CES 2016 (aka Consumer Electronics Show) is kicking off in Las Vegas in less than two days, and Brit + Co is here to check out some of the crazy cool new tech and future innovations that will be coming to our lives this year and beyond. Our first night in LV, we got hands-on playtime with some of the newest tech that is going to shape our every day in 2020. According to Shawn Dubravac, the Chief Economist of the group that organizes CES each year, “The conversation 15 years ago was about what was technologically possible … that conversation has started to shift. There’s going to be a focus on what is technologically meaningful.” So expect your tech to be even smarter, more personal and more ubiquitous than ever before — and all this mind-blowing stuff hitting the market in 2016 is going to be in just about every home by 2020. Here are predictions for how your tech-connected life is going to look in just four short years.
Connected smart homes are one of the biggest trends at CES 2016. Expect that the AI butler Jarvis from Iron Man might be here sooner than we thought. In the morning, when you wake up, reach over for your smart remote, like the Smart Remote by Seven Hugs, which allows you to control everything from your Sonos music player to your connected bedroom lights simply by pointing and clicking.
Over breakfast, you’re trying to book a trip with your family but you’re not entirely sold. You put on your virtual reality goggles and take a virtual tour of the boat filmed by a simultaneous 360 camera, like the Vuze Camera + Goggles, to see the amenities.
Then, you get into your self-automated car that drives you to work. Dubravac predicts that by 2020, the auto market will see the first fully-automated self-driving car and by 2030, there will be over a million units sold per year. “Trying to get out of the habit of saying drive,” he jokes, “because those things will drive us.”
Your smart standing desk, like OfficeIQ by HumanScale, will be measuring your vitals at work, reminding you to occasionally stand up and take a lap around the office for your health. Meanwhile, you’re dictating emails and writing reports for that afternoon meeting at a zero percent Word Error Rate. When voice dictation was first introduced in 1995, it had almost a 100 percent word error rate. “It was gibberish and it recorded nothing you said,” Dubravac said. By 2013, that number dropped to 23 percent and by 2015, that number has again fallen to only five percent.
After work, you have a couple of friends coming over. As you’re enjoying your meal, your Prizm stereo will measure the number of people in the room and overall ambience based on lighting, volume of chatter and movement and curate a special playlist for your evening without you ever lifting a finger.
At the end of the night, after your pals have gone home, you can throw your laundry into a washing machine and go straight to bed to wake up to clean and dry clothing. Yes, you heard us right. No need to stay up and separate your clothes into a drying machine — it can all be done in one energy-efficient machine, like the Marathon Laundry Machine.
Hello, future. We’ve been waiting for you.
Wanna see more cool new tech? Stay tuned for all our CES coverage @BritandCo!
