personal documents. As for memories, impromptu sharing has already replaced memory recollection — Snapchat showed us that. There is no reason this culture wouldn’t thrive.
# 5 - Restaurants
If we have remote offices, why not remote kitchens? Just like co-working space industry was born out prohibitive real estate prices, restaurant industry deserves some cost-saving too.
Eating out will become a thing of past more quickly than one might think.
Recipe for restaurant obliteration:
- Envision a co-cooking space. OK, why imagine? It’s already happening in Israel, Thailand, Singapore, Croatia, and many other places.
- Now add some delivery scooters and robot-driven cars lined up against food counters of various restaurants — not quite different from airline checking counters.
- Finally, add an app (Skyscanner of Uber Eats and its ilk) that connects restaurants, delivery company providers and hungry customers.
# 6 - Movie theaters
Wild wild waste days of Netflix are soon to be over in 2020, with 6 big billion players entering the streaming industry. While it’s quite early to say who will win the streaming race, doomsdays of mainstream cinema theaters are quite near.
Moviepass ambitiously tried to revive itself along with the industry, and royally failed. Experience cinema (IMAX, 4DX and 3D) may survive for limited huge budget productions + deep pocket audiences, but that too may eventually head into our drawing-rooms via VR route.
Many of our children won’t associate the smell of popcorn with a popular hang out place in town.
Conclusion:
Supersonic race to digitalization is continually being fueled by weapons of modern tech warfare: Cloud, AI, 3D printers, Smarter sensors, and robots. It is hard to predict what we may see in next 10 years, because combinations are infinite.
But it is easier to predict what’s moving towards obsolescence, and above is just a snapshot.
It must be noted that clearer picture can evolve by not only considering standalone products, but also by studying their interplay and movements of their controlling ecosystems.
If it wasn’t the case, 100 years of commercial aviation would have made personal, affordable aircrafts possible already. And mass-transit aircrafts obsolete.
(Remember? #7 is still missing in the list.)
Hopefully, it will materialize soon.
