Linux is included in the dead OSes camp, sorry.
Scripting languages are the next step up.
Javascript, Python, Tcl, Perl, Usertalk, you name it. There'll be a thousand flowers blooming and a lot of ways to do very powerful things with very little effort. Look how much more you can do with software today. Click on that URL and magic happens remotely on some machine in Brazil or Russia that you've never even heard about. I'd say the rate of innovation in software is accellerating, if anything, not dropping off.