As always, the year begins with CES, at least if you work in technology land, and if you don’t, you’re probably not going to be reading this brand-new shiny issue of the TechWatch Quarterly, unless … hi, Mom!
This year, CES brought us so many things including connected cars, 4K TVs, and the threat of 8K TVs, robots, drones, intelligent light bulbs, VR helmets ,and 3D sensors. Sometimes it seems like so much stuff we never asked for, and can’t imagine wanting, but as the quarter goes on and companies continue to preach the gospel of technological computing, some things start to seem more desirable, even sensible. Think back, after a few years of cars with back-up cameras and sensors, many of us have considerably fewer dents from backing into invisible poles. So maybe walking around with smart glasses will keep us from running head first into embarrassing situations, right? No more forgotten names or appointments. .jpg)
But yes, some things seem to be fine for someone else’s house. I don’t see myself needing a chandelier with integrated speakers, but I could be wrong.
You could really see the first quarter as a march to the future. At CES we get the full landscape in an indigestible extravaganza. And then through the quarter, we get GDC, GTC, some Apple announcement from the mount, assorted company presentations and this year we got the bonus of Microsoft’s continued reorg/reboot. It’s as if the industry takes a closer look at all the new technologies introduced at CES, tries them on and it’s up to us the public and technologists to sort through it and try and decide what makes sense and what doesn’t.
As this is being written, the National Association of Broadcasters’ conference (NAB) has come and gone and we learned that the industry is hell-bent on producing content that will make us want to have 4K HDR TVS. The bad news is that early adopters who bought 4K TVs might soon be in the market for new HDR sets, so you late adopters can count on getting a good deal on nearly new 4K TVs. We all scoffed and laughed at the Apple watch, or at least some of us did. There are now plenty of us watching our mailboxes and hoping our watches gets here soon, real real soon. We’re not half as cynical as we pretend to be.