TechRevu Review

The Future Is Now
Review by Ernest Lilley
TechRevu ISBN/ITEM#: CES2010WRAP
Date: 18 January 2010 /

CES 2010 is now far enough behind us for some perspective, so Ernest looks back at the experience to see what this year's consumer gadget-fest holds for the future.

At CES 2010 I had lunch with NY Times tech reporter Stephen Miller, who's just launched his blog, "The Future Was Yesterday," which riffs on a classic theme, that according to science fiction, by 2010 we're supposed to be trekking around the solar system and living on the moon, at the very least. By that standard, we're behind the curve, but it's not a real measure of whether or not the future is here yet. The future imagined by SF still has the US and the USSR locked in a struggle for world dominance, and we've moved on from that to other struggles, and the entire consumer electronic industry was largely overlooked by visionaries of the past. By the way, Steve's blog isn't stuck in the past at all, but are some excellent musings on products, technology, and design. The Future Was Yesterday

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What I saw at CES this year was a future in the process of arriving, not just being out there in the imagination of visionaries and nerds. This is a future you can take hold of, shake without breaking, and actually use for something. Sony's inscrutable tagline for the year, "Make-Believe" framed much of what I was thinking. Technology has delivered tools that can make the wildest creative dreams into immersive experiences, whether on a handheld device, flatscreen display, or IMAX 3D with full THX sound. The future is here and it's whatever we choose to make it.

In past years, we've often seen radical new devices that we'd "oooh" and "awwwh" over. They were also pretty pricey as a rule, and you could be certain that as soon as you actually put down hard money for something, it would be replaced by one that did more for less, and probably worked more reliably. The future was a game for early adopters, people with more cash and techno-lust than sense, but more significantly, people for whom the future was an end in itself. Not an end to a means.

CES 2010 was full of new ideas, but it was also full of dreams that had finally come into their own. Powerful netbooks for under $400 are the realization of the $100 laptop for the world, without interfering NGOs needed to distribute them. The iPhone and Nexus One put computing power in everyman's hand, and provide a platform and distribution channel for development that anyone can get in on. eBook readers are still shaking out, and whether eInk will stand the test of time or be replaced by OLED or something else has yet to be seen, but they've come a long way baby. Far enough so that you can buy something, expect it to work, and expect it to still be useful a year or two from now.

That's what it means to live in the future, not just glimpse views of it waiting offshore. The future is here, it works, and I saw it at CES 2010.

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