Alt Digital

A little less sexy than the latest smart TVs perhaps, but drawing significant crowds at CES, were displays of kitchens and kitchen appliances. It is now a very realistic possibility that we will soon (after years of hype) be using fridges that assess when we are running low on certain food items and automatically reorder through our regular online retailer of choice. Given coverage of retail results over the last week and the development of this sort of technology, Morrisons may have even more reason to regret its slow progress in online retail when compared to the likes of Tesco. Another interesting appliance was a dishwasher from LG that liaises with your energy supplier to ensure that it only switches itself on at a time of day when electricity is cheap.

There are a very large number of stands exhibiting smaller scale, wearable computing such as health and fitness monitors and smartwatches (often combined). One of the most interesting of these is the Pebble smartwatch which was the subject of much excitement at CES today. This hotly-anticipated smartwatch was created thanks to $15m of crowdsourced funding (Kickstarter's most successful project to date) and is being made available this month. The Pebble has an e-ink display similar to those found on e-readers and lasts seven days on one battery charge. The screen is able to display a multitude of apps as well as tell the time. Third-party developers will be able to create apps for the watch which can pair up with smartphones running Google's Android software or Apple's iOS. Perhaps of more importance longer term are the devices that will help us monitor our health; not only heartbeat, blood pressure and so on but food intake and amount of exercise.

A huge number of acres of exhibition space was taken by car manufacturers. It feels to me that much of the focus in recent years has been around using technology to improve the quality of the drive as opposed to the in-car experience. But that is clearly about to change. Many manufacturers were displaying technology that can seamlessly link car, smartphone and location data to deliver an enhanced experience. For example, Ford were showing a car that would read your text messages to you as you are driving. Others demonstrated how by synching car and smartphone, the music being played in your car could automatically adapt to driving conditions. One soundtrack for driving faster on an open road, another for city driving.

by Stewart Easterbrook

10 Jan 2013

Intel, which employs more than 4,000 people in Ireland, relies on futurists like Brian David Johnson to deliver a vision of how we will be using technology in the future.

Eventually Johnson sees the devices getting smaller, thinner and almost invisible.

“When you talk about silicon architecture, right now we are at 22 nanometres, which is extremely tiny. When you look to 2020, the size of meaningful computational devices could reach almost zero. Moore’s Law will keep going until we get to virtually zero.

“The next big focus for Intel is seven nanometres. When we get to that level, chips will be so small that they can be powered by friction, the heat of your body or the movement of your hand.

“Once you have computation moving to almost zero, it means we can make anything into a computer.