In the Year 2025–Who Knows What Tomorrow Brings in Tech?
by Kara Swisher
Posted on January 15, 2009 at 5:43 AM PT
When attending the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas last week, BoomTown moderated what turned out to be a fascinating panel discourse of what was to come in the tech sector.
No, it was not a gathering of Trekkies.
The CES SuperSession panel, titled “What Will They Think of Next? Consumer Technology in 2025,” was less Jules Verne than a logical analysis of where gadgetry is headed by looking at both the past and the present.
Overall consensus: Touch screens everywhere, 3-D imaging in wide use, no device wires, ubiquitous high-speed wireless networks and more.
Of course, there were some edgier ideas, like being able to tell exactly when it is going to rain to the minute, via massive computing of weather patterns.
In addition, one of the panelists, Greg Harper, brought back what was popular in 1994, the same number of years back that 2025 is forward. Yep, he dragged out for display the Apple (AAPL) Newton and brick-sized cellphones.
The panelists were: Stephen DiFranco, VP and GM, Americas Consumer Group, Lenovo; Gregory Harper, co-founder, Gadgetoff and president, Cerberus; Len J. Lauer, EVP and COO, Qualcomm (QCOM); Sean Maloney, EVP and GM, Sales and Marketing, Intel (INTC); and Phil McKinney, VP and CTO, Personal Systems Group, Hewlett-Packward (HPQ).
Here’s the video with interviews about 2025 with all of them–and don’t miss the very funny poster at the end from Microsoft (MSFT) about its vision of the future:
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Comments
Glad to see that other than their poster Microsoft is largely out of the conversation where they have served as more of an impediment than an enabler.
What the future doesn’t need are devices with $40 operating systems (much less $400 ones).
Let’s get this stuff working, largely with existing standards which might need tweaking from time to time but won’t involve single vendor lock-in gimmicks. Companies who can compete within such a framework, which translates into competing internationally, will do well.
Posted by Mac Beach at January 15th, 2009 at 1:22 pmhead-mounted displays to come…:)
Posted by Mark Omega at January 16th, 2009 at 1:45 pm