The Technology Trickle-Down Effect at by Reyne Rice, toy trends analyst and consultant
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he International Consumer Electronics Show (CES), the world’s largest digital technology trade show and playground, was held on January 7 to 10 in Las Vegas. The show covered more than 2 million square feet and featured 25 different TechZones—six more than in the prior year—for more than 15 categories of products. There were also more than 150,000 attendees, with nearly a quarter of those being trade guests from global markets. We uncovered smart devices and products that will soon be found in family homes, cars, offices, pockets, and pocketbooks worldwide. These technologies will have a profound impact on kids and families over the next two years through what we refer to as “the trickledown effect”: Kids watch closely as their parents, caregivers, educators, celebrities, and other role models use technology products, and soon they want to pretend play with real technology as well. One of the most buzzed-about concepts at International CES was the interconnected, emerging Internet of Things (IoT). This connectivity network involves not only smart devices that have computer chips built into them, but also seemingly everyday physical objects that can communicate with each other without any human interaction. Last year, it is estimated that more than 10 billion physical objects—from traffic signals and in-vehicle technologies to health and wellness tracking devices and ingestible monitoring medications—were connected to one another. This number is projected to grow exponentially, reaching 50
244 • THE TOY BOOK
Left: MiP, on display at International CES, is a robotic innovation from WowWee in association with University of California at San Diego’s Coordinated Robots Lab.
billion connected physical objects by 2050. Many of the connections between objects will involve kids’ toys, games, and devices. Interesting creative applications and new arenas for toy research and development became apparent in walking the International CES floor, attending the press preview events, and scouring all the various TechZones. The Robotics TechZone, which focused on engineering,
FEBRUARY 2014