Consortia and Joint Programs

Most of us are awash in consumer electronics (CE) devices: from cell phones, to TVs, to dishwashers. They provide us with information, entertainment, and communications, and assist us in accomplishing our daily tasks. Unfortunately, most are not as helpful as they could and should be; for the most part, they are dumb, unaware of us or our situations, and often difficult to use. In addition, most CE devices cannot communicate with our other devices, even when such communication and collaboration would be of great help. The Consumer Electronics 2.0 initiative (CE 2.0) is a collaboration between the Media Lab and its sponsor companies to formulate the principles for a new generation of consumer electronics that are highly connected, seamlessly interoperable, situation-aware, and radically simpler to use. Our goal is to show that as computing and communication capability seep into more of our everyday devices, these devices do not have to become more confusing and complex, but rather can become more intelligent in a cooperative and user-friendly way.