Every year at the Gartner Symposium, a list of top technology trends are predicted for the year to come. These aren’t meant to be business trends, this list is meant to be a bit more forward-looking and represents trends that are transitioning out of the emerging technology areas, but are not yet mainstream. This interesting information came to us from PC Magazine in their article, “The Top 10 Strategic Technology Trends for 2016.”

This year’s trends were split into three big categories: digital mesh, smart machines, and “the new IT reality.” Among these groups are devices beyond mobile, regardless of where you are. An increased interest and use in wearables beyond the watch or health monitor devices currently popular. Hands-free devices for medical applications and virtual reality applications will be some of the first on the market. One product example will be Google Cardboard, a virtual reality platform intended to be a low-cost system to encourage interest and development in virtual reality.

Melody K. Smith

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