CNET's Next Big Thing: Are we all too connected?

-Hello everyone. Welcome to CNET's Next Big Thing presentation, our marquee Super Session. I'm Molly Wood. -And I'm Brian Cooley, and we're glad to have you joining us here on what is actually our 10th anniversary of the Next Big Thing. So how about a hand for all of you who have been with us for so many of those years. Staying smart-- -[unk] on our part. -here at CES, very cool, very cool. Glad to have you here for all that. We are here of course to explore a topic once again that is going to be we think very much the future of technology. That's the Next Big Thing is all about. It's about going forward. It's something that's not totally futurist-- -Right. -But also not obvious. -Although we have a futurist. -Yeah, so-- we have a futurist, is it-- -So a little bit. -Yes. -Yes. -So they're going in that direction as well. And it's kind of a digital reunion of sorts as part of what we're talking about this idea of a post-mobile future. -That's right. Mobile devices obviously have been hot at CES and beyond. And their usage has changed this industry dramatically but we are looking ahead as Brian said into the post-mobile future. -Yeah. -What happens when we start-- when we get to stop finally talking about tablets and Smartphones and talk about our connected world? -Now, I know a lot of you probably-- this gas thing. Okay, we're still getting our heads wrapped around tablets and phones to some degrees especially with our consumers and customers. But, the idea here is to stop having these silos of phones, our phones and tablets and then computers and then maybe connected TV or just televisions and other bucket trying to get to a wall to wall series of basically screens that let us get to whatever experience we want whenever and however and have a little more interconnection between those services, that's a little more difficult challenge actually. -And it's not too much of a surprise as you might imagine. The CES so far has been all about this idea of the connected future. -Yeah. We would also like to invite you to take part in this of course through our social media. We're doing that with Twitter, right? -Yeah, absolutely. I think you should be able to see our hash tag shortly posted on the screen, -Here we are. -@CNETNBT right there. Please tweet us during the session and if you tweet me and things about our moderation, we'll never know. So, go crazy. I also want to let you know, if you're standing in the back, there is overflow seating in the room directly next to this one. That one tends to fill up too. So if you're feet are hurting-- oh, that's full. I just heard. -Full. Okay. -Okay. Well, if your feet are hurting-- -We'll take that back. -I'm really sorry. They're gonna keep on hurting. Tweet about it. -Next time better shoes. -All right. Let's dive in with that then and explore the post-mobile future. -Last year, we officially moved in to the post-pc world. But are we getting close to a post-mobile world too? The Next Big Thing in tech is always on, always connected and completely programmable so what is that mean for consumer electronics and the services that power them? Well, that's what we're here to find out today. -I'm gonna actually use this smart things app that's actually turn on the Christmas lights from here. As you can see this is so much more than just like a remote control ball. This is a robotic gaming system. -How long was I asleep? I must have been tired. Do you want to listen to a story? -Yes, please. -Basically, it's a thermostat but re-designed totally to be connected to the internet. -According to Cisco, one trillion devices will be connected to the internet in 2013. Just one billion of those will be the mobile devices we're used to today. And in the future, our array of connected devices will in theory, let us live lives that are much more convenient and much personalized. -We can connect to real world in the internet and you walk into a retail shop and they know what sizes you have and then what you like. They know what not to show you. You will have a better shopping experience. -Not everyone as convinced that every device needs to be connected though, or that all those connections are coming anytime soon. -I think we're further away than people think. I mean, there are more smart devices on the planet today that aren't humans. But having them off connect together and work on my behalf, you know, people talk about, hey I want my stuff everywhere. The refrigerator-- it's a different story, you know. I might have to work with the home automation people in terms of how that connects it. I think we're closer than we've ever been. I think it's a journey and I think we're part way down in that journey and it will continue to go forward. So, it's not next year all of the sudden magic. -Connecting the world in a seamless, easy and personal way won't be easy. It involves a lot of companies working together. Radical new device and interface designs and there will be serious privacy and security hurdles. But the future is already here. Figuring out what it looks like is our job today. -So that's the post-mobile future. -Yes. There will be several phases to our event today. We're gonna have sort of a three-part discussion. We'll look at how devices will change, how their connections have to revolve and then what entirely new categories are going to emerge. -Yeah, that's really interesting stuff-- -That's the good stuff. -as we look toward really getting one more step further out. Now, to help us discover all those phases we're working out way through them. We've assembled what honestly maybe our most interesting diverse panel for this event. Let's bring our panel up now so you could meet them. Starting with tech entrepreneur and chairman of Access TV, you know him, welcome Mark Cuban. -You can make him go now all the way to the end. -From LG, also a company who needs no introduction here at CES, head of Marketing and Go-To Marketing-- Go-To Market Operations, please welcome James Fishler. -Welcome. Next up [unk] outstanding title, the Futurist for Ford-- -Yes. -Sheryl Connelly. -Thank you Sheryl, good to have you here. -Welcome. -And finally, Sprint's Senior Vice-President of Product Development and Operations, Fared Adib. Thank you. -All right. Let's settle in for a good deep dive on this topic to kick us off panelist. Oh, you have a comfortable chair as well, mine is-- I don't know about yours. -I know, look at you diva? -I want each of you to give us your thoughts, kind of a little lightning round here of what you thought about this topic what's the most interesting. As we work with you over the last few weeks, bring in here, get your minds working with ours on it. What about it, most captured your imagination? Mark, start with you. -I mean, the next big thing to me is about personalized medicine. You know, it's-- we're just at the infancy of it but just little things like at sports where we're slowly able to put heart rate monitors on the players while they perform and [unk] hydrate them and give them nutrition in response to what's going on in their bodies. We're able to prick their fingers and get some blood and analyze it and figure out what nutrients they need and help support them there. So I think personalized medicine to me is a big game changer and that, you know, your body becomes part of the network of networks. -Yeah, not at all where I expected you to go to be honest. That's really a very interesting angle on it. -Well, thank you. You see-- you expected me to be dumb. -No. -You guys-- this is gonna be awesome. -It's gonna be that way. We're just getting started. -James, your turn. -I'm afraid to now. -Impress us. -For me, I watched that video and so much of that is already here on the floor. And it's not all futuristic. A lot of the future is already here. Here at the show, we announced appliances that have voice-control from your Smartphone when you're not home. Start your washer remotely, you know, use your robotic vacuum and have it start cleaning your house again before you get home. Take the content and throw it from your Smartphone right through your TV wirelessly. So a lot of that technology is already here. I think it's an evolution and I don't think we're there at the end. But I think we're a lot further along that we have been in the last 10 years. -Sheryl? The Futurist at Ford. You come at this from really a very different sort of point of view because a lot of people still of think of car as consumer electronics. Here you are-- what's your take in this topic? So, as a futurist, I'll just remind people that I cannot predict the future. -Right. -But what we do look as big picture trends, social, technological, economic, environmental and political. And so when I watched that video, I don't-- I think most people in the audience would say, they see more. They see more connections, more information, more in demand and I actually see less. I think that all of this hyper connectivity means that we are going to get less information, less bombarded with data. We'll get exactly what we need, where we would need it and when we need it. And I think that's really what the driver is, is that, it's not about information. It's about getting the right information at the right time. -I mean, Fared, how about you? The most interesting sort of component of this especially if somebody who is in many ca-- you know, hoping to provide the connection that could power all of this. -Yeah, I actually have a little bit of a different point of view. I want people to have more connections. I mean, they can solve more things but, imagine-- -But I think that's-- -Shocker. -You know, the-- I mean, look, mobile technology is probably the most pervasive technology that's ever existed in the history of man, you know, it's arguable. But I think you would say that, you know, we got 6 billion people in the world and more people have more mobile phones, they have running water and electricity believe it or not. I don't exactly understand how that works because, I'm not sure how you charge your phone if you don't have electricity. -It's a [unk] thing at the bamboo bike. -Yeah, exactly. -Runs with generator. But, you know, I think the one thing you know, that's, you know, in our industry because we're in at a lot of people here are just now getting exposed to how mobile technology influences their industries is that, you know, there has been this, you know, concept for the last few years called Machine to Machine. It's not necessarily about people being connected to devices but it's about machines talking to other machines and using the Cloud to, you know, serves different types of functions that, you know, ubiquitously they don't have the capability to do today and so I think that's the big thing that I'm excited about and you see a lot of that technology here at the show where there's TVs that are connected or cars that are connected or to March Point, Health Monitors and e-Health and things in that nature. I think that's the exciting part, is the pervasiveness of the technology. We haven't even thought about the ways that we can use mobile wireless today. The problem is though, there are some bad things that go along with it and, you know, some downsides are that there's a limits to the amount of capacity and, you know, problems that, you know, could exist from all these devices. -Expect from these devices. -Yes. -Exactly. -And we're definitely gonna talk about that a little more. First, the machine to machine is a good jumping off point for our first sort of discussion topic which is obviously the most tangible and most relevant in some ways to the Consumer Electronic Show, that's the devices. So far the post-pc revolution has revolved around phones and tablets. But in the future, who knows what devices will communicate with each other and what those devices will look like. -Increasingly, we won't just have 1, 2, 3, 4 screens around us. We'll actually have 10, 20, 30, 40 things that we have around us, on us, smaller things, lighter things, closer to the body that also have sensors. But they won't be the full purpose, multi-purpose. They won't do a hundred things. They'll do a few things really, really well for a device diagnostics. So we know moment everything is mobile to mobile 'cause frankly they're cool and very easy to work with. But in the future, you'll be talking to TV or, you know, we might even get the internet fridge maybe. But everything is on the internet. Everything that's connected via RD can technically be used to your systems. -Everything from the devices in your pocket to your home appliances, to your car, to the scale in your bathroom. -This scale can work both in WiFi and Bluetooth. So this is my [unk] for the last 3 years. And you see there is a periodic variation during summer and winter. -The holidays. Yeah, that's-- December. -First post-pc and now post-mobile. Let's imagine the possibilities of the connected devices of the future. So hardware-- here we are at CES and it feels like the Consumer Electronics worlds gotten a little boring. And we've been talking about is tablets and Smartphones and yet, this year, CES feels like there are many more device categories I was thrilled to see LG finally bring like the washing machine out of the closet in our front stage and the refrigerators. You know, talk a little bit, maybe we'll start with you James actually. Let's talk a little bit about device design and what hardware since you guys are in so many businesses could start to look like. -Yeah, I think changing landscape, no doubt about it. LG's designs are always driven by consumer demand. We really try to look at everything through the lens of a consumer. Our motto is Life is Good. We wanna make customer's lives better. And all of the products that we have here at the show is about that. We have a technology called Turbowash which is incredible technology but it's about saving time. It saves 20 minutes on every laundry cycle. You combine that with-- -We never discussed laundry at the Next Big Thing. First time for a moment. -Well-- -Yeah. -We don't know how to use it. -But-- -I want one of the fridges. -But imagine if that same washer can send you a message and remind you o your Smartphone to turn over your laundry. Right? A common challenge that everybody has or you're at the grocery store and today this product is at market. You can check the contents review refrigerator. Your refrigerator can make recommendations on recipes, you can set up profiles for members of your family that may have an allergy or the diabetic. Then take those same recipes and set them to your oven, right? Through WiFi and have your oven pre-heat. And again, but via the entire network. You can do that via touch. You can do that via voice. All of that technology is here today. -Mark, do you get excited about connected appliances or there's some other device you wish was her with the show now? -I mean, I don't get excited about appliances at all. -We got the job. -I'm starting to though, I'm really am-- LG is just phenomenal. -It's happening quickly, right here, it's happening. -Life is Good, right? -And life is good. -[unk] sometimes or like a freezer sometimes? -You know, the way I look at it was consumer driven devices whether it's appliances or others. It's price first, functionality and price first. And so all these things that we're seeing that were starting to come to us because, certain CPUs whatever hit certain price points. [unk] you know, certain price points. And so now you're able to enable to-- you're able to enable them with intelligence. But when you look-- when you try to look forward, if you take out the cost constraints, you just say, okay, where's all this stuff going? We're still going, you know, CPU performs and it still gonna accelerates. It's still gonna get smaller. It still gonna get a lot more interesting. So, you know, all this enabling I think is actually simple. The hard part is hitting cost. Where I think it's going is that as CPU's continue to get faster and faster and faster, wouldn't that work ourselves. So we'll have in our wallet somewhere a CPU that communicates with whatever else our centers, whatever else we lead to gather for information. And whatever type of output we need, you know, Google is doing the thing with glasses, you know, you could have something in your pocket, your wallet or your purse that is you're-- you know, your central processor that communicates with everything. It communicates with external devices. So I think the real concept is, how small, how fast can you get the processors and how efficient can you make communications in your own little network and then let those communicate outside. That's what we're gonna see in this 8 to 10 years so that we're not constrained by what the physical devices are. Sheryl, you looks like you agree? -I agree. I'm completely in favor with Mark's saying 'cause I don't think the hardware is the interesting part. I think it's the user interface that really matters. So I mean, when you think about CES, this is my first CES visit and I was taken aback by the range of categories that are here. It's not just a mobile devices it is, things like LG. Automotive Ford's been here for 7 years. I mean, they fundamentally changed the way that we go to market because we think about the cars not just being vehicle for transportation but something that enables lifestyle of constant connectivity. And when you move in to that space that means that not only where your competitors in the landscape change but the categories in which you compete against changed. I mean, Google is making a car. Who would have thought? But in this environment of constant connectivity, I think it also really comes down to not innovating just because you can but what's in for the consumer. Is it convenient, is it accessible, is it intuitive? As I listened to-- I want a vacuum that cleans my house before I get home. And I need a washer that does remind me to flip the dryer, just dries it after it's washed it. You know-- -You can have more [unk] one of those. -And so I was-- -I have no idea what you're talking about. -There was a gift for each of you Mark doesn't his, so looks like you're gonna get too. -Fridge, fridge, fridge. -This is interesting 'cause it kinda brings up the concept of-- shouldn't we saw a simple tasks and needs first. I know it's what you're getting at Mark with the fact that it can be cheap enough to do so. I think somebody early connected appliance visions James, we're going back 5 or 6 years. We're very grandiose. The refrigerator was gonna know what's in the fridge. Know how to order it, go to safeway.com. Get the order going and have the recipe pulled up based on what you've got tonight. Now you're talking about a dryer that simply said the dryer's done. Go get the clothes while they're wrinkle. -No. You wanna pre-empt all those things. You don't want to solve them. You want to pre-empt them, right? So that's I think the problem a lot of companies get in to. This is what we've been doing. -Yeah. -Let's solve that problem in the simplest way, the least expensive, the most efficient, the bet design possible-- -Even their own view. -Again, when you have a hammer, everything looks like a n ail. -Uh-huh. -Right? I'd rather say, okay, we're kinda close, don't need to watch. You know, what-- how would you pre-empt that problem so that you don't have to spend the time doing those things. You know, that-- and I think again, as we get more power. You know, every year we thing this is the most powerful it's going to be. But you look at [unk]. They are single-tasking. You know, now you're starting to see a multi-tasking. And that limits the change on how we interface with everything because you only do one thing at once basically. -The freezer [unk]. -Well, we do start thinking about what we need to do, what we don't need to do. That seems to raise a relevant or at least the [unk] point for you Fared which is what devices don't need to be connected, right? I mean as the guy who's dealing with a constraints, do you ever look around and think, maybe all these devices don't need to be online. Maybe a water bottle doesn't actually have to be-- -Yeah, you know, we get-- I mean, we get approached everyday by manufacturers that wanna use our distribution and our reach to our 56 million customers to, you know, put devices on our stores and sometimes we just have to question what really is in alignment with the wireless strategy versus things that are not. -Okay, we use one of your devices. We use Sprint-- I have a company called Motionloft and what Motionloft does, it's got a little sensor. We put it on the outside of the building so you-- let's say there's a big commercial building in the New York City and they have space to lease down on the bottom floor and it counts, just counts everything that goes by, sends it over to this Sprint network back to a central point. And so we can watch the number of people that are in any one place where there are sensors in real time. And now we're starting to add additional sensors so they can test for carbon dioxide, the can test for moisture. They can test for any number of different things all in real time. And so you start looking on that devices, it's not even the device that matters, the sensors almost irrelevant. It's that information. It's almost-- we called it Google Analytics for the real world. -This has many nodes as possible. -Yes, as many as you get. We'll put them on bridges so that the transit authorities will know that there's-- you know, this is a busy intersect-- interchange right now and it's snowing or whatever and you need to get here first 'cause there's a lot of people there. We're here all of the sudden there's a congregation in this one part of town in San Francisco where there shouldn't be a congregation. -Uh-hmm. -Let's just make people aware of it, you know, for who knows what's going on. -And this is describing a vision of low-cost devices that you're saying, barely even devices. -Yeah. -And a little bit rate bandwidth not putting a lot of load on your spectrum. -Right. -So things that are easy to get into to really build up that incredible [unk] of the data. -And we're doing this now. -Yeah. -I mean, I think Mark's got a point. There's something about accessibility to data that I think primarily drives a lot of these applications but I do think there's a lot of things that you start to question, you know, you don't start to question the innovation that's taking place but you start to question what's the direct kind of return on investment. And I think that the one big thing that we're seeing for most mobile device-- and the phone because it's most people's primary mechanism. What we're seeing is the evolution on what's happening to the phone. I mean, you know, when you look at it. When we are in 1G, 2G world, you know, when data through put was really, you know, kinda light, you know, a slow, you know, it really kinda stopped a lot of the-- you know, real applications from, you know, being invented and being pervasive view of the market place. -Yeah. -What you're seeing with the speed now being a parity with desktop speeds and what people are seeing in their homes is that the combination of that with all of the different sensors that are within your phone, for example, the phone has an accelerometer. It has a camera. It can sense motion. It knows everything about you because it is with you pretty much all times of the day. That information is collected and I think that information becomes valuable for health care. It becomes valuable for applications like gaming, you know. There's all kinds of things that you can utilize that data for that you couldn't in the past. And I think it's the combination of the sensors, the software, the ability of the high-speed networks to transmit that information and I think that there's also kind of this idea, this personal area network that for a long time was a vision. It was originally one of the reasons Bluetooth was, you know, invented. -Right. -But, it never really came to get-- I mean, for a long time Bluetooth was only used for Bluetooth headsets. Well, now we're just actually seeing people are using that phone as their central processing unit. And it's connecting to things like, you know, Jawbone Jambox speaker phones, you know, and the-- the Nike Fuel Bands and all kinds of things that are gathering information. -And, toothbrushes connected to kids' iTouches. Yeah. -Uh-hmm -You know, to make sure you brush your teeth and then track it and get rewards for it in Game Fire. -Yeah, we got so much Bluetooth in the Fitness and Health. -We were really be able to impress by all the fitness devices that have coming out as a major category to the show using networking from Bluetooth to WiFi to 3G cellular. -And it does-- it sort of gets to the point that the head of design from Nokia was making in the video that you saw earlier which is that, that these devices now-- is it possible that they do too much? That what we really need is the information and then a very simple kind of terminal device that basically just accesses all that information? -I was surprised by his comments because I've just seen like that, the single purpose device is really rendering absolutely. You know, if you look around the room, you won't see many people wearing watches because watches are single function. And so, there are still those, I mean, you know, statically, it's fashion. It's still fashion but in terms of utility it'll be a hard for us to find a person under 30 who wears a watch because they tell the time through their phone. -Unless it's connected to some other device. -Yeah. Unless and in fact Nike Fuel Band is a good example of it. -Right. Yeah. -Yeah. -You have something that-- so they-- I think these devices we want to carry fewer and fewer of them. You know, we want-- we don't have the space to carry like all these devices together. So those that can converge it into something simpler and easy and accessible. -Well, what's only happening is, all these devices are getting their own APIs which are, they're becoming platforms for other things like with cars. It's always amazed me, you know, I can have a GPS and I can have a map but I don't really have a program and interface, so I could write apps 'cause I've spent so much time, I can customize my car to fit me. -Yeah. -But Ford just-- they're open up like yesterday. -We start-- yes. -Energy-- -And also that developers program. -Yeah. -Just on the DVDs that you used to load the maps. -Uh-hmm. -Right? There should be a program and interface to let me for it-- okay here's Uncle Suzie's or Aunt Suzie's house, Uncle Joey's-- it could be Uncle Suzie-- You know, so-- but all these opportunities because you spent so much time in the car-- but I think an API as we get this devices, the first step is, here's the device, here's what it does. Can we create a platform out of this device? Once you make it a platform then all the brain power of everybody in the community that uses it can make it smarter and better in taking directions you never imagined. -Okay. Now all these devices were talking about some real, some imagine or some conglomerations of real that you need to come together more. None of them really get very far unless they've got the kind of connectivity that's gonna support them in a really transparent ways. So we're not really thinking about the connectivity very much. It has to be easy, pervasive and affordable wireless connections throughout these kinds of categories. Let's take a look at some of that. -A world of devices and services that offer a truly seamless digital life for the first time won't get very far if they're wireless, bandwidth in connectivity don't progress as well. -It was only about a decade ago that investors were questioning wireless carrier sanity as they spent billions of dollars to build out broadband for mobile devices. After all, it wasn't calling and texting good enough? I won't questions that anymore. -Now wireless especially 3G and 4G cellular fuels smartphones, tablets, connective cars, connected TVs and new classes of devices from the personal to industrial. But they are bottled next ahead. -A lot of that comes down to spectrum. The radio frequency space in the air all around us, it's kinda like gold. We sort to know how much there is and we can't just go and make more. -This is why you see so many major telecom deals. Successful and attempted. -A flood of new users each using more and hungrier devices means data plan caps could become a real problem, not just theoretical. Overhead charges could make this new world seems less worry-free and the spectrum of meter usage instead of flat rate creating a perception of much higher cost. We can only maximize the connected future if we have ample, simple, affordable connectivity, how big are the problems and how do we solve them. -Help us Fared, you're our only hope. -Yeah. I think it's-- -There's a lot of us is on you baby. -On Stage. You're only hope on stage. -That's why I guess [unk] on. You're right. -A little like a little bit. -Yeah, so I mean, you know it's definitely-- look, you know, the one thing we don't have the ability to change the laws of physics and unfortunately, you know, the-- -Google's working on that. -Yeah, Google is probably working on it, you're probably right. But they, you know I think that the radio frequency is in the spectrum that exist in the United States. The way it works today is its auction [unk] and it's licensed to providers like Sprint and others in the country and I think what happen is that, you know, you get congestion in that kind of thing like highway lanes, there's a certain amount of highway lanes and once you have a lot of vehicles on those highway lanes, it start to get congested and that's what you see in the call world when you're making calls, you'd see dropped calls or you can see the ability to not be able to call the cell tower. Well, the same thing happens with data. You know, when you don't have access to those lanes, you are have no ability to transmit data or yours, you slow down the speed of the data on those large pipes. And so, the only way to solve that is either to allow us to use more spectrum which is hard to reallocate just based on the fact that, you know, there's a lot of different people on the spectrum map and if you're to look at as goggbledygook of different players from the US Government to TV broadcasters to-- -Yeah. -You know, wireless carrier and so it's not as easy as just kinda saying, let's just, you know, open it up. But I think it's good-- it requires a few things. One is it requires application developers who get smarter about the applications and how they react to situations when the networks are congested so they can adapt, you know. Today, really, you know, most developers don't think about the mobile and environment. But once they're being successful in their user experiences, they've optimized their experiences to kind of work in those congested environments or work environments where they use very little data-- -Right. -when they need to. And I think that's one thing. The other thing is we just continue to build that capacity and I think one concept in our industry that's kind of catching on is this thing called small cells where today, you know, we go out and build these big networks. While on the future, what we're gonna actually see is that you're gonna be able to buy these little routers, I think of them as little small cell sites that you're gonna just be able to connect in your home, in your business and they-- -It's a Femtocells. -They are Femtocells. Yeah. And there's more industrial versions of them that you can kind of put on sides of buildings. -Okay. These are not for customer premise. -Yes. -These are things [unk]. -Some of them we would deploy. -All right. -And the reason we can't continue to deploy big network is they start to interfere with each other when we have too many of them in a given area and they actually create a negative effect of actually causing more problems and solving them. And so when you have small cells, they don't tend to have as much power and output and so they don't tend to interfere in large areas but they do tend to, you know, relieve the congestion because they're using blackhaul like, you know, cable and DSL. -Yeah. -Where our big cell sites require these big copper and fiber drops to them which is very inefficient. So this small cell technology, we think millions of these around the country will help relieve a lot of this congestion but unto itself, there's no silver bullet solution. -Audience-- -It's gonna require a lot of [unk]. -Show your hands, how many of you are carrying a 4G LTE device at this point in history? Wow, and we are at CES. This is a big number. Obviously, there's a very high penetration compared to the general population. But one of this theory that I guess is the best way to put it that we can re-farm 3G more quickly than any of the pervious, whatever you call those segments of spectrum that we could basically start to shut it down and more that spectrum of LTE faster because it can do it all. Is that-- is the LTE more of a do-it-all what-- coding environment and RF environment that we can actually congeal everything on it and get more efficiency and more pipeline? -Well, it's definitely happening and LTE has become the global standard. I mean, everybody-- every carrier is going LTE but it won't solve the problem because even when you re-farm the 3G spectrum to 4G, we're finding us when you go from 3G usage to 4G usage, People's usage quadruples in data. So what happens is they go from whatever they were using maybe a 100MB a month or 200MB a month. They go to using about 1.6 GB a month on that same device, is because the device-- -[unk] cap there. -You know, you get more data usage because you have faster speeds and you wanna use it more, right? And so I think all it does is it increases the problem, it doesn't necessarily solve it. -James, we got a juggle a lot of radios in your products. -Yeah. -What is your take on this? -We Do. I think again customers drive, they're mad, right? So they demanded more data faster, so 4G evolved. But is that a national problem or a regional problem, right? So certainly more walk in the floor here, hard to get a 4G signal, but you go to many of the markets not concentrated cities and it's not the same problem everywhere. So, you know, I think the FCC's doing some good work in condensing, you know, open spectrum on broadcast and moving it over to 4G. But I don't know, maybe controversial to say, but is it really that big of a problem everywhere or in isolated places? -Yeah, I don't think it's starting to become a problem today across the border. I think everybody will admit to that. I think that it's the-- when you look at the Cisco information on the amount of devices accessing the network and the amount of usage, it's going to be a-- it's one of these problems if we don't start solving now in 4 to 5 years from now it becomes a very chaotic situation. -Perhaps a new technology is coming. -To re-enable bandwidth on wireless? -Yeah. -So we'll get another quantum leap and the amount available. -Yeah. There's definitely. I mean, there's compression type technologies and, you know, again-- -Not just re-usage. -Those re-usage and re-farming but, it's a very complicated problem because it's not any one thing that can solve it. We've looked at everything and every carrier deploying multiple different types of solutions to try to solve the problem. But it's the-- what scares us is the billions of devices that you start talking about that start using network and, you know, there's other things you can do like the personal area network where the devices share a connection and they intelligently kinda use the phone as backhaul back to the network. That's good. That's good stuff. -Anyways, my next question is, you know, what point do you cut the cord? -Yeah. -Uh-hmm. -Well I think you're-- -Well, 'cause it does feel like 4G is the thing to get us away from bandwidth caps and wired-- I mean, I would love to have 2 devices on a wired connection and everything else on-- -You know, how can you cut the cord in the terms you don't have wired broadband? -I can give you an example-- yeah. -Right. -Right? -I'll give you an example. One percent of our users generate 33% of our traffic. -Uh-hmm. -So there's one percent that's-- -Do you always say that there's like a lot of people here and you're not doing that? I think it's-- -Yeah, so you're in the one percent which is okay but there's-- it tends to be not the general public like you said in populations 'cause you kinda see this kinda curve that takes place is that, it's not everybody is using all the data all the time. It's just that you sometimes also have people abused the networks, right? You know, they're using them as, you know, they're streaming, you know, access TV with all their friends, right? -Yeah. -I'm not, I mean, I always, I don't think if you-- -I got my sandbox in the worst place-- -Yeah, you're the worst customer Mark. [unk]. -But it's stated that we, I mean, I always take issue with that. I was happy that you didn't say Data Hog but is it really abuse for us to use the data that is available? -No. -To use the connection that's available on the data-- -No I think-- -And if we're the one percent now, where the future 99 percent, right? -I think we have a belief that, you know, we're the only unlimited carrier really, you know, truly unlimited carrier in the country. So we still believe that when you pay us for the unloaded usage you get to use it unlimited. But, we want also to make sure that, you know, we educate customers on, you know, if you're using it and you're using 100GB a month, you know, we need to probably-- -Have a discussion. -Probably talk. -Yeah. -Dad. -I would answer this conversation though. Is that it seems to me that we're discussing it in a vacuum or a bubble, anyway. Because, you know, we're talking about the evolution of the spectrum in 3G 4G LTE. This is moving so rapidly and when you pair it with a durable good like a car or an appliance. You might render other parts of your life obsolete. I mean, I was just at the hotel and I was trying to get someone to print something off and they said, "Oh, this is from-- we've outdated software, this came from a, you know, another an older of a newer version." There's a disconnect and I think consumers, they're hungry for speed but when they starts to touch when this evolution of innovation move so rapidly and renders other parts of the life that are constant, inconvenient. You have attention that's there. -And you have some confidence in technology in general. -I think those days are gone. That the whole, you know, 1980's thing-- -The too fast innovation leaves people behind-- -Yeah, or, you know, the guys were afraid of technology and-- you know, those guys are-- -You've met my mother, have you? -I think-- I know, I'm just saying. I think it's possible that those days are gone in terms of adaption of technology. I think though, it is true that networking specifically is still way too hard. To me that is the one party equation, I know-- I mean, I look at all of your connected devices and I think, for God's sake, like my router freaks out, if I add a TiVo to it. You know, it's-- so that part of it. There's still so-- -There's a lot of works and studies that said 75% of people don't know how to turn on wifi and use it on their phone. -Right. So imagine I'm trying to turn on another refrigerator. -Listen, we are not, mostly the general public. Most of them don't know how to do basic things like set up Bluetooth, set up wifi in their phones. This is not that our customers are stupid. It's just that, the technology to the point earlier, it's so complicated sometimes and there so much functionality in these phones. People just don't know how to use it. We haven't simplify the process. -And so how much worst is that get when you start to add in a car and then on refrigerator and then wherever else Mark's working on? -So it changes you. I mean, you have to have open source. You have open architecture so that Ford builds our systems so that we can upgrade and pass out, you know, deliver free software to our customers so we can update this new technology hits the market place. But, we're also concern about future fatigue. You know, people are very conservative about how they spend their money and if I buy something based on its features, but actually get at home and realized that I don't access most of the them, I somehow feel like I'm wasted some of my investment that it wasn't a good money spend. And so the features are intriguing but if they don't make my life easier, if they're not accessible, if they are not intuitive, then I feel a bit duped on a consumer side of things. -Uh-hmm. -Yeah. And we were talking about it earlier. A lot of features I think aren't explained properly, I think. Not all customers understand all features before they buy in. You look at the TV industry back in the 90's PIP people would not buy a TV if it didn't have 2 tuner of PIP and less than 5% of the people ever used it, right? So solve a feature that really had no usage model. So I think some of the ownership is on manufacturers to make sure we're putting features in the market that can consumers do get value added and do make their lives better. But going back to the spectrum, I don't think it has to get more complicated especially in the home. I think as more and more devices come on online at home, manufacturers across different brands, categories and industries have to work closer together. We're working with Cisco right now on some other prioritization work of our home network, right? 'Cause not only your connected devices need to be on pulling the data at the same time. So do you set up a priority of when difference devices work-- -You're making your point though, you're making your point. The fact that you have to have prioritized networking which is gonna, that means, if it screws up, someone's gonna have to come in and put in the admin log in right and go to the router and reset your priorities 'cause you just updated the software on your washing machine. You know, and it goes to another point, Molly and I go back and forth all the time. If we can't even get a wireless networks to work, how's all of this over the top stuff going to impact TV? Right? -I've been waiting for this to come up. -Yeah, I had too. You know, you just don't. You know, if you can't get your wireless network to work. -And we have talked about that at the show that there are so many solutions for content delivery. There are new boxes announced to your-- it seems like every half hour and it's still as very hard to tell, and so it's really confusing. -But isn't that-- for entrepreneurs for, or for manufacturers to make it simpler right? So like you said earlier, right? Forget about tough and the problem today. Let's make it simpler from the beginning. So I disagree and say that, you know, we can solve it and it's an opportunity, right? And we can do it together, right? And maybe it's an act. -It's almost-- it's actually, is if you read our minds because that is our next topic of discussion; Innovation and what comes next. We've talked about today the immediate future. But the discussion really gets interesting when you start looking ahead to machine-human interfaces to our personal networks to the innovations that comes next and sort of blow apart the categories that we're working with today. -It's been called the post-mobile world. The internet of things and the connected future. Either way the trend toward ubiquitously connected devices could shake up the consumer electronics world like nothing else before it. Right now, you can use the Smartphone or a tablet to control the temperature in your house, call a taxi that already knows your location, video chat with anyone, anywhere, lock or unlock your door, start your car, augment reality or access nearly all the world's information in seconds. So, what comes next? -I mean reality all of you are cyborgs because you're not terminator and you're not Robocop. You don't have to have a brain in front to be a cyborg. All you need to do is have the symbiotic interaction between you as a human and a machine. -Once you connected your home, your car and your devices, all that's left will be to connect yourself. -So Muse is a 4-sensor brain wave headband. It's actually able to sense your brain activity and give you feedbacks so that you can play games directly with your mind as well as improve your mental abilities. In the far future, this is gonna be a tool that allows you to things like control the lighting in your home or your automated phone system or your car directly with your mind. So the long term future is actually allowing us to interact with devices in the world in really smart ways that are able to support you because they know something about you. -And you said like the far future. Do you mean far, far? Because we're already in an exciting future. -We are already in the future. -I love it. I love it. But what else does the future hold? Whether it's wearable checks, Smart Home or car automation or machine-human interfaces. What will a connected future look like and what are the opportunities for innovation. -Okay, sandbox time. What do you wanna see we don't have right now. -Sheryl? -I wanna say things that are, that simplifies stream line. They gave me back my time. I actually kind of intrigue in the back drop of this constant connectivity about a retreat from technology. You know, finding a sanctuary, de-toxing, real person engagement. They're seems to be-- for a lot of discussion about authenticity and craftsmanship and I think that's in response to a lot of hi-tech that's in the world. But it's an odds because we do want constant connectivity, it does make our life easier. It allows us to be more spontaneous, controlling our environment, influence those surrounds us. So I think those things are here to stay and I think that what we have seen in recent years will look like a turtle space compared to where we're about to embark on. -So can I [unk] into that comment that you feel over the few years as you and most of us have an adapting Smartphones and tablets increasingly. You feel like you're spending more time playing with tech. I don't if you can play majoritively. And it maybe, the value equation is still TVD in your mind. -I think that the value equation is there but I think that we will reach a tipping point where people will try to, you know, I think there are great irony of these digital devices that they are sold to us in the premise that they're gonna save us time. -Uh-hmm. -But they steal time because we're constantly connected. We don't have down time. We don't disengage. I mean, I don't even consider myself that high in the index of tech addict but I still check my phone before I go to bed. First thing I do when I wake up and if I should wake in the middle of the night, I'm still glancing-- -Could that be a hell lot of-- -Okay, what's in my voicemail? You know-- -That is a lot. -It is more convenient like you said just [unk] from. -I don't do meetings. I don't do meetings. I don't do phone calls. You e-mail me. Sure and end of story. Unless you're gonna write me a check, then I'll meet with you, give me a call. -Then we're gonna be at Pete's and Mark will be there. -And I get so much more done and I can go to my phone right now. I was talking to somebody yesterday about a deal I had looked at 2002. Put up my phone. I had put it up through iMap in the Gmail, right? Did a little search. Oh, yeah this is the e-mail from 2002. It took me 2 seconds. It wasn't like, go look it up, you'll find it, you know, or ignore it. I mean my life is been dramatically simplified 'cause it's just right there, I can go wherever. I was just in [unk] with my kids, fortunately if the Hedge Fund Capital Worlds so the connectivity is good. So, I'm in the boonies when they came in on the beach playing with my kids. I can say, call, you know, we're taking e-mail, I didn't know when those work, where am I, you know, who doesn't care? -But you are the one percent of the one percent of the one percent of the one percent. I mean, your experience is-- -I'm happy about that. -And that's, you know, problem for you-- -Good political position in there. -But I actually think that in the future luxury will be affordable to those who can't afford to disconnect. Who can't shut up the phone, who have an infrastructure or system in place is a safety net that's-- I don't need to check my e-mail. I don't need to know what's-- -But don't you think you've said the same thing about cars. They said the same thing about anything that took you from one world to another. You know, one of my favorite line is, you don't live in the world you were born in to. You know, just things evolve and we evolve with them and you're always gonna look at the changes you're going through right in that moment. And so you cannot live without them. -Yeah. I think there are some social responsibilities there. I agree with both points of view but I think there's some social responsibility that comes with some other technology and we don't tend to think about it but thinks like-- I use a basic example, everybody can relate to distracted driving. -Uh-hmm. -I mean, distracted driving is a place where I can't say that being productive with my car is a positive thing because you see all the time how accidents happen from this and it's actually, it's becoming an epidemic amongst teens and we as a company as well as some of the other carriers have realized that there are some responsibility we have to educate people on that because it's not just something that, you know, mobile technology. You can talk about the great aspects of it. You can look at-- you know, there's some responsibility I think we all have where that's a bad use case of something we don't wanna have happened. And I think to Sheryl's point, there are some pieces of that that I think also, you know, we see enterprises where their employees are so connected but they're actually having to tell them to un-connect at times because they're feeling this kinda ongoing pressure. I mean, I'm sure a lot of us, but you know-- -Yeah. -There some psychological and physiological type aspects these stuffs that have more-- -How long before we see this, text don't kill people, people kills people. That's a modern-- yeah. -Does it argue though back to that point that it seems like we're about to get into earlier. Does it argue for devices that do less. Is it possible that the devices themselves do too much that if the data collection is more seamless, that if the information flows more constant, that if a device is more simple, more simply a terminal into information, that maybe it's less of a distraction? -My point when I said at the beginning is that I think in the future, I see less distraction. I see less noise. I see less clutter. I think that the future that you were laying out means that, I have carried the content that's relevant to me that resonates with me now. And I think that's the future. I think right now we're in a flat space where we're in undated with information. We have no [unk] what's accurate, credible and reliable. And that is a challenge. I mean, that's the reality of the internet today. And I think that what people want in the future is a solution that helps them navigate that. So that is a time saver, so that it is personalized or customized to their needs. So it's intuitive. So it learns our behavior and starts to respond. Like if I pull out of my drive way, why do I have to hit the garage button for it to close? Why can't my car just sensed that enclose automatically? There's behavior that are easily anticipated and the sensors and technology, it seems like it's a bit of-- well that's why you have emotion sensors-- -And do I know that? -You know all kinds of stuff. -[unk] like, is this the personal mobile revolution I'm getting this much more done a lot but I'm actually spinning this much more time to get there. There's efficiency there between those two absolutely. But it's a net additional use of my resources. And I don't know if I we accomplished something that we've been talking about a little bit here which is, wait a minute. Do we ever get the baseline of life to take less time and effort or do we just make our lives more productive, more efficiently? You know what I'm saying? -We're taking things out of our work worlds and that's causing us to work more and to try to work more efficiently. You know, you don't see people who work behind cash register or you're seeing fewer and fewer people who work behind cash registers like we-- it's a bifurcated world. You've got those who deal with data which is where the opportunities are and those who deal with physical objects and if you have to deal with the physical object to our job, there's a good chance you're not gonna have a job in a few years. You know, we're just pouring, we're sucking all this marks out of the day to day operations of retail stores in anywhere we can to become more efficient. That because we're pulling the data from one place to white collar workers let's call them, whatever devices they use. It requires us to process more information. So I think to your point, you know, there's a great book by Nate Silver, the Signal and the Noise, right? -Yeah. -We have to learn how to process what's signal and what's noise. And that's one of the skills that I think will acquire, we'll try to give to our kids as they get older, right? And how to separate it. So you're not, 'cause the challenge is that you have too much. The challenge you just don't know which is the good stuff and which is the bad stuff. -I think one of the biggest [unk]-- -That's it. -Seeing is that, you know, almost everybody is now used to be artificial intelligent and machine learning was just kind of something you'd find in a few computer scientist working on it, you know, computer science departments around the country and, they were never bothered and that's like, they're t he most highly- demanded people that you can hire, yeah, I mean. National language, machine language learning and machine learning and, you know, national language, parting and all of these things that you see like Siri, that most people first kinda recognized or Google now and things of that nature. I mean, these are the things where I think, you know, you're gonna see it help fill the void and the gap. It's the interconnections of not just being functional on your device, 'cause today, you checked your e-mail, you've checked your calendar, you go in the Yelp, you know, go in and you open up different applications there. It's really kind of I think what you're seeing is that the platform providers are starting to make investments in those areas because they see that is the future. They want people want have seamless and ubiquitous context to what they do not just necessarily being functional. -So ultimately as a personalization, is that where, you know, that's where the innovation can lead, that's where the entrepreneurial-- -I think personalization is kind-- it's like convergence and all these other kind of terms. It's like, I think it's not just about personalizing things. It's about giving them context and I think in mobile, the great thing about your mobile device is it's got, you know, we call it mobile, local and social, right? It's the intersection, the Venn diagram of those three things. It's that, I'm mobile and I know I'm at the Starbucks and I know that my friends there and I help connect this together and then also I gave you a discount coupon 'cause I know you're, you know, you're a long time Starbucks customer and I know what Starbucks coffee you drink everyday because I, you know, seen you order that over and over again. It's like things like that, and it's probably little far fetch. I know people want that level of personalization. -Well, and how serious we only have like 3 minutes left. This is the big topic to jump into quickly. But how serious do security and privacy concerns become then when we're talking about exchanging so much data so seamlessly? I know we've already seen sort of troubles with seamless sharing. How much more seriously do we have to start taking that? -That's huge. I mean, you know, privacy, you know, 'cause tonight you have this ubiquity of information especially when we're talking about personalization and sharing it for anyone. Look at all the, you know, things that are going on with Google and Facebook. I think that privacy becomes a big issue and everybody has to respect that but security is, I think, this year most of the people that you see who predicts security threats and say this will be probably the year that we're gonna see one of the largest probably Smartphone security threats, whether it's viral or malware. We've started the CM&R industry, we track them on a daily, weekly basis but we're starting to see them progress more because smartphones have become so ubiquitous and we're trying to now educate people on protecting their phones with antivirus software and malware, anti-malware software and safe browsing software because we're seeing some of the same threats that we saw on the early computer days, now starting to, you know, show themselves in the Smartphone. -Well, then James, does each new connected device become a possible vector? I mean, we also have a story about the Samsung Smart TV is being hacked, maybe an entry way into your home network. -Yeah. I think it's something we have to be aware of. I don't think it's an epidemic today. I think there are isolated cases. I think all technology makes that happen. All right. They-- or the opportunity for that to happen. -I love being the doom and gloom guy. -So, let's just turn on 4G. -Very expensive. -I had my coffee today. -Our phones are doomed. He's cranky. -I think consumers know. I think that, that this balancing act on safety and security is that if they can see a direct benefit, they are willing to sacrifice a little bit of privacy. But it has to be transparent, we have to be consistent about how you plan to use the information, where it's gonna go, what are the possibilities and I think that the more the conversation has had, the more prepared the market places to understand when a mishap takes place. -How about a word about individual privacy and security? Because if I wanted to hack you, I'll just break into your mailbox or call your credit card company, pretend I'm your grandma. -Right. I mean, you can get through the individual stuff in a whirlwind right now. I'm more concerned about the bigger hacks that impact our national security. I'm not as concerned about missiles as I am as somebody from overseas coming in and just messing with our whole, you know, communications infrastructures 'cause you know, you take out some cellphone towers in the right place as you take out the network, you know, we got problems and so, to me, those are the bigger issues, the bigger-- have a big impact on society issues. -Mark talks about one of my favorite wild card scenario. So they ran across in the CIA website. So, if someone were to detonate an atomic bomb to the atmosphere, it would shutdown all satellite communication, you know, so you would all of this connectivity that we rely upon that is so essential to our day to day, health records, access to Medicaid, access to financials. -Yeah. -All that's gone. -A revolution about that. -Yeah. Well, and actually it's funny because I was without power recently for I don't know, 32 hours or some. Unbelievable and I'm trying-- -You can shut your phone. -And to me, no, I could take my phone. -Oh, no, she went at Starbucks and plugged in. -Oh, yeah, I drove around with my car for like 30 minutes to charge my phones. No, but someone tweeted me, if we were really gonna talk about the connection, we probably should have talked about power. I mean, we start to be-- we start to have a very serious conversation about electricity, being absolutely essential to powering, you know, obviously not just like lights in life and heat but everything we'll be relying so much. -We need this stuff goes down. -This is a downer of a concept. -I know. -What? -Don't think about this, people. Don't think about this. No. -But you can go and celebrate. -You know it's exactly to happen. -No. -That revolution thing didn't even make any sense. -No. -But I heard that show is available on [unk] so you can get all cut up over the top. -Oh good. All right. -Demand for it because it was on TV. -Folks, please help me and Molly thank our guests as we wrap up this 10th anniversary of Next Big Thing. -Thanks, guys. -Mark Cuban, James Fishler from LG, Sheryl Connelly, Futuristic Ford, and Fared Adib of sprint. Guys, thank you very much. -Thank you very much. We're gonna sort of hang out.