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The high-tech world converges on Vegas
Robotic barmen, green technology and gadgets designed to change the world are all about to go on show to 140,000 tech insiders
Many gadgets at CES 2008 promise simple wireless networking of TVs and computers
The Consumer Electronics Show opens tomorrow, unleashing a host of high-tech gadgetry on a buying public that has barely recovered from Christmas shopping.
More than 140,000 representatives of the global technology community will descend on Las Vegas over the next four days to hear Bill Gates’ thoughts on the industry he helped to create and to catch a glimpse of the future.
The clearest impression to emerge from a brief preview of the show is that convergence – the holy grail of the technology world, which has long been predicting that telephones, televisions, computers and music players will communicate with each other and eventually merge into the same device – is finally beginning to happen.
Products likely to be coming soon to a living room near you include ultrawide-band wireless technology, which will enable cable-free connections between high-definition TVs, DVD players, games consoles, set-top boxes and video or music files stored on a computer.
This will let people download films or TV programmes directly from the internet and beam them to TV sets anywhere in the home, without needing to lay cables.
“It’s such a simple idea, but it really changes what you expect from your TV,” Bruce Watkins, president of Pulse-Link, which develops high-definition wireless connections, said. “You wouldn’t buy a TV now that isn’t high-definition, and soon I don’t think you’d buy a TV that isn’t able to do this.”
The growing interdependence of technology and the media is confirmed by record numbers of visitors representing entertainment companies, such as Disney and the big American TV networks.
Since the first video recorder was displayed at CES in 1970, Hollywood has tended to regard technology as its enemy, and digital piracy has added to the hostility felt by many in the entertainment industry. But the success of DVD sales and the gaming industry, both of which are now more lucrative than cinema screenings, have encouraged studios to work with technology companies.
There is a stick, too, as well as a carrot – the music industry sustained crippling damage when it failed to adapt to the rise of the internet a decade ago, and now that broadband speeds are getting faster and transferring digital files from a computer to a TV is getting easier, the potential for video piracy on a similarly damaging scale is increasing.
Convergence is likely to be a theme of the opening night keynote speech, traditionally delivered by Bill Gates on the eve of the show. Tonight’s speech will be his last to CES as Microsoft's chairman, and while the contents are closely guarded, analysts who have been briefed in advance have suggested that Mr Gates will strike a reflective note, taking stock of a rapidly changing technological landscape.
One indicator of these changes is that among the company executives, analysts and reporters at CES will be Paul Kagame, the President of Rwanda, whose presence at the show underlines the increasing importance of technology to developing countries. He will be joined by Nicholas Negroponte, founder of the One Laptop Per Child project, which aims to put a $100 wind-up computer at the heart of educational policy throughout the developing world.
Green technology is another idealistic and ambitious sector attracting increasing attention. This year, organisers have created a ‘TechZone’ dedicated to products and research designed to protect the environment. Devices ranging from power-management tools to a small, bullet-like gizmo that claims to cut a car’s fuel consumption by 20 per cent appeal to the customer’s conscience and wallet.
Despite the presence of potentially world-changing products such as these, CES remains the jamboree of the technology world, where beer-carrying robots find their place among the more serious offerings.
There is, however, one company that will be doing its best to spoil the party. Apple does not take part in the show, holding its own expo in San Francisco next week instead. Last year it upstaged CES by announcing the iPhone to an ecstatic reaction, and although it is not expected to repeat the PR coup, rumours of an imminent ultrathin Macbook laptop have been exciting as much comment among delegates as anything expected in Las Vegas.
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