9 Counter-Trends To Watch Out For in 2016

1. Impressing people by dropping the name of your Alma-Mater becomes passé. MOOC surfers will roll their eyes and tell you they are currently taking courses from Stanford, MIT, and University of Michigan.
2. Smart devices that beep, ring, or thump our wrist will lose their luster. As IOT devices become smarter, technology will become better at improving our lives without annoying the heck out of us.
3. Data Storage will become sexy. At your next cocktail party try dropping the line “I back up my data to secondary storage before it is backed up to my private cloud, I just feel it’s more reliable when I do it that way”
4. Regulators and Court precedent assume a strong role in dictating the future of technology. With several technologies like IOT, Drones, Robotics, Big Data, etc., raising privacy concerns, courts and regulators will weigh in like never before.
5. Bitcoin will become huge, but sadly not in the United States. Bitcoin price is stabilizing and the bitcoin market is becoming liquid. In the US, regulation will curtail the popularity of bitcoin.
6. The cloud evaporates. Just kidding, cloud won’t actually go away but it is already so ubiquitous that the phrase “…in the cloud” can just be dropped.
7. Venture capital evaporates. After two giant consecutive hype cycles-Big Data and IOT — venture capitalists are tapped out, talked out, and feeling a little bummed. Would-be entrepreneurs are strongly advised to remain in their garages for another 10 month.
8. Single digit growth in mobile devices. Cell phone growth rate declined 4% in 2015 and will drop to single digest in 2016. Thats just how the ball bounces back.
9. The familiar USB port familiar to us will be upgraded. In 2016 it may be wise to carry around a USB Type A to -USB Type-C Cable.