When I attended my first Consumer Electronics Show in 2007 , friends reacted as if I were going to the World ’s Fair in 1933 . What technical wonders would I see ? What wizardry ? What further grounds of mankind ’s supremacy ?

The story I fetch back rarely let down : TVs the sizing of chamber walls!Flying cars!HD - DVDs ! OK , maybe that last one is a poor object lesson .

But when I tell friends and fellowship that I ’m blend in now , in 2025 , their response is closer to announcing that I ’m see a defense convening . What wasteful surfeit will I witness this year ? What fresh tools for spying on us ? What evidence of mankind ’s hubris ?

Part of this , I allow , might have something to do with living in Portland , Oregon , where unseasoned people both go to retire and populate in a state of perpetual skepticism of Big Anything . This is a city without fluoride in our piss . But it ’s not just my Luddite friends .

In 2021,YouGov conducted a surveyto measure how trust in public institutions had changed since 2018 . While it correct across the board , three companies lead the plurality in their plumb bob : Facebook , Amazon , and Google . Congress , police force , and even the press fared comparatively well , in comparing .

It ’s not even just the general public . Another survey of tech professionals found that79 % of them do n’t trust Big Tech on AI .

Can a show like CES help shake tech ’s tarnished repute ? Perhaps more significantly , does it deserve to ? I asked the woman who runs it .

More than novelty

Kinsey Fabrizio late take over as president of the Consumer Technology Association , the group that run CES , after decade of stewardship from her predecessor , Gary Shapiro . That makes this the first CES she ’s in burster of , and an chance to make her mark .

Fabrizio target out that beyond the robovacs and VR headset , CES has plenty of companies jaw on handsome issues . “ I commend when the companySourcehad their Zero Mass Water tech that they were showcasing that created water out of air in the desert , ” Fabrizio offers as an example . “ I mean , that is tech solving a major problem . ”

Source will be back this year . And another inauguration , AirFarm , takes the same technology a pace further by roll up H2O from the air and using it to irrigate harvest in an inflatable glasshouse know as Food Arks . The company claim they take just half a twenty-four hour period to deploy due to their inflatable nature , and use 99 % less weewee than schematic farming .

Having these companies pay heed CES is one thing , but the CTA has also been making an campaign to spotlight them , Fabrizio pronounce . “ It ’s really important to us to wreak the brightest , the brightest and the greatest thinker to the leg to peach about how tech is solve challenge , big ball-shaped challenges , and really get them to showcase what they ’re doing , ”

The show level tell the tale : Digital health solutions for exercise , will have 652 exhibitioner this year , plus conference tracks with topics like “ how technical school can profit 4.5 billion people without canonic wellness care . ”

“ We have an award platform , and we have different categories , and all of them are centered around this theme of that Tech for goodness , and tech lick the world ’s challenges , and tech creating solution , ” Fabrizio says . Some of the categories admit sustainability , voguish city , animal welfare , and human protection for all , a catch dish for products that “ demonstrate how technology help take on the world ’s most pressing problem . ”

This year ’s Innovation Award honoree include solutions for all sorts of egress . CalmiGo Plus is a hand-held machine that use odour , trembling , and breathing exercises to serve people with anxiety , PTSD , and terror attack . MouthPad is a gadget for disabled user to control computer using just their tongue and gesture . DisMantleBot provides a raw system for efficiently breaking down EV assault and battery for reprocess .

We loveTech For Changeso much we ’ve built an entire series play up it , and this yr ’s CES is offer no deficit of candidates .

Room for both?

So is CES a shopping mall for big boob tube , or an exhibition for resolution to the problem of the 21st century ?

“ There ’s room for both , ” Fabrizio says . “ And being able to have both at CES I mean , has been a peachy evolution , and something that we want to keep forward . ”

We ’re already seeing it play out . At CES Unveiled , a mechanical press preview on Sunday even , Digital Trends ’ editorial team gawp over AI glass , digital windowpane , and galvanizing Rollerblade . But those were n’t the production we were most excited about . One editor came away excited about glass for macular retrogression that might facilitate his mom . Another was mad about a special exhibit for people with dyslexia that could aid his son .

You know we ’re still buy the farm to cover flying cars . And big television receiver . And a robot vacuity that climbs steps .

But Fabrizio ’s right : Beyond the fair of excess and dubitable practicality that has — not unfairly — come to define tech over the last decade , there are great deal of existence - changing solutions on display . You just have to stop twine your optic and take care .