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LG TVS, APPLE VISION PRO & THE RISE OF INVISIBLE TECHNOLOGY By Berit Anderson _____ Why Read: The new gold standard for product design is invisibility. This week, we explore what that means, how it's popping up across consumer products, and how it will impact the success of Apple's Vision Pro headset. _____ A few weeks ago, I was wandering through the main hall at CES (which happens to be run by CTA, of which SNS member Gary Shapiro is president and CEO) when I came upon a large group snapping photos of a giant wall of LG television screens. My sardonic side found the scene hilarious. This was peak CES - hundreds of (mostly) men in suits and sneakers, hungry for newness, dutifully documenting the latest television set. I had no idea what number of pixels this giant display had or how many ks it was. Or if the innovation in question lay in its size or an ability to broadcast across screens or between them. To be honest, I'm not a big TV person, so I really didn't care. But I was very amused at the spectacle, and in that spirit, I took my own photo of this gaggle of onlookers.
Upon further inspection, however, I found that I really did care about the screen in question: LG's OLED T. It was, in a word, invisible. Both wireless and transparent. And yes, I mean transparent. When it's not in use, you can see right through it. Like a window. As I stood there with my mouth open, watching LG's wall of screens turn from windows to displays and back again, I became a TV person. As Arthur C. Clarke famously wrote: "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." This felt like magic. But the SNS Global Report is not a gadget blog, and I'm not writing about LG screens here to drive affiliate sales links. The OLED T is an example of a much bigger trend that it will behoove SNS members to keep front and center as they build and bring products to market. A confluence of social factors and innovations in processing is driving technology toward a new marker of consumer success - invisibility.
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