Episode Summary
The Consumer Electronics Show (CES), after a few years flirting with irrelevance, is on the rise again, as the wild technology and gadgets from the 2015 conference captured the imagination of consumers and media pundits alike. A big and important theme of CES 2015 was the Internet of Things, with major companies like Samsung taking IoT strategy for a new connected world. In this episode of the Digital Life we discuss some of the cool tech from CES, like Intel's Curie chip, and how it relates to the IoT, wearables and the future of UX.
Here are a few quotes from this week's discussion.
Jon on the future of the automobile:
I think it also introduces some interesting models that we’re beginning to see abstracted out, the idea of the sharing economy and Uber or Zipcar, where you’re less concerned with what it is you’re driving in and more concerned with the access to it. If the car becomes this "rolling technology", does it matter quite as much? As long as you have access to it, and it’s self-driving, maybe it can just show up on Uber when you need it. Maybe there are a bunch of those rolling around your neighborhood. It’s another way of looking at public transportation, certainly for those folks as well who only need cars in certain instances, but then really need them. We see that right now by having services that’ll pick up folks who don’t have their own cars and take them to doctor’s appointments or what have you. A lot of those things could be managed by software, especially if cars are self-driving.
Dirk on the growth of CES:
It’s interesting how the CES – the Consumer Electronics Show, which is what we’re talking about – how it’s evolved, where 5 years ago, the CES was on the down slope – companies were backing out of it, it was getting a lot less media coverage – because Apple was the big event in January. It’s very interesting how post-Steve Jobs and how as the Internet of Things ramp up, which are much more open and certainly they work on the Apple platform as well, but more in the PC ecosystem. The CES is on the upswing, too, and it’s getting a lot more media coverage than it was 5 years ago. It’s a lot more interesting than it was. It’s part of this whole shift back away from Apple and back to the more traditional ecosystem of computing devices.
