When I ask people about the future of tech, most of them just end up listing their wish list. I wish in future we can do XYZ... Or they end up talking about human accomplishments (space, medical etc.) that they most likely don't get to partake in closely.
So last week I asked a bunch of people (techies and non-techies alike) what current tech they regularly use that they couldn't have imagined 10 years ago. Got some really interesting thoughts. Retina displays and 4k displays were definitely unexpected. Complete phone backup to cloud would've surprised many. Same with mostly waterproof phones.
One trend I noticed that people are way more surprised with hardware than software, even though AI/ML software has made huge leaps in the last decade. Maybe because sci-fi has raised our expectations for human-life AI and until we achieve that in code, it just won't be enough. But hardware innovations continue to amaze people.
