Big Thinkers, Disruptive Technologies at CES

This will be my 10th year moderating a Super Session at CES called “Big Thinkers, Disruptive Technologies.” Anyone going to CES can attend any Super Session’s as these are the only major conference sessions open to all attendees. http://cesweb.org/Conference-Program/SuperSessions.aspx

Each year I get to look at a whole host of technologies that are considered disruptive and chose 3 or 4 to present in our super session. That’s the good news. The bad news is that since the session is only an hour, I can only choose 3 or 4 and deciding which one’s to include is one of the most difficult things I have to do each year.

This year I was asked to add a gaming emphasis to our session, although all of the technologies represented on the panel can be deployed across the board in our digital world. Over the last year I got to see a lot of things in the labs that I consider very disruptive, but most cannot be shown publicly at this time. And this session’s emphasis has to be on products that are in the market or close to release impacting our world of tech in the next 12-18 months.

With that in mind, here are the three technologies that we will discuss in our session.

1. The Future of Displays

Jams Clappin, the president of Corning’s Glass Division will be talking about their advancements in next generation displays. Last March, Ben and I went to Corning’s HQ in Corning, NY and got to see first hand some of the things Corning is doing with displays. Below are links to two videos we saw that gave us a glimpse of the future of glass displays.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Cf7IL_eZ38

http://www.youtube.com/watch?annotation_id=annotation_424843&feature=iv&src_vid=6Cf7IL_eZ38&v=jZkHpNnXLB0

He will be giving us an update on these new glass technologies that can be flexible, rolled out and seen through to deliver a whole new way to view our digital content and interact with and collaborate with friends, family and business colleagues.

2. Augmented Reality

Casper Thykier, the Managing Director of Zappar, will be showing how augmented reality will soon be impacting how we use technology to get access too much more info and content that is already shown on our mobile screens. In my TimeTechland column a few weeks back, I profiled Zappar and shared how they are working with game companies, movie studious and consumer brands to make our mobile devices indispensable in the near future.

The links in this column will give you a good idea of what AR is, but you really need to see these demo’s and similar one’s from Aurusma (http://www.aurasma.com/#/explore) in person to really understand how this technology will be disruptive.

3. Using Android Apps on Windows PCs

Rosen Sharma, the CEO of Bluestacks, will be showing how their technology allows a person take any Android app and run it on Windows PC’s as if it is a Windows app. This is a really cool technology that while on the surface makes Window’s products better but the underlying technology behind what Bluestacks offers suggests a day soon where any app can run on any OS using their core architecture. What they have could finally deliver on the promise of write once, run anywhere and could by quite disruptive for the future development of applications for all digital devices.

4. The Wrap up

After these three presentations and demo’s, Brian Cho, a partner at Andresson Horowitz, who handles their research into investments in gaming and related technologies will share what he sees as being disruptive in this space.
(http://www.crunchbase.com/person/brian-cho)

A former executive at Ubisoft, Brian is well versed in the world of gaming and can share a lot of light on what he technology he sees impacting the future of games, video and digital entertainment.

If you are at CES, please come and join us as I believe this will be a most interesting and provocative session.

Tuesday, January 8, 11:00 AM at LVCC…room N255-N257.

If you’re not attending CES feel free to share what next generation technologies you are excited about that could be coming in the next 10 years.

Published by

Tim Bajarin

Tim Bajarin is the President of Creative Strategies, Inc. He is recognized as one of the leading industry consultants, analysts and futurists covering the field of personal computers and consumer technology. Mr. Bajarin has been with Creative Strategies since 1981 and has served as a consultant to most of the leading hardware and software vendors in the industry including IBM, Apple, Xerox, Compaq, Dell, AT&T, Microsoft, Polaroid, Lotus, Epson, Toshiba and numerous others.

4 thoughts on “Big Thinkers, Disruptive Technologies at CES”

  1. Tumbleweeds…

    As usual, CES is a wasteland regarding innovation and disruption.
    1. A component OEM offering incremental robustness
    2. 2013 is the year of AR (just like 2010-12)
    3. Virtualization but this year is it the most nerd-baity OS available on the most moribund. Hooray!

    Sorry to be down on this but there seems little new or disruptive here.
    I would have thought that wearable devices like FuelBands and FitBits evolving to medical telemetrics might be more innovative with real long term implications on policy, personal rights etc. US health plans are already creating incentive based plans that can easily evolve from opt-in to mandatory and devices may be an important part of the future.

    Innovation in NFC would have been another option (more than bumping SGS3s or simple payments). Neither of these are gamey so probably don’t fit your brief.

    Good luck tomorrow anyway.

  2. CES is “a five-day frenzy of new gadgets, PR people, exotic strains of influenza, rivers of liquor, mountains of terrible free food, neat piles of overpriced decent food, endless lines of irritated bloggers, a constant fog of cigarette smoke and air freshener and blogger self-loathing, big TVs, small TVs and skinny TVs, all on just a handful of hours of sleep stretched across several nights.”

    – From a tech Website.

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