Interconnectivity a Central Theme of CES 2015

The 2015 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) is now winding down, and it has been a big one. Featuring over 3600 exhibitors, the convention also covered what it called “the largest show floor in history”, with 2.2 million square feet of space devoted to the exhibition. It also featured an unprecedented range of biometric technologies, many of which intertwined with tech from other fields and industries.

The expo began with a pre-show keynote address delivered by Samsung President Boo-Keun Yoon, who discussed the blossoming Internet of Things. And indeed, that area does seem likely to dominate the technological landscape for 2015. In a week that also saw the announcement of a major partnership between IDEX and ASA to deliver biometric security to a range of connected devices, CES prominently featured companies urgently integrating FIDO-certified biometric security into their own everyday connected technologies – all very much in accordance with experts’ warnings about security threats as the Internet of Things expands.

In another prescient pre-show address, an executive associated with Daimler AG and Mercedes-Benz discussed the future of the automobile, pointing to a world in which connected cars offer drivers a higher degree than ever of leisure and luxury. That was borne out in Nuance Communications’ exhibit of its Dragon Drive platform, which will identify drivers, connect their cars to their smartphones, and offer a personalized driving experience complete with tailored traffic and weather information.

Add to that the looming spectre of biometric marketing technology that can use face recognition to deliver personalized in-store marketing to unwitting shoppers, and you get a pretty clear picture of the rising Skynet-like intelligence that biometrics is infusing into everyday products and applications. That having been said, it’s all to a purpose, and that purpose is very often the consumer. In his address, Mr. Yoon offered a wise maxim, saying, “The Internet of Things is about people, not things”; the same is true of biometric technology on the whole.