CES 2017: Has technology reached ‘peak smart’?

Its not reached its peak as you will find if you read up on Globalisation all the action comes via the US government and the massive US corporations / conglomerates who fully intend to cover the Western world with their latest innovation the “glorious ” Internet of Things , don’t take this lightly this is deadly serious and as time goes on the public will be gradually “eased into ” this way of thinking by–thats right you have guessed it ! –massive media advertising and ,as usual the public will welcome it gladly with open arms like they do most advertising , The Problem ? there is another branch of the public that will be thanking that “Digital god ” on a SSD with prayers of gladness and joy- that ever increasing digital religious group —the “Church of the Hackers , prayers will be given, incense burned and we will all settle down in the years to come to a massive increase in traffic heading towards the Which website for help . As a certain Irish comedian said at the end of his TV show- may your god go with you -all the best-Dave Allen.

The CES has been notable in past years for creating ideas that became essential. Vast fortunes have been built in that way, and so creative individuals have never been more inspired to get creative.

However, new ideas tend to go in one of two directions: the ‘That’s a great idea!’ pile or the ‘Okay; what’s that for again?’ heap. I suspect it’s never been any different, and the image of Victor Borge with his infamous telephone call by Sir Walter Raleigh to the Queen attempting to explain what a potato was comes to mind.

But advanced as the home is becoming, the holy grails of Smart devices remain tantalisingly out of reach. The autonomous robot, the stuff of SciFi and Asimov, will almost certainly sell in billions if an affordable and stable device ever comes to market. VR might well be supplanted by ER – Enhanced Reality – which, if a way could be found of projecting directly onto retinas, could be another multi-trillion market. True holographic TV – first mooted in the late 1950s – remains as far away as ever, with the issues surrounding the reproduction of stable, moving fully-formed three dimensional imagery being way beyond out current technology.

But with all the seemingly magical advances in iThings (generic, not Apple) come the associated issues of privacy and safety. All iThings communicate with the outside world and all iThings send back information to that world. Although you might not think it matters, sadly the ne’re do wells working for some companies will seize on the golden opportunities offered by threatening to create havoc unless paid not to do so.

The ransomware virus, which currently affects only data, could assume a far more menacing visage, it it were to tell your iFridge to ignore poultry going off, or even contaminate the milk. If we move towards total reliance on this sort of technology, how long before we stop checking for possible smells and other signs of danger?

A future for we all have to remain on guard .

CES 2017? I thought Which? Conversation had been requested by a recent contributor to spell out abbreviations on first appearance. The initials “CES” stand for “Consumer Electronics Show” which sounds dreadfully old-fashioned nowadays so it’s not surprising that it’s been air-brushed out to an unpronounceable acronym. However, one might have expected a leading consumer representative organisation to try to hold onto the name for a moment at least.

All fears of outside interference are fully justified and these are eloquently described in the posts above. For me, the test of a good automation is whether I am happy with the way I do things at present… if it ain’t broke… or whether I can see a genuine improvement in efficiency, labour saving or enjoyment by accessing the new technology. To an extent, this has to be invented and presented to us to give an opportunity to decide on its merits and then market forces take over. Sitting here at the moment I’m hard pressed to think of much that I want to change. I certainly don’t want everything connected up. Life is generally compartmentalised -work -shopping – domestic chores – leisure activities etc and I see no reason to combine any of these using smart devices. Being in control of what happens is important to me and, currently, if I want reminding I’ll write it down somewhere and leave it in an obvious place. I’ll make a decision whether to replace an item and I’ll soon know if I forget. All my domestic appliances work well and separately. Why should they need to talk to each other? There is a dubious advantage in letting the phone control heating and lighting and security from afar, especially if someone else can do the same by a hack or two, and I can’t think of many times when I might find this of much use. Keep things simple and there’s less to go wrong. I’m not quite on the fence but more this side of it than that at present.