GRAND RAPIDS – Technologist Keith Brophy, for the twelfth year in a row, presented his tech trends for the coming years – a collection of predictions this year that highlighted alternative energy, social networking, smart electric meters, health care, and auto tuners.

Speaking before about 100 people packed into the restored Wealthy Theater, Brophy, a West Michigan technology entrepreneur, culled his list from 10 to five this year and went into more details on his predictions. The event was hosted by aimWest, a West Michigan technology professional association.

Another new wrinkle this year was Brophy?s predictions were given a thumbs up, or down, by a panel of three judges; a TV reporter, radio sports commentator and Interactive marketing specialist. The audience was then encouraged to vote for his predictions live using a text-based Internet poll.

A drum roll please :

One: Underwater kites. Seriously. By 2021, these underwater collectors of wave energy will supply 3 percent of the world?s power.

Two judges disagreed; one agreed. 42 percent of the audience agreed, 42 percent disagreed.

Two: Facebook will not be among the top five world social networks by 2016. It will be replaced by professional or regional oriented social networks.

Two judges agreed; one disagreed. 71 percent of the audience agreed.

Three: Smart electric meters will be used in at least 30 percent of the homes in the United States by 2015 opening the floodgates to sophisticated interactive homes.

Two judges agreed; one disagreed. 71 percent of the audience agreed; 24 percent disagreed.

Four: In 15 years, the average person will have three or more personalized health management devices accumulating data on them.

All three judges said they were unsure. But 65 percent of the audience agreed; 24 percent disagreed.

Five: This one will take a little more explanation. His prediction is focused on an auto tuner, an audio processor that uses a phase vocoder to correct pitch in vocal and instrumental performances to disguise off-key mistakes. Brophy predicted within 10 years, auto tuners will be fine tuned to modify the rough edges for social etiquette. They will be provided by domain expertise sellers.

All three judges disagreed. 56 percent of the audience disagreed; while 33 percent agreed.

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