CableLabs’ COO Chris Lammers provides the behind the scenes view of one of Rance Howard’s final acting roles in this interview filmed at TIS18. Howard, an accomplished actor with credits in 283 television shows and movies as well father to director Ron Howard, was the star of the CableLabs video, The Near Future – a Better Place. The video talks to the near-term technologies that will allow more people to age in place and not lose mobility (as seen with the glimpses of the autonomous shuttle Accessible Ollie taking him and his friends to a fishing spot).
As pointed out in the video and reinforced by Lammers, the technology offers the potential for better connectivity, so people can have independence without isolation. He touches upon some of the practical applications, such as telemedicine applications (e.g. this video with a professor behind a skin patch blood pressure sensor).
Broadband is the common element to make the connections. Although the need for speed will continue (Lammers suggested in his presentation at TIS18 that, if Nielsen’s Law holds, by 2030 10 Gb/s could be the1 Gb/s of today), reliability and low-latency are just as critical, particularly for applications like telemedicine and some IoT use-cases. He says it is ultimately about creating an overall customer experience.
And looking to the future, CableLabs newly released video, The Near Future – Ready for Anything – looks at the other end of the age spectrum with the viewpoint of a child explaining how she will use technology, such as augmented and virtual reality, artificial intelligence and IoT, to learn things in a more engaging and efficient way. To Lammers’ point, the Ready for Anything and A Better Place videos are excellent because they don’t use technology jargon, but instead, shows the experience, the outcomes and positive emotions enabled by the technologies.
