There are two things you can do if you want to understand the future of system administration.
First, if you want to see what DevOps will be like 5-10 years out, you can read the amazing new book, "Site Reliability Engineering: How Google Runs Production Systems". I read a preview copy and it was excellent. Many different Google SRE teams got together to produce a very well-rounded book that covers all aspects of Google's SRE program, which is easily 5-10 years ahead of the industry. (Pre-order from O'Reilly or Amazon) Congrats to the editors Niall Richard Murphy, Chris Jones, Jennifer Petoff, and Betsy Beyer on a great addition to the IT cannon.
Second, if you want to see what SRE will look like in 30-50 years, you should watch the 2009 movie "Moon" staring Sam Rockwell. Anything I say would be a spoiler, so you'll just have to trust me. (BTW, the trailer is full of spoilers. Don't watch it!)
Congrats to all of Google SRE on the publication of the new O'Reilly book! I predict it will be a big hit! (and thanks for letting me blurb the back cover!)
[P.S. I apologize in advance for the very link-bait'y title. What I mean to say is that Google SRE is devops at an incredible scale.]