4 Tech Trends & Hobbies of the Near Future 

When we think of technology advancing, the broad idea tends to be that it’s making it easier for us to accomplish things without effort. More advanced home climate controls keep us from having to adjust temperatures; better smartphones anticipate our needs and suggest functions for us; self-driving cars will transport us along the roads. Indeed, one could argue that the chief goal of advancing technology is to make enable us to perform tasks both more easily and more effectively. But as technology continues to move forward, we also gain new opportunities to interact with it in interesting ways — essentially producing new hobbies.

With that in mind we want to look at some of the interesting tech trends and hobbies we foresee becoming popular in the coming years.

1.) Virtual Sculpting

One could debate if this is explicitly a tech hobby, or more of an artistic hobby that is played out via technology. But however you choose to think about it, 3D sculpting through virtual reality is something that’s beginning to emerge as an accessible activity. Back in 2017 in fact, Towards Data Science explored modeling in VR and painted the picture of an emerging art form — with the writer concluding that he was “excited to keep learning.” And in the years since, many have done just that, learning how to use increasingly impressive programs to create 3D art in virtual space. With VR still refining itself as a consumer technology though, we’re betting that this hobby has only just begun to emerge. As virtual reality tech becomes more affordable and more widely used, it’s likely that many people will begin to explore their artistic potential in the medium. We may even see some famous artists emerge as original VR sculptors!

2.) Arduino Engineering

An Arduino board, for those who may not know, is essentially an electronics platform that can be programmed to read inputs and produce outputs. For example, it might be able to take in information about the weather and then display an accurate temperature in lights. This is a fun piece of tech that people have been experimenting with for some time now, but moving forward it may become even more popular as it becomes more complex. As is explained in a piece on Arduino schematics by Altium, people can now access software that allows them to modify Arduino boards essentially to add more complex functionality. It’s something that involves a little bit of a learning curve, but the expanding availability of this kind of software makes it likely that more people will attempt to build their own electronic tools and mechanisms via Arduino in the years ahead.

3.) 3D Printing

3D printing can actually accompany the idea of virtual sculpting, in the sense that one can enter a VR program to create a model, and then print said model into existence. VR aside though, the more straightforward practice of 3D printing is also likely to become an increasingly popular hobby. As was written up recently in a post on 3D printing in Hongkiat, there’s a lot to know before you get into 3D printing. You’ll have to figure out whether to buy or make a printer, what materials to use, how to obtain or create model designs, and so on. It’s not something you simply start doing in an afternoon. But as with VR and Arduino software, the increasing availability of consumer 3D printers is bound to lead more people to learn. Creating one’s own products via printing software will likely be relatively common practice in time.

4.) AI Programming

AI programming is also something of an inevitability when it comes to considering new trends and hobbies in technology. When posting about “What Can We Expect From Artificial Intelligence In The Near Future” we once remarked on a rise of machine-human interactions. This is something we’ll see even at the home level, with various household tasks increasingly trusted to intelligent machinery. And in time, this is likely to lead to more customized programming of said machinery. We’re not quite at this point yet, but in the years ahead, expect it to become normal for people to tweak and engineer their own AI machines in order to train them for different functions.

There’s no end to what new technology can introduce for us, and in the near future it will continue to bring about wonders we can hardly conceive of now. On a simpler level though, the steady advance of tech is also going to continue to produce new consumer trends and hobbies, and these are some of the most interesting ones to think about.