Moving the future: organic motion joins other high-tech companies to help Intel open our eyes to the future.(Trends & Technology)

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They're an unlikely couple--Paul S. Otellini, Intel CEO, and Steve Harwell, lead singer of the alt rock band Smash Mouth. But, with the help of VR, motioncapture, and other leading-edge technology companies, they made music in what Otellini calls "third life" at this year's Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

Onstage, Otellini began the keynote by stepping through Intel's vision of a future in which the Internet becomes personal; it becomes "proactive, predictive, and context-aware." To demonstrate, he takes the audience on a tour of Beijing, with the help of a set that looks like the outside of a Chinese restaurant, a 15x50-foot screen, a few off-stage processors, and Total Immersion's D'Fusion augmented-reality software.

A colleague points a cell phone at a street sign and sees the English translation replace the Mandarin characters on his screen. Similarly, when he points his cell phone at a menu on the side of the restaurant, he sees pictures of the food and a video review overlaid on the video captured by his phone.

Otellini notes that although this is only a demo, with more powerful and energy-efficient processors, ubiquitous wireless broadband infrastructure, context-driven Internet, and more natural user interfaces, we can expect to have applications such as these in our hands "in a blink." Now, it's time for the climax.

The Smash Mouth band members are already online, connecting from wherever they are in the world. Harwell takes the mike, and by using eJamming's AUDiiO software, sings "Walking on the Sun" with his band. They're perfectly in sync. "I can't believe how close in time that is when we're this far apart," says Harwell.

But, Otellini hasn't finished. He brings Big Stage cofounder Jonathan Strietzel onto the stage. Big Stage, a start-up that debuted in December 2007, converts photographs into 3D avatars. Strietzel takes three photographs of Harwell's face--one from the front and one from each side. From those photographs, or, in this case, photos Strietzel took earlier, the software creates a 3D model texture-mapped with Harwell's face in less than a minute. Digital Steve Harwell is bald, but he has the real Steve's eyebrows and goatee, and can wink, blink, and move his mouth. After a little funny business--Strietzel gives Harwell a blond Mohawk, he puts Harwell on a still image of a chopper, changes his hair, and changes his expression-he pulls up a Smash Mouth music video and replaces Harwell's head with an Otellini avatar.