What was missing from CES 2016
The annual Consumer Electronics Show never ceases to amaze me. This year it wasn’t just insanely high-def TV’s from tech titans, It was exciting innovations from startups like Wiiv, a company that will 3D print custom shoe insoles based on photos you capture via mobile of your own feet, or Cerevo, who’s building a robotic projector that can leave its charging station and ride to your bedroom to project morning television on any wall.
But as awesome as CES is, there’s a glaring missing piece to it. How can a show that kicks off the year in consumer technology have no formal presence from the consumer technology companies we spend more time with every day than any others? Where exactly are Google, Facebook, Apple… even Uber?
Sure all of these guys are represented in some way- incorporated in someone else’s TV’s, giving sales pitches in hotel lobbies, advertising everywhere. But what I want to see is each of them taking a leadership position in expressing their vision for how consumer technology will play out across all of the touch points in our lives, based on their specific areas of expertise and value propositions.
I want Google to explain how they will increasingly leverage their massive data troves to make our phones a concierge for our lives. How that data is helping them create more precise and personalized driving directions in every connected car. How those cars will know when and where to pick us up and take us autonomously. How our contacts and glasses will learn about our diseases and augment our perception of the world. And so on.
I want Facebook to speak about how their messaging, notification layer, and relationship graphs will be a platform for new technologies that can make a difference, from ride sharing to gaming to solving real problems of health and governance in third world countries.
I want Apple to explain their approach to similar problems but how they envision it differently based on their staunch belief in privacy. I want Uber to talk about how powerful a fully optimized supply chain can be in providing next generation services beyond just cars to the airport.
This list goes on.
This year we had Reed Hastings from Netflix, a company that makes no actual consumer hardware of its own, give a keynote on his vision of television. Like him, leaders from the consumer web & technology companies we care about the most- the ones that we interact with every day- need to stand up and help inspire the future here beyond just being represented by their partners. That’s what CES is for.
