Last Friday was the final day for the Las Vegas mega-trade exposition: the annual Consumer Electronics Show. Forward-thinking Oklahoma City homeowners have learned to keep an eye on the CES because the public debuts of new appliances, gadgets, apps, and devices that take place there often wind up influencing Oklahoma City real estate. Sometimes, in major ways.

Past examples are numerous. Not too long ago, giant screen TVs were oddities—but today it’s unusual to find a single Oklahoma City house for sale that doesn’t have at least one room configured to suggest an inviting big screen entertainment area. CES is where the latest television advances showed up first—and America bought into big screen in a big way.

CES is also where the newest Bluetooth- and WiFi-ready devices have their coming out parties—important because some older Oklahoma City houses with dense, WiFi-stopping flooring and walls need some serious signal-boosting setups before their listing can promote “WiFi throughout.”

The 2019 CES continued its tradition of providing a launchpad for devices intended to transform the way consumers live, work, and play—but this year did so without a lot of star power in the real estate department. There wasn’t that one single standout that could grab headlines major media attention, at least not one likely to transform the prospects for future Oklahoma City houses for sale.

What did debut were a collection of incremental additions to the roster of gadgets and appliances that listen to you and talk to each other. These gizmos belong under the heading of “IoT” (the Internet of Things). On display was everything from smart refrigerators (by now, they are old hat) to smart bread-making machines (the Breadbot) that send and receive electronic signals.

Overall a surprising number of the new advances were in the voice assistance direction—aided by the industrial clout of the internet giants. The BBC noted the drift toward “voice assistance everywhere.” Their headline read, “Amazon and Google Assistant carve up tech expo.” That was demonstrated throughout the 2.9 million square feet of exhibits, with, as moneycontrol.com put it, voice assistance for everything “from TVs, toilets, or toys.”

As more and more daily household tasks are enabled by voice command—and collected into a single unified memory store—

It’s a future where I hope you’ll give me a call!