Peter Diamandis' Top Tech Picks for 2015

I think this is a pretty aggressive timeline.

These technologies are certainly nascent -- but they have been, and will continue to be. I doubt that we will see widespread adoption of ALL (or even 25% of them) over the next 350 days.

More likely -- using Diamandis' own descriptive memes -- I believe many of these technologies are likely to hit an inflection point (i.e. where their exponential growth becomes an observable phenomenon) in the next five years.

> VR - obviously FB is making a huge play here, but Magic Leap is the real (pun intended, if you've seen the promos) elephant in the room. And I have a hunch that their technology won't be ready for at least another 18 months. And it's not even VR, it's AR (which I think is going to be easier to swallow for most consumers).

> Mass Market Robots. Roomba is already around. The question is robots for what. I don't see the killer app quite yet. Perhaps as industrial assistants? Amazon already uses them to great effect in their warehouses. But that is well out of the public eye.

> Autonomous vehicles. Sure, I'm planning to buy a car with autonomous capability in the next 18 months, but full explosion of this technology is going to require governmental concurrence, and lots of work by the insurance industry. And neither of those work very fast. If only for this reason, I see 10% market saturation as at least 4-5 years away.

> Drones "everywhere". They're still toys with remarkably short battery life.

> Wireless power. My personal sense is that Apple is the market-leader in expectations management for mainstream adoption of this sort of tech. And until it's integrated, I don't think it will see widespread adoption.

> Data + Genomics. No idea. But I do have some up-close experience with a non-public project in this area, and I have to admit I'm shocked by what they're able to do, putting large datasets to work. Here I agree with Diamandis that we might see something spectacular happen over the next year. But what -- I don't know.

> Sensor explosion. It is certainly coming. Not confident in the next year.

> Voice Control. Very much agree here, but because of the Apple Watch. All of a sudden an entire generation that saw Siri as a nice-to-have will now see it as a need-to-use -- and this will cascade downmarket to the Google and Microsoft ecosystems as well.

> 3D Printing. Upcoming patent lapses and adoption by large-scale corporations will likely drive this -- not consumer leadership. The biggest news I saw in this was Local Motors' initiative to build a 3D car manufacturing facility in Washington, DC. Once that happens, all bets are off because both corporate and consumer sectors will start to understand the true implications for the technology.

> Bitcoin. Agree in principal. But just as important is the underlying blockchain technology which could revolutionize many more things than simply currency. But yes -- here too, adoption via Apple is the leading indicator. And I believe that ApplePay (and potentially even an Apple currency) is the future.