Desire, not dystopia

While Australia slowly eases into 2026, convinced it should still be at the beach, the world of tech is enjoying its annual catwalk moment.

CES is currently underway in Las Vegas, showcasing the best (and weirdest) consumer technology innovations from many of the world’s foremost gadget manufacturers.

Lego made headlines by introducing its ‘smart brick’, a tiny embedded chip which adds sounds and light effects to the standard Lego experience. The company will be hoping kids prefer this option over making the noises themselves - it took eight years and significant resources to develop.

Nvidia and AI has predictably been everywhere. New innovations include chips that can create an ‘AI supercomputer’ (gulp), software that brings us a step closer to entirely autonomous cars, and smart technology that plays your favourite music as you enter a vehicle. 

Then there’s the weird and wonderful - a toothbrush that smells diabetes, a robot cat that blows on hot food to cool it down, and a vibrating knife that more easily slices through hard materials. All coming to an overly-excited smart home near you soon.

The challenge for every company (except Nvidia, whose only challenge seems to be counting the zeros on its valuation) is how to generate excitement and interest, without either blending into the mass of announcements or feeding the narrative of increasingly invasive and dystopian technology.

Lego appears to have nailed it by focusing on both the time and care it took to develop the new smart brick, and by introducing something genuinely radical to its product line.

Others, such as Clicks Technology’s ‘Communicator’, a device which looks very much like a BlackBerry but connects to your phone to prevent doomscrolling, shot to attention by addressing a societal concern.

Brands will continue to grapple with a challenge that could be a defining trend of the year in tech. Or they’ll just introduce a cat that cools down your coffee. That works.