Eric Savitz from Barron's went to the Fairmont Hotel in San Jose for the Churchill Club's tenth annual Top 10 Tech Trends Dinner. The people making the picks are mostly venture capitalists such as Steve Jurvetson (Draper Fisher Jurvetson), Vinod Khosla (Khosla Ventures), Josh Kopelman (First Round Capital), Roger McNamee (Elevation Partners) and Joe Schoendorf (Accel Partners), so some of them are in a position to back their ideas with substantial amounts of cash.
This year's picks are mostly the standard stuff of Bill Gates keynotes, such as Vinod Knosla's "The mobile phone will be a mainstream personal computer", Josh Kopelman's "The rise of the 'implicit' Internet" (your data is "in the cloud") and McNamee's "Within 5 years, everything that matters to you will be available to you on a device that fits on your belt or in your purse." Which isn't to say they're wrong, of course...
Some were more challenging. For example:
From Joe Schoendorf: Water tech will replace global warming as a global priority. The world is running our of usable water and will kill millions more in our lifetime than global warming. Darfur could go down as the first water war of the 21st century. And with 2 million deaths, might not make the top 10 list. One billion of 6 billion people do not have healthy water. We're losing close to 1 million people a year under 5 years old due to dirty water.
And from Steve Jurvetson:
Evolution trumps design. Many interesting unsolved problems in computer science, nanotech, and synthetic biology require construction of complex systems. Evolutionary algorithms are a powerful alternative to traditional design, blossoming first in neural networks and now in microbial engineering.
Well, this is an idea that's been around for more than 30 years, in one form or another, and I remember writing about it in the 1980s. It still hasn't taken off....
And finally:
Vinod Khosla: Fossilizing fossil energy. Oil and coal will have trouble competing with biofuels. 99% of discussion on the topic is completely irrelevant to the topic. In 4-5 years will have production proof that can sell biofuel at well below $2 a gallon at today's tax structure and no subsidy.
I thought that was an idea that was being put into reverse.....
Well, if you had $40 billion to invest, which trends would you back?
