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Note: this topic is from 6/19/2017. Thanks 2ndDivisionVet.

Such lists are always amusing, at least. R & D for most big ideas is only available to big-cap companies, so privately-held startups containing the real talent can only go just so far, then get bought out, rather than turning up as an IPO. And getting hold of an IPO at the starting line is, to say the least, difficult. Roku has been around for over a decade by now, just had its IPO, and as happens with so many, the first day flipped price spike didn't last, and won't be seen again for years, if ever.

Amazon, AMD, Apple, Google, Microsoft, Nvidia, and probably others (including Chinese and possibly Indian companies; in at least a couple of these categories, Israeli companies) are definitely involved in numbers 1, 2, 5, and 6, and probably 7.

3D printing will be in many a local shop, pretty much everywhere in the US, in a year, and will be the lower-end stuff found in most homes five years from now. SpaceX already uses high-end 3D printing to build engines and components, and I'd be very surprised if a huge, relatively fast 3D printer won't soon exist to extrude custom-length one-piece rocket fuselages, if not at SpaceX, then somewhere.

Number 7 is one where political difficulties will arise internationally, and mobile transactions (#5) are much more important. Mobile transactions will be in most hands in developed countries (if they aren't, it's my fault, old flip-phone user; hey, I grew up watching Star Trek) and in a good many hands in developing countries like India, and exchange rates are all handled by some unseen distant computer. The US, EU, China, and India make up pretty close to half the Earth's human population.

Putting Johnny Cabs all over the place might be convenient (or might not, considering they'll have to be expensively licensed in at least some polities), but they'll also put an end to a bunch of part-time and full-time jobs. And those cabbies, they do more than just drive you around when they get good and ready, they also keep the cabs spotless.

Okay, bad example.

Numbers 2, 3, and 5, at least, will displace a lot of employees, who will then be *liberated* from having to work, yeah, right, and there will be a political imperative to *create jobs* that can't be done with automation (at least, not now), such as drug counselling. That'll be just in time, because both illicit drugs (I understand that a lot of meth cooking is done in Mexico now; it's always been more of an outdoor and rural activity; heroin is made in a labor-intensive, multi-step process; powder cocaine and crack lie between the two in terms of cost and stimulation) and prescription painkillers and the like will probably boom boom boom.

Med stocks remain highly speculative though, almost as bad a crapshoot as airline stocks. :^)

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