Judging the Top 10 Tech Trends

The event was organized like a Comedy Central roast. Curt Carlson, President and CEO of SRI International, presented the top 10 tech trends at the 13th annual Churchill Club event.

“Technology and innovation is what we think about and do everyday at SRI,” Carlson explained in his opening speech, making sure to note that some of the trends he was about to proclaim were intentionally provocative.

After he read the trend, audience members were asked to raise a red card when they didn’t like the trend, or raise a green card if they agreed with the trend.  Then, the three panel members would discuss their opinions about each one.  Immediately afterward, the audience would push a button on an Option Finder vote remote to gauge what the 326 or so people in the audience really thought.

Without further ado, here are the Top 10 Tech Trends:

1) Age before beauty

Baby boomers will dictate the technology products of the future.

2) The Doctor is In

The trend is toward complete automation that will provide high quality diagnosis and advice—including answering patient questions—online, by combining AI, theInternet, and very low cost medical instrumentation.

3) Made for me

Practical, one-off production of physical goods in widely distributed micro-factories: the ultimate customization of products.

4) Pay Me Now

Technology and business models based on attracting consumers to share large amounts of information exclusively with services providers.

5) Rosie, At Last

The trend is robots becoming embedded in our environments, taking advantage of the cloud, to understand and fulfill our needs.

6) Social, Really

The rise of true social networks, designed to maintain real, respectful relationships online.

7) Augmented Reality

Hyper-resolution, augmented reality and hyper-accurate artificial people and objects that fundamentally enhance people’s experience of the world.

8) Engineering by Biologists

The trend is practical, engineered artifacts, devices, and computers, based on biology rather than just on silicon.

9) ‘Tis a gift to Be Simple

The trend is cyberdefense through widespread adoption of simple, low feature software for consumers and businesses.

10) Reverse Innovation

For developing countries to turn around the flow of innovation: Silicon Valley will begin to learn more from them about innovative applications than they need to learn from us about the underlying technology.