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Steve Wozniak Predicts The Future (usatoday.com)

Posted by EditorDavid on from the let's-do-the-time-warp dept.

USA Today asked Steve Wozniak to predict what the world will look like in 2075 -- one hundred years after the founding of Apple. An anonymous reader writes: "He's convinced Apple, Google and Facebook will be bigger in 2075," according to the article -- just like IBM, which endured long past its founding in 1911. Pointing to Apple's $246.1 billion in cash and marketable securities, Wozniak says Apple "can invest in anything. It would be ridiculous to not expect them to be around... The same goes for Google and Facebook."

Woz predicted portable laptops back in 1982, and now says that by 2075, we could also see new cities built from scratch in the deserts, with people wearing special suits to protect them from the heat. AI will be ubiquitous in all cities, as consumers interact with smart walls to communicate -- and to shop -- while home medical devices will allow self-diagnosis and doctor-free prescriptions. And according to the article, Woz "is convinced a colony will exist on the Red Planet. Echoing the sentiments of Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, whose Blue Origin start-up has designs on traveling to Mars, Wozniak envisions Earth zoned for residential use and Mars for heavy industry." (Though he doesn't have high hopes that we'll ever meet aliens.)
Woz is promoting the Silicon Valley Comic Con next weekend. (Not coincidentally, its theme is "The Future of Humanity: Where Will We Be in 2075?") During the interview, Woz pointed at a colleague's iPhone, smiled broadly and said it "shows you how exciting the future can be."

29 of 198 comments (clear)

  1. Beware of predictions by Kazymyr · · Score: 5, Insightful

    In 1911, it could have been predicted that 106 years later the Tsarist and Austro-Hungarian empires would be around and stronger than ever. There was no reason at that time not to predict that.

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    I hadn't known there were so many idiots in the world until I started using the Internet -Stanislaw Lem
    1. Re:Beware of predictions by Gavagai80 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Bad examples. Nobody except maybe the Tsar would've predicted Tsarist Russia would last. It'd been weakening for a long time and there was a revolution in 1905.

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      This space intentionally left blank
    2. Re:Beware of predictions by Zero__Kelvin · · Score: 3, Funny

      Well the inverse would be "Whenever you hear a prediction, just assume that is how it will play out, because they always do" so, IOTW, No Shit Sherlock. And you have been modded up for that? Slashdot really has sunk to a low even I couldn't have predicted 20 years ago.

      --
      Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
    3. Re:Beware of predictions by mrsquid0 · · Score: 4, Interesting

      In many ways Putinist Russia is Tsarist Russia. The broad outlines of Russia's current governance and foreign policy would be immediately recognizable to people in 1911. The thing they would not have predicted was the 62-year hiatus in the middle of the 20th century.

      On the other hand, the long-term demographic problems facing Austria-Hungary were known and both Russia and Germany were trying to get their ducks in a row in case the empire collapsed. Much of the lead-up to WWI, and the Balkans wars. was states jockeying for position in a post-AH world. It was widely assumed that Austria-Hungary would not survive in its (then) current form much beyond the death of Franz-Josef. Even his heir was openly talking about radically restructuring the empire.

      --
      Just because you are paranoid does not mean that no-one is out to get you.
    4. Re:Beware of predictions by Kazymyr · · Score: 2

      Bad examples. Nobody except maybe the Tsar would've predicted Tsarist Russia would last. It'd been weakening for a long time and there was a revolution in 1905.

      Well, here we have Tsar Wozniak making predictions about the Apple empire. :)
      Quite the apt analogy I presume.

      --
      I hadn't known there were so many idiots in the world until I started using the Internet -Stanislaw Lem
    5. Re: Beware of predictions by magarity · · Score: 2

      They're still around but just transitioned to a looser format; the Commonwealth is larger than the Empire ever was.

  2. Nice try... by SpiralBound · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I'm surprised anyone would bother trying to make such sweeping predictions of "the world of tomorrow". I guess Mr. Wozniak felt that future generations will need something to giggle at in 58 years. I know I get an amused chuckle from reading all those outlandish predictions of what the year 2000 was supposed to be like, as envisioned by futurists of the 1930's. Where's my flying car! LOL! :-)

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    Avatar of the God(s) Random
    1. Re:Nice try... by mrsquid0 · · Score: 2

      Barring a visit by a Class V space jellyfish there will almost certainly be future generations in 58 years. The real question is what will their quality of life be like?

      --
      Just because you are paranoid does not mean that no-one is out to get you.
    2. Re:Nice try... by Gussington · · Score: 2

      The real question is what will their quality of life be like?

      If we use the last 10000 years as an example it is likely to be much better, all the while the great unwashed will believe it's worse.
      This has pretty much been the standard pattern for all of human civilisation.

    3. Re:Nice try... by Aighearach · · Score: 2

      Where's my flying car! LOL! :-)

      They're called "business jets."

  3. We'll meet our cosmic neighbors when we're ready.. by UnknownSoldier · · Score: 2, Insightful

    .. because there would be little point in showing us how morally, spiritually, and technologically primitive we are.

  4. Here's my prediction: by DatbeDank · · Score: 4, Insightful

    In 100 years people who were successful in one field will continue to try and predict the future in areas that they have no expertise in and still be wrong.

    1. Re:Here's my prediction: by mfh · · Score: 2

      ie: narcissism is still currency in 100yrs

      --
      The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
  5. No. by Gravis+Zero · · Score: 3, Insightful

    "He's convinced Apple, Google and Facebook will be bigger in 2075,"

    I'm sure everyone in 1975 thought IBM was going to be ruling the playground right now. The truth is that new companies get too big, bureaucratic or unfocused which makes them slow to respond to new technologies while new companies emerge and displace them which happens about every generation or two. It's been my experience that 10 years is about as far as you can see in terms of the technology industry if you're lucky but that doesn't even account for societal changes.

    Here's my prediction: some old fart is going to complain about how the current generation behaves and give their account about how things used to be better.

    --
    Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
    1. Re:No. by Guspaz · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Well, they didn't exactly do too bad for themselves. IBM is roughly 30% larger today than they were in 1975, accounting for inflation (~6x the size by pure dollars). Maybe they didn't rule the playground, but they grew even larger and more profitable.

    2. Re:No. by SteveWoz · · Score: 5, Informative

      A whole interview rarely carries over. I was asked if I thought Apple would be around in 100 years. My reply even referred to IBM, along the lines of what you can do and how many restarts you can get when you are that big. I facetiously jabbed at the idea of Trump seeking advice from today's huge internet companies by telling the reporter that they would all ask for lower taxes and become larger yet.

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      OK a new size TV
    3. Re: No. by Voyager529 · · Score: 2

      I don't see the same longevity in Facebook as Google. When more grannies are on Facebook than 18 year olds, won't they lose their cool factor and become another MySpace?

      Well, that depends. Off the top of my head, here were Myspace's problems:

      -Their IM client never worked.
      -They allowed raw HTML pasting, which meant that MySpace pages were filled with gobs and gobs of glitter graphics and terrible CSS that made each page a different style of navigation.
      -Their advertising consisted of "punch the monkey" banner ads, but they were serving up massive amounts of internet traffic. They didn't have much in the way of user profiles or 'brand pages' with which to monetize.
      -As much as Facebook and Twitter get ire when they change the UI, Myspace never seemed to attempt to do so...until they deleted everyone's data...then restored about half of it years later.
      -It predated the critical mass of smartphones (yes, there was a Blackberry app...and very little to do with it) and failed to keep users engaged over time.
      -It didn't have the userbase Facebook has.

      Facebook will probably experience a slow decline, but even if grannies become the prevalent demographic, I don't think Facebook cares as much about their 'cool factor', as long as the people who use the site have good click-through rates or profiles marketers are willing to pay for. However, its sheer pervasiveness and market saturation means that it's basically the "lowest common denominator" of social networks. Snapchat may be the cool thing right now, but Facebook users outnumber them by over 10:1.

      Will something else take over? Well, that relies on two things: sufficient dissatisfaction with Facebook, and a comparable competitor to take up the slack. Myspace wouldn't have experienced its mass exodus if Facebook wasn't waiting in the wings to give everyone a home, along with additional functionality - in Facebook's case, it was possible to interact with it via text message, which was a big deal when flip phones and 'feature phones' still well-outnumbered smartphones.

      The question for the first part is what it would take to make people dissatisfied with Facebook. UI changes haven't done it, privacy implications haven't done it, political backlash hasn't done it, the Messenger debacle didn't do it...so it's rather tough to tell what the breaking point would be for Facebook...but let's say that whatever it was, happened. What would the competitor have to have in order to cause a migration? I can't believe it would take more than a month to conjure up an app/website combination that had one-to-many messaging, one-to-one messaging, image sharing, and location sharing. Besides "it's not Facebook", what would the incentive be? Instagram has had a decent amount of success due to ease-of-use and filters. Snapchat became popular because of its fun face changers and 24-hour limit. Whatever Facebook++ has, it'll need to do something desirable that isn't already being done, and have lots of people migrate to it.

  6. Is it marketable? by Opportunist · · Score: 3, Insightful

    That's the question to be asked when you want to know whether something will happen. Can it be monetized? Can someone make money off it? That is the pivotal question.

    Why don't we have colonies on the moon, as a lot of people thought in the 60s? No profit. Why don't we have flying cars? No profit. Why don't we live in one of the many utopias that were promised to us? No profit.

    Socially, the 20xx years will probably be closer to the 18xx years than the 19xx years, without a Soviet Union that forces us to look like we're the good guys, there is exactly no reason that cutthroat capitalism shouldn't be employed to the full extent that we had in the 1800s. Only far, far more efficiently.

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    We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
    1. Re:Is it marketable? by Opportunist · · Score: 5, Interesting

      The reason our parents could afford a house on a working class wage and we cannot is simply that we earn less than they did. Yes, I'm not kidding here, in buying power we're worse off than our parents were. Well, most of us at least. A select few are actually better off. Then again, it's that select few that probably don't even notice it.

      Our running costs also went up. And I'm not even talking about fluff like that we "need" cell phones and internet. Even if you dump that, we're nowhere near the expense level our parents dealt with. Yes, part of it is convenience. Most of it, though, is planned obsolescence. I do remember my dad repairing our TV, our washing machine and various other electronic devices around the house. Today, when one of them breaks, all you can do is throw it away and buy a new one. And not because you're too stupid to fix it, but because it CANNOT be repaired. Generally, the amount of things you can actually do yourself, build yourself and fix yourself has dwindled into insignificance. I remember my dad actually gathering his buddies and build an extension to our home. Can't do that no more, new building codes and other laws demand that you hire some "professional" to do it.

      Professional only means here that he's doing it for money. Not that he has any fucking clue.

      The list goes on. It's frustrating to know that you're reduced to being a consumer. And this learned helplessness is branching into other areas of our life. More and more people live by the creed of "can't do it anyway, why bother trying".

      In all aspects of their life.

      --
      We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
  7. hopefully it will finally be by FudRucker · · Score: 4, Funny

    the year of the Linux desktop

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    Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
  8. What?! by DontBeAMoran · · Score: 2

    No catgirls?!

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    #DeleteFacebook
  9. Counter-argument to Woz by DontBeAMoran · · Score: 3, Informative

    I predict it will be more like Idiocracy. In fact it's already begun.

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    #DeleteFacebook
  10. Cities in the desert by Alwin+Henseler · · Score: 2

    Makes perfect sense to me. It may just be a matter of economics:

    In the past, cities tended to grow at strategic locations, or where it is relatively easy (read: cheap) to support a city. Like near a choke point between land masses. Or a river delta (easy transport up river). Or in the middle of an area with fertile agricultural land.

    In a technological advanced society, it should be possible to recycle most raw materials (including water). Most food could be grown in 10-story greenhouses where crops don't even need soil. This only takes space, and energy. So 'cheap' may then gravitate to non-agricultural land where energy is abundant. A desert could be one of such places. Floating cities on the open ocean another option.

    Of course this may depend on how much more the world's population grows. Maybe that will stabilize at a number where there isn't much need to build new cities from scratch.

  11. My predictions... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    A world market crash as rogue agents from various countries manipulate high speed trading markets for immediate gains, destabilizing the currently in-place market balance agreements between the top trading organizations around the globe. Apple shares will plummet to $1 per share, at which point Apple will be bought out by Costco, and the iPhone will be marketed in bulk packs of 25 and as a loss leader for Costco Internet Services. Costco Internet Services will actually be a division of Amazon run on the AmeriNet network, the internet no longer being what it is today but more like AOL once more.

    We'll have flying cars, but only the elite and shipping & transport companies will be able to afford or use them. They'll also be fully autonomous with security programs backed by massive AI complexes that actively defend themselves from hacking, usually by taking down an entire countries internet structure for a short time. Its simply more efficient that way.

    Home computers will no longer be a thing in the US, as cardboard boxes won't have electrical outlets. The good news is that Apple and others don't accept rat pelts and grass clipping as currency anyways. Rednecks will be extinct as well, having been replaced by literally everyone else in the US and out-competed for food.

    The maker community will have been completely bought out by the Corporations, and their projects all promptly shelved in an effort to prevent the Third Corporate IP sueball war.

    Generation of power at home will be flat out illegal in every country. You will buy your electricity and heating gas and like it, or die.

    Laser weapons will finally come into their own, and Trump's descendants will carve his name in 30 mile high letters on the face of the moon, in homage to Chairface Chippendale. The use of laser weaponry will then be banned in all countries by mutual agreement treaty.

    We won't make it to Mars. We'll have had our first contact with advanced alien species before 2075, and they'll have established a cordon around our planet to keep us all here until we die off naturally, thus preventing the spread of our insanity to the universe at large. They will however rebroadcast our sitcoms, removing the laugh tracks and billing them as documentaries, as a warning to other species not to interact with us.

  12. Wasn't the first to predict laptops by arobatino · · Score: 4, Informative

    Woz predicted portable laptops back in 1982

    Laptops were predicted in the September 1977 Scientific American article Microelectronics and the Personal Computer by Alan C. Kay. That's just one prediction I happened to know, there may be earlier ones.

  13. Predictions are about as useful as MySpace stock by raxtich · · Score: 2

    How soon people forget that it was less than a decade ago that everyone was convinced MySpace was going to be around forever, Windows was going to be killed off by "desktop Linux", the demise of Blockbuster meant DVD's-by-mail was the future of home video viewing, Amazon's business model was destined to fail, Blackberry was the future of smartphones, and everyone would be driving hydrogen cars.

  14. Re:We'll meet our cosmic neighbors when we're read by Applehu+Akbar · · Score: 2

    "Technological development is not coupled with any scale of morality in any way, shape, or form. If we were waiting for morality to develop before advancing technology, we'd be sitting in a cave debating whether or not rocks were edible.

    '

    At any given time in human history, moral codes are largely an emergent property of the many adjustments in social etiquette we have to make as new technologies become available. Nineteenth-century Britain had to deal with child labor moving from the farm, where it had always peacefully existed, to factories, where the changed environment made it an abomination. Right at the moment we are fretting about our sudden ability to use personal privacy as an asset that we can exchange for goods and services.

  15. We still have to solve the following insanely diff by backslashdot · · Score: 2

    1. Batteries that are 5x better than what we have today.
    2. Artificial muscle to replace bulky inefficient motors.
    3. Solar cells that are 3x cheaper than today's lowest cost.
    4. Fusion energy (current viable path exists via MagLIF or ITER).
    5. Cure stage IV cancer and autoimmune diseases reliably.

  16. Missing Oxford comma by terevos · · Score: 2

    > He's convinced Apple, Google and Facebook will be bigger in 2075,"

    He's convinced Apple that Google and Facebook will be bigger? How did he do that? And why did Apple need to be convinced?