This is CES #21 for me, twenty in reality because there was no event in 2021 due to COVID. Still, I sat in front of my laptop for the days the event occurred and watched painfully boring presentations, one right after another, none of which were rehearsed, memorable, or particularly insightful.

I played in a jazz trio all through high school, and when we’d set up, no matter what, the guy on guitar always had the polarity wrong between his microphone and his guitar. He could tell when it was wrong just by listening, but he never did. The second his lips got close to the mic, I’d see this blue arc zap him on the lips but good. It got to be so funny to me because he’d never listen and check it ahead of time and it was like a ritual of a continuous bad decision, unfazed by the previous shock. It really hurt too, but it always made me laugh anyway because there was no way the lesson was sticking with him. I still laugh about it now.

In the 21 years of attending CES, the press has always laid out these predictions about CES that remind me of the same thing. They come in two categories. The first is the meaningless predictions, such as what’s in this week’s Show DAILY where the headline reads “At CES 2024, Stagwell Hails ‘Year of Competition’” and this gem from the Consumer Technology Association, “CES 2024 Will Celebrate Technology Solving Big Global Challenges,” which can be said every year of the show for as far back as I can remember. Those completely empty headlines are everywhere at the show, put out by those desperate for relevance and wishing to sound like opinion leaders, followed by equally empty press. If they were honest, they would admit they have no clue what we will see this year, but that it would be something new.

Like my bandmate getting zapped every time, those predicting the contents and direction of the show are wrong every time. I’m not saying wrong once or twice, but every, damn, time. As an example, just a year ago, OpenAI launched ChatGPT on November 30, 2022, and yet there was no mention of it in the show press five weeks later at CES 2023. However, according to Reuters, “Funding for generative AI projects exploded last year, surging more than fivefold to $23.78 billion through the beginning of December from 2022, according to PitchBook data.” Last year, they were instead talking about NFTs and the Metaverse as a new category of CES. They missed this entirely!

I still scan the pre-show press just for fun and save all the silly predictions that turn out to be way off. The reason they miss it so often is that invention is often deeply personal and kept secret until CES. The little companies that change the world are often on a small booth somewhere. In 2003, the first year I attended CES, the Bluetooth booth was about the size of a card table, and few had any clue how it would change the world. There was little mention of it in the show. In 2004, it was pronounced as dead technology just before I bought Open Interface North America, and by 2005, Bluetooth was everywhere at CES.

There are some fantastic journalists who dig deep into the show, but they are not out there either wildly predicting the future or making broad empty statements. They dive in to see what’s new and only then draw conclusions. I’ve learned my prediction lesson, and I now do the same thing because even when I try to guess what I’ll see, I too have been wrong so many times, I don’t try to fake it. I’m not getting zapped. I’m excited about the show because of what I don’t know as I sit writing this. See you at the show!