Silicon Valley Club Names Top 10 Most Important Trends of 2018

Some of the trends include: "New Space Stack Will Enable Extraterrestrial Commerce"; "Voice First Will Open Up Internet to the World"; and "China Accelerates Past the U.S. in Key Technology Areas." Have any idea what the top IT trends are for the next three to five years? The Churchill Club, one of Silicon Valley’s longest-running and most successful business/social organizations, does. The well-respected club, which consists of many IT and venture capital executives and entrepreneurs, revealed its annual Top 10 Tech Trends list May 22 at a dinner in Burlingame, Calif. Panel members debating the trend list at the event included David Cowan, Bessemer Venture Partners; Sarah Guo, Greylock Partners; Nicole Quinn, Lightspeed Venture Partners; Tomasz Tunguz, Redpoint Ventures; and Mike Vernal, Partner, Sequoia Capital. Masters of ceremonies were Forbes Media CEO Mike Federle and Publisher Rich Karlgaard, co-founder of the club. Here are the top 10 IT trends for 2018, according to the 2018 pundits: Trend 1: The New Space Stack Will Enable Extraterrestrial Commerce. After holding back Moore’s Law for 50 years, the space industry is being turned upside down by a new ecosystem of startups developing microsat constellations that replace mainframe-like systems at 1 percent of the cost, with planetary coverage and higher resilience. Companies in tourism, mining, communications, manufacturing, agriculture, energy, defense, media and more will buy the tech and services they need off-the-shelf to operate extraterrestrial fleets.