Just finished skimming 187 posts in my RSS reader that were piled up from Engadget‘s coverage of the winter Consumer Electronics Show (CES). The innovation, evolutionary features and new gadgets are pretty cool but at the same time troubling.
The Japanese and Korean HDTV models are incredible. Any glimmer of a US-based production presence is non-existent.
In the late 1980′s I moved to Chicago to take a job at Pioneer New Media (PNM was part of Pioneer Electronics, focusing on laser videodisc, CD-ROM and cable gear). One task I undertook was holding discussions with Zenith TV in Illinois about their possible desire to private label one or more models of our laser videodisc players.
This was a company and brand I knew well growing up. My grandparents had two Zenith 13″ black and white sets and a color one in the living room, and I bought a Zenith TV as a high schooler for my bedroom. Knowing that former television manufacturing powerhouse Zenith was pretty much irrelevant, I nonetheless dutifully headed over.
The physical plant was like walking through a time warp back into the 1950′s. It was dingy, old, and filled with almost antique furnishings and equipment. The folks I met with were so incredibly clueless about the entire category — and wanted players so inexpensively we couldn’t possibly supply them — that I knew I’d wasted my time.
As a technologist and futurist I’m excited by all the new gadgets. As an American and a father who cares about the country we’re passing down to our children, I’m appalled that we’re making little the world wants to buy.
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