The International Consumer Electronics Show is the ultimate playground for technophiles. Every year, thousands make the Las Vegas pilgrimage to hear leading tech executives paint a vision of the future and join the crowds on the show floor to see prototypes of electronics products that might not reach retails shelves for months or years.

CNET TV has a great collection of video clips on highlights from the show, including a glimpse of Panasonic’s 150-inch plasma TV. Gizmodo has a nice roundup of some of the cool products at the show and a funny video of Bill Gates contemplating retirement.

In his opening keynote address (in a more serious moment), Gates looked ahead to the “second digital decade” where a wide array of devices and applications will be linked through ubiquitous Internet connectivity. “Those applications will run not only on the PC, they’ll run up in the Internet, or in the cloud, as we say, on the phone, in the car, in the TV,” Gates said. “The applications will use the best of rich platforms and those Internet services.”

It wasn’t all about gadgets at CES. In a speech on Tuesday, FCC Chairman Kevin Martin took issue with those who claim that the United States is slipping behind other industrialized countries on broadband technology. Martin, according to a report in the Seattle Times, said those comparisons, often based on OECD data, fail to account for differences in size and population density, which complicate the delivery of broadband.
“The population density is about the same in Massachusetts and Japan, for example, and actually the broadband penetration is about the same,” Martin said, adding that the same can be said of New Jersey and Korea or Florida and Finland.
The real issue, Martin said, is looking to what can be done to offer more people broadband access, particularly in rural areas.
Convergence, the growing interdependence of electronics, computers and the Internet, is always a big theme at the show. Intel CEO Paul Otellini told attendees that the industry was “in the midst of the largest opportunity to redefine consumer electronics and entertainment since the introduction of the television.” For that to happen, he said four factors need to be addressed: Silicon needs to become more powerful and energy efficient; broadband access needs to be ubiquitous; the Internet needs to be infused with a sense of context; and user interfaces need to be more natural.

We share these tech leaders’ enthusiasm for the rich possibilities of ubiquitous broadband. But beyond the glitzy confines of Las Vegas convention halls, broadband will have a profoundly positive effect on economic growth and spark real innovations in health care, education, homeland security and other areas. Universal broadband could deliver $500 billion in U.S. economic growth and create some 1.2 million American jobs, according to some estimates. That’s a vision we can all get excited about.