Convergence isn’t coming…it’s here
One API to rule them all.
Consumers, especially PC–bred Gen Y-ers and younger, no longer draw a distinction between the real and virtual. The world is one big data stream and you are only as cool, as powerful, as smart as the gadgets you have that allow you to capture and use that data. The less effort you have to expend to draw content from the cloud, the more social capital you have.
This new reality of CES has two major components.
Connectivity is King
If there were any nooks and crannies of your life that you relished as being Internet-free, you can almost guarantee that this year’s slate of new electronics will quell that. For the roughly 8,500 miles the average American spends in their car each year, there are multiple offerings that will add not only streaming audio and video to your ride, but provide you voice-command access to social media, and warn you (and allow you to warn others) of traffic or weather conditions on the highway.
The formerly quiet living room is now home to internet connected TVs and Blu-Ray players that will allow you to chat via Skype or AIM about the movie you’re watching (along with others watching at the same time), and access video from around the world, on-demand.
The respite of the coffee shop is now interrupted by data streaming to the increasing slate of physically accessible smart phones and netbooks that put the world’s data in our pockets. In our 24/7/365 economy, being off the grid can be death to your career and/or social life. This trend in hardware is ensuring, no, demanding, that you never have to be.
Consumers crave immersion
The data is not enough, we want to control it, mold it, and bring it into our world. Features being built into 2010 electronics are allowing exactly that, creating new interactions with data that virtually eliminate the distinction between the real and digital.
3D television seems to be the most pervasive technology at CES with forecasts from the Consumer Electronics Association suggesting that 25% of televisions produced in 2011 will have 3D capability and four major television networks announcing 3D channels in the next couple of years. The glasses are gone; this new experience will replicate the Star Trek Holideck in your living room, putting you the viewer in the center of the content.
Already popularized touch sensitive technologies on phones and tablet computers are getting less expensive and finding their way to more devices on the CES floor, allowing you to pinch, swipe, toss and bump digital data as if it were created with something other than electricity and light.
What’s Next? Awesome.
The outcome of this newly converged world is, without a doubt, allowing us all to get a little more Steve Austin – faster, stronger, and more powerful than before. Though we will certainly, as a society, need to navigate through some murky ground on our way there – addressing issues like over-connectivity and the need to escape the grid, increased anxiety over having real-time information constantly in hand, and a massive pipeline of distractions always within arm’s reach. The 2010 CES show is demonstrating the urgency with which we have to prepare for total convergence.
Photo credit: loritingey
