This is an inspired list of (mostly-tech) predictions that I think will occur in 2019. I’ve seen a few others talk about or post a list of predictions and thought it would be interesting if I could predict the future from what I know at the moment. These predictions will be on topics that I have some sort of understanding in.

1. Self-driving cars will grow in popularity and acceptance, but there will be one clear leader that will become mainstream (most likely Waymo). Other AV focused startups will be acquired for large sums of money by existing car manufacturers as they look to get in on the deal.

2. Augmented Reality will not move much on the consumer end. I don’t expect any devices to come out, and the current ecosystem is geared towards developers and creators rather than consumers and will remain so until 2020.

3. Blockchain startups and companies will have to refocus and introduce other paradigms and not just rely on the word “Blockchain” to carry them forward. On a related note, most cryptocurrency plays will also die out, ICOs will reduce considerably. The mainstream cryptocurrencies (Bitcoin, Ethereum, etc) will remain relatively stable.

4. AI research and productization of audio and voice-based mediums will grow rapidly.

5. Machine Learning development will become more mainstream and part of a generic software engineering skillset. We’re getting to a point where tooling and training are making it easier for developers to unravel research and make it easier to implement and integrate.

6. “Public” Group social media (i.e. Facebook) will decline and more “private”, and group-like social networks (Discord, etc) will become more popular.

7. This one is the wildest. Drones will become used for security and survelence. We’ll see drones in cities, airports, stadiums, and other public spaces.

Alright, non-tech time. You’ll see my mind is very pessimistic for 2019 in terms of the state of the world.

1. The stock market will decline.

2. Housing prices will start to decrease but not “crash” as we saw in 2008.

3. 2019 will be a year of worldwide political mess (more than 2018!). We’ll see Trump being impeached in 2019 due to #8 and #9.

It’ll be fun to review these at the end of the year and see how many I get right!