Comedy Electronics Show (2024)

We found laughs in a hopeless place

Jan 18, 2024

At the top of every year in Las Vegas is an event that happens so rapidly after the previous year’s festivities you might just miss it. The event happens so early, in fact, that as a resident of Fabulous Las Vegas Nevada who has wanted to attend for years, I’ve forgotten to get tickets every time around. Of course, I am talking about that famous Las Vegas event where people who use computers in all kinds of profane ways descend upon the LV Convention Center to satisfy their sick perversions.

The cultured reader will be disappointed to hear that I am talking about the Consumer Electronics Show, rather than AVN’s Adult Entertainment Expo that takes place mere days after it. Although I only attended the first half of the CES/AVN double feature, I still have much to share both shocking and absurd.

As I myself stumbled into the CES exhibits, the first thing I happened by was the booth for the CES Innovation Awards. This is supposed to be some of the most inspiring and bold technological developments of the whole event, so let’s check it out.

The first thingy on the menu was this AR smart mirror. I, for one, appreciate that because it debuted this year it’s dubbed an “AI mirror”. Basically what this does is allow you try on different hair styles/outfits before actually getting them. They made the video game character creator a real thing!1

Could this be the next step in never interacting with reality again except through a filter? Maybe. But I choose not to think about that.

The next delightfully devilish device I feasted my eyes upon was the, uh, laptop TIE fighter? This innovation was a peripheral that you plug into your (I think USB-C) port and you instantly get two new monitors. Not bad, but is it spaceworthy? I’ll wait a couple years for the update.2

The next shocking innovation was a pair of pants designed for Silicon Valley startup founders. No really! It was a pair of pants called the WE-STIM!3

This marvel of a clothing accessory is a pair of yoga pants that generates electricity from your movement and then… shocks you? And this is good? According to the creators, the leggings “represent a pinnacle of excellence and sustainability, offering both an eco-friendly and effective approach to health and wellness.”

The next incoherent innovation on display was a web3 technology called “grafting”, which is a way of displaying graphs for students. Their description card claims it “empowers students to independently achieve scientific analysis at the level of professionals.”

What a brave and bold declaration. The image that follows, and I shit you not, is the item they put on display for this revolutionary technology.

I genuinely do not understand what this is. This bullshit birdhouse is what they passed as a justification for their lofty claims. You may have also noticed on the left of the description placard that this is a 2024 “Best of Innovation” award winner. In contrast, everything we have seen so far has been an innovation “Honoree”. This Web3 grafting grift really takes the cake for self-parody at this year’s Comedy Electronics Show. I can only assume they had nothing better to award in that category.

On the other hand, a product that really stuck out as innovative was these carbohydrate based plastics. I wish I could have reached in and felt them to see if they were sturdy, but they sure looked cool. This company made all kinds of prototype products from a starch that was biodegradable.4

This product was of course an “Innovation Honoree”. Tough crowd. This stuff looks like it’s still in the prototype stage, but it was pretty impressive from what they had to show for it. This technology may still be a ways off, but I can definitely see a future where I eat my dinner and it’s chill if I want to eat the fork too.

Those were the big hitters from the innovation awards. What follows are some other images I captured from the rest of the event.

Jack Thrust is back and faster than ever. Remember what I said about sick perversions?

I AM THE ONLY ONE THAT WILL TEST YOUR SUMP PUMPS EVERY DAY! Is this chortle bait? They’re baiting me to put this is my comedy blog, aren’t they?

Companies are out here stealing my hustle. Not cool, man. Not cool.

I also couldn’t help but notice that for the bulk of promotional materials for CES 2024 they used AI generated images of tech-ish looking people. The people themselves look just a little uncanny, but all the “devices” in the background are the type of mush we often get in current (previous?) generation AI art. Coherence plays second fiddle to hype. We’re out here raw-dogging unreality.

Check out the crazy tagline on this next company. “The virtual humans factory”. It sounded like a new web3 game. What’s crazier is that this company is actually doing something really cool! I talked to them and they told me about their work.

What Elem does is use supercomputers to simulate the beating of a human heart. The goal of this is to demonstrate to patients how a potential treatment could help them. For example, someone with arrhythmia would be shown a simulation of how a pacemaker could help regulate their heart dysfunction.

They showed me how they use data from MRI scans to collect information on real hearts and construct a model from there. There was even a powerpoint slide with all the employees and their simulated hearts! It’s easy to joke about companies from afar, but this was by far my favorite showing from the whole event.

If you’re curious, you can check the company out at elem.bio. I also heard they’re doing another funding round soon, so any wealthy Chortlebin readers can shoot a line their way. Simulating organs and breaking into the health industry seems really hard, but at least you know their heart is in the right place *dies of laughter*

Yes, we found a lot of laughable products, but real innovation is out there if you look. Perhaps it’s even more laudable while standing in a field of braggarts. But the risk of embarrassment does not come from making something strange, or new, or maybe even destined to fail. The real embarrassment comes from a lack of humility while doing so.

Humor can come from a ridiculous product, but it can also come from seeing a problem solved in a way you feel silly for not realizing before. It can come from being surprised by a device that seemed useless at first. It can even come from the joy of seeing something you never thought possible. At the end of the day, humor is in the world as we see it, and the wonder we can find there. As long as innovation abounds, a good laugh is evergreen.