For example real and already working nanobots. Interestingly enough they are built out of biological material. In Israel and in Switzerland they are working with folded dna that contains a payload of medicine. They recognize 12 different types of cancer and on encounter unfold and release their payload. These already exist and first tests on humans were made early this year. The size of those bots? 35nm (A single Zika virus has a diameter of 40nm).
The German Max-Planck-Institut works on three-layer nanobots that propel through water and "eat" heavy metal like lead (through a graphene oxide layer that absorbs them). First tests were promising: They cleared 95% of polluted water. After they are done they propel home and their content can be retrieved and recycled.

 

I love VST. That technology literally changed my life.
I can clearly see room for improvement in the architecture though.
Having fear of incompatibility with (unnecessarily required) system updates is crap.
Losing the ability to pull up old projects is even more asinine.

Arturia has some nice plugins but do we really need a whole new plugin with each version? I still keep their V4 plugs because they function almost exactly the same and use way less resources. The GUIs suck too with V5.

This might be a case of the developer's messy code but has anyone noticed that jBridging certain VSTs significantly reduces the CPU load?
I tried this with Unfiltered Audio's Dent which was pulling about 11% CPU with a fairly busy patch I made.
I jbridged the x64 VST to a 32-bit plugin and loaded the same patch and the CPU was barely hitting 2%.
The same for Output's Movement plugin. From 14-25% to 3-4%.

I tested this in Live, Bitwig, Reaper and Audiomulch. the CPU load varied but there was always a pretty significant decrease.

All that being said. Virtual Instruments and FX are amazing and what they do more than make up for the problems I have to deal with to use them.

Some of my favorite plugin devs unfortunately see no future for their products
https://delamanchavst.wordpress.com/
arcDev..?

Plugins with a future:
anything by Audio Damage

 

Thanks, tulamide, for the exhaustive information on how VSTs are implemented.

All but a single one:
How do I know if a plugin really sticks to the VST standard and ist self-contained?

 

I believe it relates to "Californian ideology", a term coined around 1995 by Richard Barbrook and Andy Cameron, see:
http://www.imaginaryfutures.net/2007/04/17/the-californian-ideology-2/

I like that mindset in some way. It's very positive and for sure can stimulate the believers to work hard for a great future.
But I wouldn't exactly call it a new idea, just continued modernism. AI seems not to have changed its promises for decades, every few years its protagonists shift their timeframes to "will take some more time, but we assure you, we're almost there".
Even that is nor new, Christian culture has always believed that we'll end in paradise very soon and shifted dates for the return of Christ several times. Time will tell if that singularity thing will take place like they predict or if they're just a bunch of madmen (possibly both? ;-)).

Personally I don't really believe that one can solve social problems solely by technological means. "Super meat" will not help as long as the problem lies rather in distribution than in production. The African warlords will be there as long as someone can pull profit off the current situation. Not to forget the western "warlords", though we are used to call them differently. I don't disagree that technological progress is a good thing generally, but imo we need to put equal effort into social development.

But before this thread gets moved to "Lounge" or mutates into a cruel political flamewar, back to topic:

When you mentioned Ray Kurzweil it reminded me of the fully-equipped K2000R, which I bought for the price of a plugin some years ago. It's about 20 years old now and I'm quite confident that it will still work in 10 years. And with it's distinct sound it's still useful. Which plugin can compete for longevity?

(Edit: corrected at least one of my typos)

 

The crucial part for both is external i/o. Access to the system, for example to write non-standardized files (which is pretty much anything apart from .fxp and .fxb) can break with serious system changes, as was the case when the MacOS switched to a Unix derivate.

Always demo the VSTs you are interested in. If there's an executable (.exe) plus a plugin (.dll), test if the plugin still works without the .exe (place it in the bin). If it doesn't, it isn't "self-contained".

Look for a manufacturers older plugins. See if people still work with them (or could if they want to). Most likely do they stick to the standard.

Avoid iLok plugins. It's a mechanism to protect the manufacturer against pirating, but it also means you make yourself dependent on third party hard- or software. If for whatever reason iLok doesn't work, all of your iLok-secured plugins won't work.