10 Ways CES Is One Weird Experience - The Jay & Farhad Show
The Jay & Farhad Show – a podcast featuring the executive editor of Business Insider (Jay Yarow) and the New York Times’ tech columnist (Farhad Manjoo) – went to the mammoth Consumer Electronics Show this week. They came back with a decidedly different take on the sprawling show compared to the usual slightly breathless recounting of oddball gadgets spotted and giant televisions gaped at.
We’ve extracted some of the best stuff from their resulting “CES!” podcast episode using the fantastic audio-excerpting app Clammr.com (note, Clammr is a Fabric Media client) to give you the highlights of what Jay & Farhad saw and were most struck by at the show (trust us, it wasn’t just the big TVs). Here are 10 highlights from their show, detailing what makes CES the CES it is. Which is to say, deeply weird and unexpected.
1) Here, the guys talk about why Las Vegas, in all its not-quite-real yet oh-so-weird glory, is the perfect place to host the sprawling, overwhelming technology showcase that is CES.
2) That said, CES really isn’t the place to get actual news about real technology, at least for technology that will actually exist in the wild sometime soon.
3) Here they talk about some of the activity taking place outside CES itself, as tech companies staged huge operations to curry attention and favor with advertisers.
4) And yes, though CES is huge, lots of other things were going on, like the secret show within the show staged by Rupert Murdoch and Fox, and featuring a host of tech notables.
5) The Jay & Farhad Show also trolled the vast floors of CES and found...animatronic tails (Neither they nor we could make this stuff up). Here's a taste of one of the wackier bits to come from their decidedly offbeat take on the sprawling show.
6) Jay & Farhad also found...weight-reducing massage chairs.
7) Also among the many strange things Jay & Farhad found at the sprawling event was, yes, a laundry-folding robot (everyone could use one of those; admit it). Here's a taste of that conversation.
8) Here, they talk about whether all the new devices (and there were so many, leaving them more than a bit skeptical about the whole thing) at the show that track and collate data about our bodies and our lives really add up to anything.
9) Of course, when you’re busy doing all the measuring and collating and data managing that come with all the devices on display at CES, it can be a bit overwhelming. But there’s just one thing you need to remember at your next cocktail party.
10) The guys spent considerable time talking about one of the biggest announcements at this week's show, the expansion of Netflix into 130 more countries. Traditional networks must be more than a bit alarmed, they suggest in this clip.
Hear the whole podcast on Soundcloud here: https://soundcloud.com/jay-yarow/ces2016
or subscribe on iTunes here: http://feeds.soundcloud.com/users/soundcloud:users:103789862/sounds.rss
You can also read Farhad’s NYT blog piece about animatronic tails and other CES tales here.
