"Pessimists sound smart, but optimists make money," is an adage I believe, so I've been trying to mine pessimism into contrapositive opportunities based on who benefits from it, so take these with a giant bag of salt as they are trying to derive optimism from dystopian views, but:

- (enterprisey langages and platforms, identity management) I don't think consumer tech mints any new unicorns or platforms for a while, as a discretionary cost, I think there's a consumer tech winter starting.

- (graphs, GANNs, LLMs, forum tech, api aggregators) When I look anecdotally at where the money is (institutions, endowments, PACs), where it isn't (consumers), and where it is going (favored causes and mechanisms to secure political levers) - the upside goes to an emerging class who works in moderation / trust and safety, campaign management, PR, ad tech/surveiilance, gov tech consulting. Like marketing, but for shifting narrative alignment and "funding," instead of discovering customer desire. "Influence hacking," is a thing.

- (not comp.sci, but likely trend) I joke that the biggest bubble over the next decade will be weekend vacation property and renovations near government towns. All them comrades gonna need dachas.

- (identity management, AI model alignment, software attestation) The mood of money in the econoomy now is being applied to converting frothy QE cash to political influence instead of being invested in innovation. Model alignment, model authenticity, and ability to influence will be valuable.

- (next gen browser tech, virtualization, webasm, react, scripting frameworks) Social platforms are optimizing for hollowing out the value they provided instead of making new products people want, so there are unlimited dollars for anything that sustains their business model a bit longer. Social is the new legacy business model, and they will spend to sustain it the way banks and credit card companies spend to maintain their oligopolies. This means sustaining legacy tech features in browsers that enabled it.

- (PowerBI, python in Excel makes you a wizard) I'd bet on incentives for additional governance roles, where firms will get ESG and tax incentives to hire low tech-skill party affiliates, creating a public sector job consumer bubble. Those jobs are ongoing conversations about higher level metrics that come from these tools.

- (no tech, just a bet) A lot of those jobs will go to childless people without a lot of responsibility, and many will just drink/amuse themselves to death, so get long boxed white wine and short pampers. Luxury goods/bags do well, as they will need new ways to signal status.

- (piecework gig platforms, make google glass shared/augmented reality for toddlers and parents) Reproductive tech and services set for a boom, single parent family management tech could become its own category.

- (LLMs for teaching and testing/exams, higher level abstractions like category theory, graphs, domain specific language design) Premium edu tech to scrape out any tiny advantage in a now-globalized competition between students for university spots. Anything that communicates useful abstractions faster will win.

I'm going to go touch some grass now.