CES 2021: Baby, It's a Wild World!

The biggest tech show on earth sidestepped the pandemic this year to present the long and short view of a hopeful future

- By Lark Gould

The big talk at the 2021 Consumer Electronics Show was not smartphones or the next big camera or drone – although those products and innovations were in abundant supply. No, the big talk this year was survival – getting the world immunized and healed and making sure that big tech does not become the big monster of our nightmares, or Hollywood’s version of our nightmares.

Around every (virtual) corner was a new concept for safe face masks, and new ways to execute room and space sanitization, not to mention new visions in touchless technology and robotic friends. The world took a detour this year and CES was its destination.

In 2020, the worldwide technology show pulled together some 171,268 attendants, including 4,419 people exhibiting and funneled them through what is, at best, a snakelike progression of booths and star-paneled sessions across some half dozen megaresorts in Las Vegas.

But in 2021, CES was, for the first time in its 54 years, not in Las Vegas.

Rather, it was everywhere as the conference’s first virtual event. That meant attendees could actually get a comfortable front row seat to all the plenaries and panels and wander virtual showrooms full of stuff. What it also meant, however, was the impossibility of feeling, touching, seeing the actual products or dropping in for spontaneous discussions with the teams.