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Tracking What’s Next At CES

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It’s no news that technology is a part of daily life, or that it’s an ever-increasing part of library life. One reliable way to keep ahead of what might be walking in the door tomorrow is monitoring consumer trade shows, the largest of which is CES (formerly the Consumer Electronics Show, now just the acronym). For 50 years, CES has showcased hot new gadgets that eventually had culture-changing effects: the Portable Executive Telephone (1968), the VCR (1970), the Commodore 64 (1982), Nintendo (1985), DVDs (1996), Plasma TVs (2001), and the first big wave of smart home technologies (2014). Some of these had direct impacts on libraries, and others only in how our patrons live their lives. As the time from a technology’s introduction to its adoption gets shorter, staying on top of what’s happening at CES is becoming more important. A few years ago, librarians began attending South By Southwest…