Man, these days it sure feels like everything has a computer chip in it, right? Even notorious doodad purveyors like The Sharper Image and Sky Mall seem to be constantly encroaching on the traditional computer market. Despite the threat of software piracy, the computer industry seems to be doing well at the moment, but what about the future? Will the market for hardcore geek gear survive if it continues to get usurped by the consumer electronics industry?OK, OK, I admit that sounds a bit alarmist, but it doesn’t sound far off from what some Chicken Littles in Silicon Valley write from time to time. What’s wild is that these are all talking points from 1991. Over twenty years ago, our favorite tech show, Computer Chronicles, paid a visit to CES 1991 to check out the hot new gadgetry set to flood Circuit City and the like.Oh boy, is it glorious. The early nineties was one of those periods when manufacturers thought segment overlap was the absolute key to everything. Want a camcorder with built-in audio and video editing tools (including color-coded memory chips full of clip-art, boldly displayed)? You got it! A $1000 CD player that also plays CD-ROM discs, complete with wired remote, to turn your TV into a sort of computer? Sure thing! You want a portable video game system that also plays television? Here’s a Game Gear with a tuner adapter, and if you hate portability, you can still hook it up to your TV.As hilarious as it is that everything at CES 1991 did everything, what’s more intriguing are some of the interviews in the episode. A big worry of many of the interviewees was that gadgets were simply becoming too complicated for casual users. Twenty years on, that’s obviously a concern that’s been proven unfounded.At the same time, the other big storyline of CES 1991 was the shrinking of device form factors. This isn’t anything different from what’s going on today, except unlike 1991 when we knew we’d be making massive trade-offs in performance and price for portability, we’re at the point now where the majority of hardware is so capable that we just want devices that are light and cheap. Look at CES 2012: Ultrabooks have waved off advertising hardware specs in favor of impressive battery life and size, and they’ve proven to be the most popular things at the show.So is this the end game for gadgetry, in which the market tells raw specs to shove off and pushes for smaller and smaller gear that does a little bit of everything? Well, yeah, because that’s the only road that ends with all of our electronics implanted in our head, and we all know that’s where things are going anyway.
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