Now I am trying to figure out what the most important tech related trend will be during the next 5 years.
Virtual Reality? Drones? 3d printing? Bitcoin?
Also, self-driving cars (if they reached a reasonable price-point in the next few years) could have pretty profound effects on ridesharing, delivery, parking, congestion, etc. Could be a major quality-of-life changer for people in big cities.
But overall I think the most-important technology will be batteries. Long-lasting, fast-charging, small, powerful, cheap, recyclable batteries will be crucial to so many hardware-based industries. They are truly the stepping stone to many futuristic tech-trends.
All noble uses for the technology, but I suspect the most popular use will be to take better selfies.
You don't even have to go to the developing world to find opportunity. There are services that exist in the US that simply don't exist elsewhere. One example is an MLS for real estate, which powers Zillow, redfin, etc. There are many developed countries that don't have one yet.
That saddens me as I do not care for it at all. It's not like I can't learn how to code in JS, but to do so I find quite unrewarding.
I don't see 3D printing being commercially interesting for at least another few years. For anything you really seriously want a custom-made part for, you'd want a metal part made by an experienced machinist with a CNC mill. I expect 3D printers will get there someday but not soon.
Drones, quite likely there are many uses for them other than snapping pictures of white house lawn.
Bitcoin, maybe. In the long run, definitely. There is a specific limit to how many bitcoins can ever be mined. At the same time, more merchants are accepting them. Without a doubt, the dollar price of a coin will increase. I do not know yet - I haven't really checked - whether i'd expect bitcoin to do better than what I could do by investing in stocks, bonds or commodities, but in the long run I expect they would do better.
For reasons I'll go into later, I just became a vegan. I've done it before, I know how to be a vegan and be happy with my diet. Tempeh is popular among vegans, but I regard is as foul, I'd rather drink sewage, but I'm completely cool with someone else eating all the tempeh.
What I like is to stress over cache misses.
Look at tablets...they're getting keyboards as an upsell. They're becoming full computing devices. The cell phone companies' walled gardens aren't the future. Maintaining a walled garden requires constantly delivering features people really want. That's not a telephone company's core competency. They're future is in providing infrastructure for general computing. All they really want is mailbox checks.
General computing is better with keyboards.