I Visited Our Tech Future. It’s Not Actually A Terrible Place.

Honda unveiled two electric vehicles at CES in Las Vegas, each of which had its own Blade Runner-inspired appeal.

When I stepped on the showroom floor in Las Vegas at CES, the largest tech industry trade show in the world, earlier this week, I felt a sense of dread. I’ve been coming to the show, off and on, for a decade, and the story is always the same: The industry made new gadgets for you, and they’re slightly better than the old ones. Despite the hype, it’s not often that there’s anything revolutionary.

But the vibe was slightly different this year. 

There was no shortage of new machines on the CES showroom floor that are indeed slightly better than the old ones, and which will make your life easier or more fun — TVs, robotic vacuum cleaners, fancy phone chargers. What really stood out, however, were the growing number of things that are designed to make you — and the planet — healthier. 

Everything from advanced fitness trackers to portable solar energy systems show that innovation means more than cramming more pixels into a display or adding AI features to a washing machine. It gives me hope that tech companies, despite the gloom and doom that they sometimes bring out in people, may be guiding us toward a better future after all.

CES, formerly known as the Consumer Electronics Show, takes over Las Vegas at the beginning of January, and it’s a big deal. Last year, the show attracted nearly 140,000 people, including industry analysts, buyers from major retailers, venture capitalists, and journalists like me, all of whom gawked at the latest gadgets and wild concepts, like Samsung’s rolling robot that can turn your floor into a screen. This is the show where decisions get made about what kinds of tech you might be able to buy — but only in the near future. It’s about as fun as going to an amusement park where you’re only allowed to look at the rides.

The show started out as a much smaller affair in New York City in the late ’60s and is where, over the years, the first VCR, CD player, Nintendo Entertainment System, and Xbox all made their debut. But at this year’s show, I found myself spending more time in unexpected corners of the convention center, where categories like digital health and energy storage were on display.

Health 2.0

Digital health probably makes you think about either fitness trackers or Bluetooth-enabled blood pressure cuffs, but the category is expanding in unexpected directions. There are new ways to gather health data, surprising ways to monitor your brain waves, and even AI-powered platforms that promise to make your whole family healthier. 

And, of course, there are fitness trackers. With the viral popularity of the Oura Ring, there were several other smart rings at the show, including one called Evie, which has an AI-powered chatbot trained on medical journals. There were also other ways to track your health, like Lingo, an over-the-counter continuous glucose monitor that works with an app-based fitness coach. (This is the same kind of tech that doctors now increasingly prescribe for people with diabetes.) 

Speaking of coaches and AI, Panasonic of all companies is launching a wellness coach for the whole family powered by Anthropic’s Claude AI. It’s called Umi, and it’s something I’d consider using for my own family for things like keeping track of how everyone’s feeling and even coming up with ideas for fun activities we can do together.

Health trackers took on different form factors, too. Master & Dynamic, an audio company, is now selling a set of headphones that can actually read your brainwaves thanks to tech from a startup called Neurable AI. There are electroencephalography (EEG) sensors built into the earcups that can actually sense how well you’re paying attention to something. I tried the headphones and was blown away by the accuracy. 

Somewhat similarly, a Canada-based company called Myant makes “smart textiles,” which is a phrase I did not expect to encounter at CES. They’re literally clothes that you wear that have sensors woven into their threads so that your underwear or an armband can continuously monitor health metrics, including heart rate and body temperature. 

This year, Myant is releasing a new generation of its tech that can also capture EKG readings and continuously measure blood pressure. With all of this data, your doctor can get a much better picture of your health than what a periodic check-in from a smartwatch or ring could offer.

“We’re developing a DSL cable to the human body to really connect the human operating system,” Myant’s founder and CEO Tony Chahine said in an interview. “As opposed to thinking of us as a device for a specific thing, think of us as an interface for many things.”

The health-focused innovations scale up, too. Probably the most potentially powerful invention I saw at the whole show was the OnMed CareStation. It’s essentially a portable clinic that can be dropped into rural areas or even in underserved communities in the middle of a city. Once the patient steps in, they’re greeted by a human health care professional on a life-size screen and guided through any number of diagnostic tests with the help of tools like a blood pressure cuff and an otoscope that drops down from the ceiling. 

It’s basically a much more powerful and comprehensive version of doing a telehealth appointment on your phone. The whole thing just needs a power outlet to run and is internet-connected thanks to Starlink. But the company’s CEO Karthik Ganesh insists that the fancy kiosk is more than hardware.

“We have spent too much energy thinking tech is a silver bullet,” Ganesh told me and explained that OnMed’s CareStations redefine how people can get their health care needs met. In some cases, it gives people who live in health care deserts access to a doctor’s office they otherwise wouldn’t have. 

A healthier Earth

While I didn’t expect to see so many exciting health-based innovations at the show, I was expecting to see a lot of talk about sustainability and the energy transition. I was not disappointed.

One booth featuring three companies embracing renewable energy offered a good example of how clean tech is coming to our homes in a meaningful way. One of them called Biolite got its start making campstoves that could charge your phone but is now getting into the home energy business with a battery called Backup that can effectively work like a generator in the event of a blackout. 

In the same booth was a similar company called Copper that’s making battery-equipped appliances, including an induction range that also works in a blackout. Finally, there was Gradient which makes window-mounted heat pumps (no batteries in this one yet) that promise to bring more energy-efficient heating and cooling into millions of homes.

The energy transition is actually something that almost every company I talked to is focused on. All of these new technologies underscore a real shift at the show: For decades, innovation meant making TV look better or speakers sound better, but if you’re to believe a lot of the companies at CES this year, it’s now about using tech to make our lives — and our world — better.  

John Deere is electrifying its tractor fleets — and making them autonomous to save energy. Volkswagen is rolling out a line of satellite-connected electric SUVs under the old Scout brand. Samsung and LG are expanding their lineups of heat pumps and heat pump-powered dryers which are all internet-connected now. 

Even Sony is going to start selling an EV in partnership with Honda. I sat in it, and surrounded by screens and lidar sensors, it very much felt like living in a sci-fi reality. (It will cost about $100,000, so that was probably my one and only time sitting in that car.)

My CES adventure this year lasted the better part of a week, and as I left the showroom floor for the final time, the dread had lifted and I felt somehow excited about the future of agriculture, smart cities, health care, and even cooking. Of course, what exists in the present at CES can take months or years before it’s in the real world. It’s okay to feel impatient. Good stuff is on the way.