Connected Car Connected Home Collaboration Surface | The Glass Age | Corning

Communicating through our refrigerator doors.

Customizing our driving experience with a single touch.

Connecting around a brilliant, dynamic tabletop for the most productive work session imaginable.

These scenarios and many more like them are no longer the stuff of a science fiction fantasy. They’re happening today, and it’s all made possible by advancements in one remarkable material: Glass.

As a world leader in glass technology, Corning Incorporated has always pushed the boundaries of science and created solutions that have shaped new industries. That leadership – and concrete examples of how the Glass Age has come to life – was on clear display again at the 2016 Consumer Electronics Show.

For four straight days, visitors crowded around Corning’s Collaboration Surface, customizable/personalized Retail Window, larger-than-life Infotainment Wall, Connected Car, and interactive Kitchen Hub.

They learned how the thin LCD glass embedded in each surface enabled each brilliant display, and how tough cover glass helps keep everything gleaming. They heard lifelike sounds generated from thin, nearly invisible glass speakers. They experienced first-hand how optical fiber can move massive amounts of data between these connected surfaces.

They swiped, tapped, and pinched. And over and over -- as they sailed moving images down the length of a glass-covered table and wrote personal messages on a gleaming glass wall -- they said, “I want this!”

Designers, manufacturers, and other industry partners want it, too.

Thanks to its long-standing industry relationships and new partnerships forged at venues like CES, Corning is helping to inspire a host of innovators explore ways to use advanced glass applications in their own visions for the future.

The timing is perfect. As many as 6.4 billion connected devices will make up the Internet of Things by the end of 2016, say market researchers from Gartner, Inc. – and that number should soar to 25 billion by 2020.

And as the momentum builds, it’s becoming clearer than ever – Corning glass is helping to feed the world’s insatiable appetite for connectedness and smart-enabled efficiency.