“Technology makes it possible for people to gain control over everything, except over technology”
-John Tudor

In the early 90s, I walked away from a promising career in the entertainment industry, moved to Topeka, Kansas, and spent a little over a year working for NewTek, on a product called the Video Toaster.

The Video Toaster was a revolutionary product for its time, putting the power to create broadcast-quality television into the hands of mere mortals for less than $10,000. Now, $10,000 is a lot of money, but what we did with the Toaster would have cost closer to $100,000 if people bought the equipment that was prevalent in the market back then.

I know it may not seem like a big deal now, considering that every Mac in the world has iMovie, and suites like Final Cut Pro are affordable and relatively easy to use, but back then, we really did revolutionize video production. I didn't get filthy rich off of it like the programmers and company heads did, but I was proud to be part of it. I felt like I was part of something really cool that made a big difference for a lot of people, and it was the first time in my life that I realized how powerful technology truly was at a consumer level. I travelled all over the country showing it off at computer shops and trade shows, including brutal and exhausting days at CES and NAB in Las Vegas.

It was at CES in 1991 or 1992 that I first became acutely aware of how much the world was going to change over the next ten to twenty years. While the show was filled with stuff that I didn't care about (and can't remember) I clearly recall seeing HDTV for the first time, and how it took my breath away. I take it for granted now, but it was like looking through a window, and I couldn't wait for that day in the future when I could finally afford one. (They were priced around $70,000 or something outrageous like that back then. To illustrate how far we've come in just over ten years, you can now buy a very nice HDTV for around $2,000. Gasp.)

Back then, my Powerbook 170 and my ginormous Morotola flip phone were cutting edge technology, and one of my bosses had this GPS device that, though it was the size of a small briefcase and required about ten minutes to lock down a position, was light years ahead of anything else I'd ever seen. We were surrounded by emerging technology (and worked on it every day in our R&D department) but I had no idea how exciting the next fifteen years would be until one of my friends showed me a bit of plastic that was slightly larger and thicker than a credit card.

"One day," he said, "you'll be able to take all your CDs, convert them to digital files, and store them on a computer."

"That's cool," I said, "but who wants a walkman that's the size of a computer?"

He held up the plastic.

"No," he said, "you'll be able to store all your albums on something about this big, just in RAM."

It seems so unremarkable now, but at the time, that little glimpse at something so magical blew my mind. If we could store an entire record collection on something the size of a credit card, what else would we be able to do? At that moment, I understood that technology could do more than bring arcade games into my home or give me a cell phone that could almost fit in my pocket.

Over the last decade, computers have gotten smaller and more powerful, and most importantly of all, more affordable. But if what I saw at this year's CES is any indication, Arthur C. Clarke's statement "any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic" is about to apply to our daily lives.

Initially, I was unimpressed when I walked into the main hall and just saw tons of HD-DVD and Blu-ray devices there. I joked that we could take a photo of this year's CES, replace the format names with VHS and Beta, and see what the show looked like in 1980. (If you're wondering who is taking the lead in the format war, it may be HD-DVD. While Blu-ray Disc is clearly ahead at the moment, Sony has reportedly shunned the adult film industry, according to Vivid's Steve Hirsch. Since the adult industry led to the eventual triumph of VHS over Beta, and has driven too many emerging technologies to count, HD-DVD may have a better chance of success in the long term . . . though I find the idea of watching porn in HD a little, uh, unattractive.)

But after a full day at the show, the format wars faded into the background, and what really stood out wasn't any specific gadget or service, but an overall message they all delivered. My friend and InDigital co-host Hahn Choi called it an "evolution," rather than a "revolution." While we didn't see too many brand new things that are going to fundamentally change the way we live, we saw lots of things that make what we already have cooler and more useful. There were smaller and more duarable screens on mobile devices which will one day receive broadcast television, larger, more beautiful, and more affordable HDTVs, and the logical evolutionary step of that little plastic strip I saw about fifteen years ago: an ultra-mobile computer from Samsung called the Q1, that exclusively uses solid-state memory.

The Video Toaster got its name because the company founders wanted to make something that was so easy to use, it would be just like a toaster. Everyone knows how to use a toaster, right? While I didn't see anything this year that's as revolutionary as the Video Toaster was, or shocked me with the clarity of that bit of plastic, I did see the undeniable truth that technology which was recently too intimidating or expensive for normal people is rapidly moving closer and closer to that philosophy we had at NewTek. At this year's CES, this was most clearly embodied in a touch screen computer intended for entire families to use. It will live in your kitchen and replace white boards and Post-its, and handle e-mail and instant messaging. It's aimed at people who don't know how to boot from a CD or understand how to release and renew a DHCP lease. This may put a knot in the ponytails of several hardcore nerds, but I believe it is actually a really good thing; once technology makes it into the lives of average, normal, non-geeks, more people will understand how important it is to protect their online privacy, oppose crippling DRM, and secure their machines, because these issues which many of us are battling daily will now affect their lives directly. It's still a long way off, but if what I saw at CES is any indication, we're getting closer every day.

Wil Wheaton misses his TI 99/4A