CES can leave you with side effects like TMI.
CES is like a public viewing of the Batcave or 007’s latest toolkit. It’s incredible to see what kind of powerful and ingenious tools humanity can create. It’s remarkable that humans now have the ability to design a faucet that can dispense exactly 1 tablespoon of water with a voice command. In the words of the internet: “What kind of sorcery is this?”
Well, in terms of impact, it’s not the kind of sorcery that will take the world very far. It needs to be said: a lot of the powerful tools presented are also absurd. Not that CES claims to showcase innovations that bring humanity forward... it’s all in the name after all: Consumer Electronics SHOW. And everyone is, indeed, entertained.
New Ways To Make Waste.
Perhaps nothing is more entertaining than the ultimate first world problem: how to optimize pooping. Last year we saw a toilet that had Alexa built into it and this year we were presented with a toilet that can analyze our droppings. Fortunately people don’t change their toilets all that often, but we still need to ask the question: is all this entertainment worth the waste we are going out and encouraging everyone to create?
Technology shapes culture. It can change the course of history—just look at the wheel or the internet. And yet, too often, what people call innovation feels a lot more like distraction: shiny new objects with benefits for the near future that keep consumers from looking at the long run. There’s no better way to do it than perpetuating a navel-gazing obsession with individual data, small comforts, and the occasional light show. What is waiting at the long run that everyone’s eyes are being averted from? The check. This is the real “worst of” from CES 2021 (and the others before it). Sooner or later, someone is going to have to pay that bill.
The Worst of CES 2021, A Short List.
1) Loss of Personal Freedom: The newly unveiled Mercedes-Benz Hyperscreen might be the best example since cars are something regular people are known to tinker with. As cars incorporate more electronics, their complexity make it near impossible for a regular person to understand how they work. This could also prevent you from taking your car to any shop you wanted to get it serviced; as electronics become more integrated into vehicles, before you know it, you may very well find that you can only get your oil or tires changed where the manufacturer says you should (and at the prices that they set). In any case, people wouldn’t have full control over their cars anymore.
The same goes for every other object as everything is replaced by “smart objects”, the ability of a regular person (or even independent repair services) to fix these things when they are broken begins to dwindle. This isn’t just because of the complexity of the actual objects but because of the leverage manufacturers have in keeping their documentation under wraps. We have already seen this playing out with Apple and its campaign against Right to Repair bills around the country—all under the mantle of “security” and with the pretext of protecting their technology.
2) The Cost of Production: While everything you see at CES is bound to be sleek and shiny, a whole lot of dirt has to be dug up for the raw materials needed to create them. According to the most recent Global E-Waste Monitor report:
“Even in an ideal scenario in which all the iron, copper and aluminium resulting from e-waste (25 MT) is recycled, the world would still need approximately 14 MT from primary resources to manufacture new electronics.”
We are far from an ideal scenario. Since only 17.4% of our tech is formally documented and recycled, you can just imagine the amount of virgin resources required to power all the electronic goodies displayed at CES for future mass consumption. Given that these resources aren’t inexhaustible, should that automatic pet door really be a priority? Often there’s also a pretty large amount of water required to manufacture these gadgets. A single smartphone needs 240 gallons of water to produce, at least by the most modest estimate. It would be interesting to know how much a single LG OLED TV requires.
3) Carbon Emissions: Related to the ultimate “cost” of electronics production is also their carbon footprint. It’s estimated that about two-thirds of electronics’ emissions come from the manufacturing process; unfortunately there isn’t a lot of data or transparency on this subject. Now that climate change is making itself felt in earnest, it seems unreasonable that emissions aren’t a part of the conversation every time a new device is released. Let’s hear about those supply chains. While we’re at it, why not make the most out of the energy and resources already expended by removing planned obsolescence from the equation?
4) Electronic Waste: In 2019, people generated an average of 7.3 kg of electronic waste per capita for a grand total of 53.6 MT, meeting and exceeding the amount of e-waste experts in 2017 had predicted that we would produce by 2021 (that number was 52.2 MT). Knowing everything that they know, industry leaders have zero excuses producing equipment without considering their end of life. That isn’t just for objects treated as though they have a 2-3 year lifespan (ie, smartphones). Once the first solar panels stop working that will certainly create a glut of electronic waste that isn’t easily recyclable. Just imagine what will happen to all those smart toilets—especially if, as mentioned above, people end up no longer having the right or ability to repair what they own.
Recycling is often the go-to answer for manufacturers. The amount of recyclable material in a product doesn’t mean that it can or will actually be recycled though, even if the person that ends up buying it has the very best intentions. At the exponential rate at which e-waste is produced, it’s hard for recyclers to keep up. And besides, the recycling market is a market too. What most people don’t know is that sometimes objects are simply too expensive or cumbersome to recycle.
CES is a place where dreamers can show off what they’ve dreamt up. Imagination, creativity—and yes even fun, can and should play an important role in innovation...but not at the expense of everything else that matters. Industry leaders ought to be forging a better way forward and helping to solve the tricky questions about our tech instead of dodging the issues. Until they do, even the very best out of CES remains part of the very worst.
