Consumer Electronic Show – Got Connected
If your latest great idea is to develop a new flying drone; think twice! At CES, I have seen so many of them, GoPro should have not wasted time to build its own. Maybe an underwater one would have been a better approach… But PowerVision just launched PowerRay, an underwater drone to redefine recreational fishing. Virtual Reality, electric and self-driving cars, 3D printing, robots, wearables and everything else speaks, feels or shares emotion. Everything you wear, you use, you touch today has been reinvented and is now connected. Most of these inventions collect data to improve your experiences and your life. I tried to capture a glimpse of this evolving world through photography:
« Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore.»
– André Gide
I am not going to describe the best novelties of CES; obviously techcrunch.com and wired.com are doing a much better job. Instead, after these few days in this ocean of technology, I wonder how our society is going to cope with it moving forward. I wonder how human nature will be affected by this new connected beast. It looks like science fiction is our reality. Moving so fast, all boundaries are pushed in every direction. In history books, I learned the coming of the car challenged the necessity of the horse. I am excited to witness today’s revolution and to jump on the new opportunities it provides. But simultaneously, the last nine months, I have heard that this country is going to be « great again ». A slogan which to me sounds like the past and smells like the coal industry. I have a difficult time believing these conflicting worlds are contemporary (See video links at the end of this post). Each time a change propulses our society forward in a big way, it comes with its hopes and its fears. When the electricity fairy invaded homes, some felt it was too dangerous. Lately, everywhere around the planet, some politicians promise to bring back the old ways to the ones who fear change and the unknown. Promises to bring back old jobs, when today’s robots are already stealing some of our work and it is just the start. Once upon a time, natural selection was between the healthy and the weak. Today the divide is between the rich and the poor. I sense the coming gap will be between the connected and those left in the dark. For sure, there will be casualties as the access to technology is never equal. But politicians should be visionaries whose main duty is to ensure a vast majority enjoys the progress instead of cultivating our natural fear of change. Investing in our educational systems to adapt to our time and culture should be a priority. If not, a cast will continue to rise wired while some will be left behind; disconnected.
Special Thanks to OSSIC
Diconnected Worlds
I can relate to these people in McDowell County, West Virginia even if I come from another country. These two videos are a perfect representation of the way I feel about our disconnected worlds; I am living in a large city with opportunities but I come from a little town in the middle of France with shrinking local businesses.
Yaskawa Bushido Project – View Video
Anywhere But Washington by The Guardian – View Video