The new thing thats going to “emerge” is already here. VMs and Containers were around for about a decade or more before they became really widespread.

Frankly I think the serverless model will end up dominating in the long run. Whats really missing there isnt a better abstraction for k8s. Its the dx workflow and local development experience that still requires lots of work. Emulators for services, workflows, good ide integration, open service standard. That will all be where the next layer happens.