But the heart and soul of CES is not the smooth forecasters or the journalists who follow them. It’s the tech creators that make the show special, and a fully virtual CES wasn’t necessarily good for them. “The smaller brands were probably the ones that suffered the most this year,” said Carolina Milanesi, analyst and founder of research firm The Heart of Tech. “Because unless you got a designated place or experience on the website, it was just a long list of names.”
Milanesi shared a comment also made by one of my WIRED colleagues: the serendipity of discovery was gone. One of the most exciting parts of CES is finding a strange product in a back corner of the gigantic exhibition hall and learning about something new by pure chance. This is a virtual impossibility at a virtual CES.
Several tech companies that I emailed or spoke to in the days leading up to the event told me they just weren’t participating this year. The CTA still charged between $ 1,200 and $ 1,500 for a gadget maker to be a “ digital exhibitor. ” That doesn’t include the additional cost to participate in tangential events such as Pepcom (anywhere from $ 2,500 to $ 10,000, according to documents reviewed by WIRED). For that amount, many smaller companies would be better off emailing journalists or potential business partners directly and setting up their own Zoom briefings.
Ultimately, this year’s CES did not feel up to date. A session on gender and racial bias in AI included no mention of Timnit Gebru. Another panel of executives from Twitter and Google focused more on GDPR than the bigger, more direct news: the spread of disinformation on social media and Twitter’s role in the violent storming of the US Capitol the week before the show.
There were exceptions that made the show feel firmer at the time. During AMD’s keynote, CEO Lisa Su was joined by scientists who explained how additional teraflops of AMD computing power help them research infectious diseases such as Covid-19. Tuesday’s conference sessions began with a 30-minute talk with Abbott’s executive vice president of rapid diagnostics and Microsoft’s chief medical officer about molecular testing and supply chain logistics for vaccine distribution. In another keynote that morning, Brad Smith, the president of Microsoft, discussed the problems of the day by talking about the recent SolarWinds hack and the far-reaching implications of this type of cyber espionage.
That, of course, is the problem with technology: it can be both our source of danger and a solution to our problems. CES has traditionally been more about solutions, and that’s a big part of its appeal. “We’ve seen the pressure on the health systems, our schools, our businesses large and small,” said Gary Shapiro, the head of the Consumer Technology Association, which produces CES every year. “But in this time of uncertainty, technology has been a stabilizer. A unifying force. “
I asked the CTA if it had considered canceling this year’s event entirely or putting on a seriously scaled-down show. A spokesman still said CES 2021 was “an opportunity for the tech community to unite, come together and focus on a brighter future.” The CTA has not yet shared how many people signed up for the online CES. The organization stressed that by being virtual it would be much more accessible to people around the world this year.
This may very well be true. And as with any CES, there were some technologies, novelties, and quirks that I’m sure we’ll have for months to come.
But I would love to be together again next year.
More from WIRED at CES 2021