Sean Maloney, Intel`s executive VP and head of marketing and communications, actor Morgan Freeman and musician Thomas Dolby wowed an audience at Comdex Chicago 2001 yesterday.
"Welcome to the biggest hangover of the world after the biggest party ever in the world," said Maloney, in a barbed opening remark on the slow down of the new economy.
He then addressed the sagging PC market: "I have not come here to bury the PC, but to praise it. In the past, many companies have tried to eliminate the PC and have failed. The key, I believe, is not to try and replace the PC, but rather to enhance it by using it together with other devices."
Maloney said Intel sees two main challenges in the market today - complexity and the necessity for co-operation among companies. He also sees diversity in the way people access the Internet. "People don`t only use work or home PCs to access the Internet anymore. We see, especially in the emerging markets, the amount of Internet caf'es growing at a tremendous rate."
He added that e-learning would be the killer app for the next two years, although bandwidth problems may hamper uptake.
"We have spent a lot of money implementing an e-learning programme at Intel. To save money on the high bandwidth costs we are using peer-to-peer networking. All the course units are kept in a central location in the US. If a staff member, say in Hong Kong, wants to access a course, it gets downloaded to that office. The next employee accessing that course gets it from the Hong Kong office."
Maloney also made some predictions for the next five years. The first forecast related to the increased use of wireless audio: "Napster generates 4% of all Internet traffic. That`s saying something."
Musician Thomas Dolby, who is founder of Beatnik, an enhanced audio solutions company for digital devices, echoed Maloney`s words, adding that his company believes the youth culture will drive the sales of wireless audio.
Maloney touched briefly on digital imaging, gaming and peer-to-peer networking as more of the things to keep an eye on within the next couple of years.
Actor Morgan Freeman, who is co-founder of the Revelations Entertainment production company, which develops and produces projects in existing and emerging media, explained how the virtual world was being used to facilitate one of the latest movie projects.
Based on the book "Rendezvous with RAMA" by Arthur C Clarke, the movie is largely set in a huge cylinder, which could only be replicated in the virtual world.
"It will only cost us $100 million to make the movie instead of $300 million had we gone the traditional way," said Freeman.
Thanks to the use of Intel`s digital imaging, the film, when released, can play on any medium, from the Internet, to normal big screen, to Imax.
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