Paris – At international start-up conference Le Web, held in Paris from 10 to 12 December 2013, French public broadcaster France Télévisions brought together nine French start-ups to imagine the future of the connected city in an exhibition called Smart City 2025.
The exhibit featured a driverless car, a light that transmits digital data, and a television that allows sharing of 4K ultra-HD files. Visitors could also see and interact with SmartWindow, a next-generation window produced by South Korean electronics company LG and French start-up Sensorit. The window’s transparent glass, which displays the local temperature, pollution levels and the user’s Twitter feed, can be transformed into a tv with a single hand gesture.
‘Right now, it’s a screen,’ says Sensorit CEO Dick Lantim. ‘But within, perhaps, two or three years we’ll be seeing this digital glass that shows information in a car or a shop.’
The theme of this year’s Le Web, Europe’s largest technology conference, was The Next Ten Years. Speakers including Phil Libin, CEO of Evernote and Nick D’Aloisio, founder of artificial intelligence company Summly, which was bought by Yahoo. Speakers speculated about trends, such as the Internet of Things, in which everyday objects become connected and eventually predictive.
Watch out for more interviews from Le Web 2013 in our Inform section.