I believe the next big thing will involve medicine, probably stem cell research, but not until we cast aside the religious zealots we have in Washington and get some thinking people on the case.
Heh-heh. You’re assuming your cybernetic Overlords consider you (or any living being) part of “us”. 
I like the idea of the Singularity and think there might be something there… but it’ll probably happen the day after fusion power makes electricity cheap, cheap, cheap… i.e., in 20-50 years, in perpetuity.
I think the ‘next big thing’ has to be practical in order to have a noticeable effect on society. Frankly, just about everything mentioned so far I can’t see getting past the novelty stage simply because they aren’t practical. It has to solve a real problem, for a reasonable amount of money, and not be unsafe.
Segway-like transportation will never be popular because it doesn’t protect you from the elements. All the other cool features are meaningless when it’s pouring rain. Nobody talks about that because it’s boring.
I can’t see many people willing to risk interfacing something directly to their brain (what a huge risk if something goes wrong!) just to overcome a minor annoyance in life. I’d only go for that if the alternative was blindness. I wouldn’t risk it just to take pictures, which is already pretty easy given current digital cameras.
My vote for the next big thing goes to the retirement crisis caused by the baby boomer generation hitting retirement age.
One word. Nanotubes.
Their strength, kinetic, electrical, and thermal properties make plastics a thing of the past. They are being made in the lab, but the results are exactly what you’d expect from a nascent technology. Once production is perfected, and in some models it appears that it could be done rather cheaply, there will be an explosion of uses found for it, from lightbulbs to lightweight bulletproofing, from extremely efficient solar power to medical breakthroughs. Very few parts of everyday life will remain unaffected by them.
Medical advances letting you regrow damaged parts of yourself. It’s still quite a ways off, of course, but I don’t think it’s completely out of reach.
Brain transplants. Seriously.
The biggest obstacle to that is understanding stem cells, and non-differentiated cells to regenerate lost tissue, which is really the only way that might be possible to repair a spinal cord break without scarring. The second-biggest obstacle is performing the transplant itself, a problem which I believe we can solve once we figure out the first part of the equation. The third obstacle is finding donors — and though we decry the idea of cloning empty bodies for the purpose of farming them for parts, that particular ethic would be tossed to the wind if it meant we could prolong our lives for 30-40 more years.
There have been some good suggestions here, but I don’t know if they have the same kind of world-transforming power. Transport technology, for example, would mostly affect those countries rich enough to afford it.
Brain transplants would make us question what we mean by identity and self, by gender and age, even if only 1 out of 100,000 people ever got one.
Plastics.
Genetic engineering and cloning of humans will happen, eventually, if they are possible at all. If the U.S. government bans them, some research group in some other country will simply attract investors there. The potential is too great to pass up.
NurseCarmen is right with nanotubes…the uses are endless an it really will change daily life with products that can be made cheaply and last practically forever.
I also believe the Internet is still a baby…with tie-ins to cell phones and monitors of all kinds.
Already it is possible for a doctor in remote villages to hook up with specialists in large metropolitan hospitals…and surgery by remote is around the corner, saving lives of people who could never afford to go to, nor live long enough to get to, a major hospital.
Broadband video is already changing the long range forecasts for major film studios and television broadcasters - no one is exactly sure what is going to happen, but one thing is for sure, people will begin to get their entertainment on-line. Will major Hollywood movie premieres be available, world-wide, at the same time - imagine 200 million or more watching a movie on the first hour of the first day it is released.
Freedom of information - already it is possible for people all over the world to see and read about the same event. Despite some attempt to censor the Internet, for the most part, the world is connected and it will only get more connected over time. How will this play out in world politics and global economy?
You only need look at the SDMB to see how the Internet has changed our daily lives. People on this board know each other, inside and out, and can laugh at the same “in” jokes, bitch about the same poster, and share deeply personal, life- altering events they wouldn’t even tell their family about…and yet we are spread out all over the world and would normally never have any contact if it were not for the Internet. Even without the occasional Dopefests, if there is a crisis or disaster anywhere in the world, I know I can come here and find a Doper in that area to give the real story, and it is probably someone whose posts I have read over the years and can trust. The threads on 9/11 as it happened, the threads on the tsunami shortly afterwards…the Internet has created this extended family of Dopers and for that, I am grateful. With many now having personal websites and blogs, we are becoming even more connected - and all this in just a few short years.
And beyond. I think that the impact of that change will reach far beyond retail or even commerce. It will have a vast social impact on ownership itself.
I think the really big next big thing will be spimes, objects that by virtue of embedded rfid tags and history databases will be traceable and uniquely identifiable. There will be privacy concerns, but the obvious advantages to individuals of never having to worry about an item being lost or stolen—if it is, just register its loss, and the net of ubiquitous censors will pick it up—and to governments of being able to tax every transaction involving goods will overwhelm privacy advocates. They’ll just say it helps fight terrorism.
But what the automobile and the interstate did for personal mobility, and the internet did for data transfer, spimes will do for personal transactions and ownership. Once the overhead of maintaining ownership is lifted, we’ll see some really innovative changes in the way society views commerce and ownership of items.
That, and nanotubes. Nanotubes are gonna be huge.
Advances in nutrition engineering will eliminate hunger, relieving millions from the rigors of a subsitance existance.
Maybe not next, but soon. Convergence of technologies has been touted for a while and no-one seems to be able to pull everything together, but I can see opportunities for some to merge.
[ul]Broadband wireless such as WiMAX. Many cities are starting to install wireless broadband in their downtown cores with plans to extend that to the whole city. If this can be expanded to the same sort of coverage as cell phones, then you have real freedom to connect whenever and whereever you are. Couple that expansion with IP telephony and VOIP and you can take a bite out of cellular business.
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If you have widely available broadband wireless access, then you’ll see a growing demand for
[ul]notebook PCs - having a notebook which is lighter and more rugged than currently available units that are easy to carry around, lasts for a long time on battery and connects to the broadband wireless. If you have a flash drive instead of large hard drive, you can cut power consumption and weight. If you have instant access to broadband, then you don’t have to have the massive local storage. Considering there are already 16GB flash drives, it doesn’t seem too far out there.
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If lots of people have a small notebook that they can carry around like a thick magazine, chances are they will want to be able to interconnect and share files or have private messaging which suggests the ability to exploit
[ul]local wireless sharing - WiFi like the new MicroSoft Zune where you can share files between units. Couple this with the smaller more rugged notebooks, and you’ve got a whole new paradigm in communication.
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Since you are mobile, it would be a good idea to have a
[ul]GPS - being able to find your car in a parking lot where your husband has dropped it off (great idea Shagnasty), where your kid is at 10:30PM, or the nearest Starbucks to where you are (probably across the street). If you are in contact with someone and want to know where they are, since you are waiting for them somewhere, just look up their GPS locator.
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How do you keep track of different people, cars, your notebook, your cell phone, your 3.5 kids GPS identifiers, etc?
[ul]IPv6 - Couple the IP address with personal identifiers such as SIN/SSN, bank accounts, or any addresses that you want to assign gives you the ability to personally manage your own universe of bookmarks. If each person is assigned series of 128 bit addresses that they can manage, then they have the ability to maintain their own list of objects. Can you imagine having to reference a single resource to find your own list of bank accounts, tax information, video store cards, affinity cards, specific GPS units,etc.?
How do you maintain this type of list? I don’t know, but Google will probably have something to do with it…
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We seem to be on the way there, what with the availability of BlackBerry type devices, Bluetooth, wireless broadband and the drop in price of laptops already easily accessible by the population in general. These technologies are already available in some form, but when they can be brought together to allow for greater mobility I think people will change the way they work.
Do you really think that’s the next big thing, or are you just wishing for it?
Because I’d like to know what miracle of ‘nutrition engineering’ it is that is going to eliminate hunger.
My generation with loud rock ‘n’ roll and Walkmen have incurred hearing loss. We also were obsessed with tanning, by the sun and artificial lights. The following generations have followed in our tracks, only louder and darker. So, we have made the hot occupations dermatologists (specializing in skin cancer) and audiologists. Hearing impairment has gone from a fringe business to a very big deal, so development of hearing aids and implants is on the front burner.
I believe a guilt powered car is just over the horizon. What a massive, untapped source of energy!
Massively Multiplayer Online Rape Simulators.
Based on the theory that a) every generation tends to adopts something (a culture, fashion, whatever) that the previous generation thinks is awful, horrific, and needs to be banned to preserve society, b) since said horrifying development always fails to actually destroy society, the generation that adopted it becomes the new old mainstream within a few days, c) argal, it takes something even MORE horrific to shock them, which d) the younger generation is usually creative enough to come up with; and the fact that a lot of the stuff that me and my generation like are arguably pretty gruesome already.
So, I predict that my kids (if and when I ever have any) will be playing SimPederast and torturing AI kittens.
No, you’re thinking of megatubes. Nanotubes are gonna be small.
Neither do motorcycles, and they’re popular. Same goes for road bikes. The reason the Segway didn’t catch on is because it makes you look like a fuckin’ dork. It’s a ridiculous, awkward-looking and unnatural thing to be in locomotion while standing upright. It might be comfortable and practical, but it looks too novel for most people to want to do it.
As if it weren’t goofy enough as it is, they had to make it the vehicle of choice for GOB Bluth on Arrested Development. That was the final in its coffin, officially making it a joke.
Final NAIL in its coffin.
I have seen a segway in public a grand total of once (on the sidewalk) and I live in a very quirky, bohemian, progressive-leaning community, with plenty of endearingly dorky science profs and programmer types who would be the main market for such a thing.
Genetically Modified Foods.
Having corn grow in poor soil with tiny amounts of water and highly resistent to pests will accomplish this.
I was against GMFs before I saw Penn & Teller’s quick clip on it. Indeed, STFU if you have the luxury of turning down food.
I think a next big thing will be space tourism and manufacturing.
-Tcat
Hmmm? Might be a good investment.