CEA/MIT Conference Focuses On The Convergence Of Consumer Electronics Devices And Innovative Lab Work

17-May-04

Consumer electronics manufacturers and the world of academic research came together during a day crammed full of sessions on the intersection of technology and devices at the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's (MIT) Media Lab first-ever joint symposium, ""Designing Bits and Pieces."" The conference, which attracted more than 500 attendees, was held Monday on MIT's campus in Cambridge, Mass. Michael Bove Jr., Director of the CELab at the MIT Media Laboratory kicked off the conference. He explained that the CELab was launched to examine opportunities and challenges faced by the consumer electronics industry. He said that the CELab is helping design electronics devices that are aware of each other and their environment and are ""simple, ubiquitous, easy and delightful to use.""CEA President and CEO Gary Shapiro praised the great work conducted at MIT and said the CE industry depends on technology advances and the Media Lab is a hotbed of innovation. He added that he hoped the event would help solidify and accelerate the mutual benefits of this collaboration. ""I urge each of you to invest the time to see the phenomenal things being developed in the lab that will take us all to the next market level,"" stated Shapiro. Media Lab Founder Nicholas Negroponte described his view of technological evolution and outlined a future where embedded computers permeate every aspect of life. ""The world of CE and embedded computing is becoming smarter and smarter and smaller and smaller,"" Negroponte noted. ""One day we will be eating computers, wearing them and even breathing them.""Walt Mossberg, personal technology columnist for the Wall Street Journal, served as the day's moderator. He shared his hope that the CE industry would design devices with fewer features that could better accomplish common tasks. He compared the Internet to the electrical grid because things are plugged into it. ""We don't say, 'Hey, I'm on the electrical grid.' But we still do say, I'm online. That distinction soon will disappear,"" contended Mossberg. ""In ten years, with convergence, we'll always be online. A myriad of things will talk to each other keeping people connected.""During the innovation ""track"", Nolan Bushnell, CEO and Founder, uWink Inc. and a member of CEA's CE Hall of Fame, urged attendees to design products that appeal to consumer's desires rather than their needs and let wealthy early adopters serve as test markets for new products. Motorola Chief Brand Officer Geoffrey Frost described convergence in wireless devices. He suggested that a product's identity must originate from the consumer's view of the world if the product is to resonate with the end user.David Reed, Adjunct Professor, Viral Communications, MIT Media Lab, kicked off the wireless track. He shared his research on the limitations and potential of wireless networks and called for a network of repeaters that rebroadcasts everything the device receives similar to the way network traffic is routed on the Internet. ""The Internet model will scale to make wireless networks ubiquitous and pervasive,"" he argued. Intel Research Psychologist Richard Beckwith described the possibilities of embedding sensors into everyday objects and creating wireless sensor networks to link them together. He said the most important thing to remember is, ""the future radio has a CPU and the future CPU has a radio.""The conference next tackled power issues as Joseph Paradiso, Sony associate professor, Responsive Environments, MIT Media Lab, talked about fuel cells and micro engines the size of shirt buttons. Dave DeMuro, Manager of Advanced Development, Energy Systems Group at Motorola contended that fuel cells may be the future of portable energy. Ted Selker, Associate Professor, Context-Aware Computing, MIT Media Lab, closed the track by talking about fuel cells and even generators in a necklace.After lunch, attendees reconvened for an engaging session on creativity and design given by Bran Ferren, Co-Chairman and Chief Creative Officer for Applied Minds. He talked about the design requirement process that uses the power of teams, talks to customers and provides a preliminary requirements document and said ideally it should be combined with the creative big idea method used by the entertainment industry. ""Think open rather than closed,"" Ferren urged. ""Viral design is out of control. It is an astonishing new force."" John Maeda, Associate Professor and Holder of the Muriel R. Cooper chair, Physical Language Workshop, MIT Media Lab, and Joseph Jacobson, associate professor, Molecular Machines, MIT Media Lab, gave attendees a peek at the future of consumer electronics design and material. The MIT professors discussed the potential for making physical prototyping software and hardware as common and ubiquitous as word processing programs, at the same time maximizing collaborative design and critique.Following the presentations, attendees were treated to a field trip to the Media Lab where they saw a maze of applications on several floors including a kitchen sink which uses computer vision to detect objects placed under the faucet and adjusts the water temperature and faucet height accordingly; an interactive digital picture frame that senses the activity of the room's occupants and changes the images to fit the room's social setting; and a video screen that is printed on standard printer paper.For more information on the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA), please visit www.ce.org.

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