"War is not a good life, but it's still a life, "said Captain Kirk in Star Trek.

A new captain is on the bridge at Intel.  Kirk Skaugen is now captain of the Intel PC Client Group and his job is to lead the Enterprise... to re-invent the PC.

Over years the PC world built an empire...destroyed many other worlds of technology  (e.g., the electronic typewriter, fax machine, desktop calculator, cash register...and more).

While at its peak, the PC industry sought to consolidate its conquered lands by inventing platforms like internet. Like the mythical Trojan Horse, the internet, built by the IT industry and harnessed by the PC industry to expand its empire...succeeded in a life of its own. Once grown, the Internet supplanted the PC and its power.

Internet hit the PC with so much force that it knocked the PC from the very center of the IT universe to its current status as just another planet in orbit...or perhaps as far away as even a moon of that planet.

In 2000, William Wang sold MAG monitors from Taiwan (a well-known brand at that time) to US clients like Gateway. He boarded Singapore Airlines Flight 006 (a Boeing 747-400) in Taipei and, distracted by an incoming typhoon, the plane attempted take-off on a closed runway. It hit some construction equipment and crashed... killing 83 out of 179 people on board.

Wang walked away from that plane crash. That experience probably best prepares Wang for what he is just about to do.

But before we go there, let's just say that what Wang has already done is even more incredible than his walked-away-from-a-plane-crash history.

Ted Waitt [then Gateway's famed chairman] had been one of Wang’s customers at MAG. In 2001, Gateway asked Wang to help put together a TV strategy and Wang’s team put together Gateway's 42" plasma TV system, priced at an impressive $2999. At the time, comparable systems were selling for as much as $6000.

Despite the fact that Gateway's TV didn't unseat Sony, Sharp, Toshiba and other traditional TV makers in USA...in 2003, at age 43, Wang took partners and $600,000 and decided to start a TV company.

Now both of the two contenders for world leadership in consumer electronics have new leaders. While Tim Cook inherited Apple's top job after the death of Steve Jobs,  Dr.  Oh-hyun Kwon [shown in photo] will step into the job as Samsung's CEO after Gee-sung Choi steps down.

But the CEO job that Kwon accepted will not be the same job Choi had. Nope. Not at all.

Chairman Kun-hee Lee, third son of the Samsung founder, oversees all at Samsung with an iron hand. He wants to separate the consumer and component segments (with consumer product division leaders, such as TV and phones, not reporting to the new CEO.)

Why? Obviously, Samsung like many Asian suppliers is a tangle of OEM and branded products. On one hand, they supply you parts and pieces...on the other hand, they bash your brand and push their own in world markets. Imagine Apple's position: as a component supplier to Apple, Samsung knows almost every move Apple will make before public, press and other competitors. Today Apple is about 5% of Samsung's total business and Samsung is Apple's Number One competitor in the marketplace...

Calling Google's Project Glass "just a  start," Forrester analyst Sarah Rotman Epps argues "like mobile and tablets today, in three years, wearable computing devices will matter to every product strategist."

Wearables have enormous potential for uses in health and fitness, navigation, social networking, commerce, and media. "Imagine," asks Epps, ".. video games that happen in real space. Or glasses that remind you of your colleague’s name that you really should know. Or paying for a coffee at Starbucks with your watch instead of your phone. Wearables will transform our lives in numerous ways, trivial and substantial, that we are just starting to imagine."

Wearables will "enter the mainstream by exploiting the relative strengths of the big five platforms" (Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, and Microsoft) says Epps in her blog post.