I write one of these "Tech Trends of 20XX" stories every year. For me, it's as big a part of the holidays as the Yule Log. I can remember some years when the big predictions for the next year were just the natural, incremental growth of current trends.
But some of the big tech trends we'll see next year seem futuristic—technologies that are quickly ramping up toward some sort of tipping point after which life could change in big, obvious ways. Let's start with the future of your wrist.
The year of the smartwatch
Samsung and Sony tried their hands at smartwatches in 2013.
I'm betting on smartwatches this year. A friend of mine told me that she bought a watch because she was tired of pulling out her phone to get the time. She prefers that familiar motion of swinging her arm up to present the back of one's wrist to one's face to get the time. With the right device, it seems natural that people would like to get lots of other kinds of information at the end of that same gesture.
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