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There is a perception that viewers are cutting the cord in droves, similar to the chopping down of Truffula trees to produce Thneeds. I, a tree hugger, am becoming a cord hugger, though a far cry from the Lorax of the cable industry. In this regard, my TV habits represent the majority as cord cutting is just starting to proliferate. This is my story; one about switching from Fiber Optic TV and re-subscribing to cable despite much consideration around cutting the cord.

Going to the movies was my favorite way to escape a mundane suburban childhood. Raiders of the Lost Ark was the first film where I truly felt the peril of the movie’s hero with heart-racing adrenaline and a first-person perspective. Gripping the seat with both hands, I lived through the moments with Indiana Jones as he narrowly escaped a booby trapped cave, ran for his life through a primitive jungle and was dropped into a den of slithering snakes – barely avoiding certain death, time and time again. In that darkened movie theater, it was hard to imagine anything feeling any more real and thrilling, but the advent of Virtual Reality promises to raise the game, bringing consumers an even fuller, more immersive experience.

“Mr. Watson, come here, I want to see you,” said Graham Alexander Bell, as he made the first ever phone call 140 years ago yesterday. And, of course, I’m sure Mr. Watson came running from the other room, probably wondering why they couldn’t have invented video conferencing instead. How times change; when the landline phone rings at my house, the kids barely look up from their smartphones and no one makes a move to answer the thing. And so it rings and rings until voicemail finally kicks in…and no one bothers to check that either. If you want to talk to one of us, call us, not the house. And yes, we all have video conferencing, but on our own personal little screens.

Mobile World Congress has traditionally been the playground of the mobile OEMs, highlighting the latest and greatest devices, and creating the loudest buzz possible along the way. To some extent, this fact remained true at MWC 2016, but the real buzz was saved for VR headsets and the 360-degree cameras needed to help build some of this content.