BuzzFeed

For a long time, the Consumer Electronics Show, which began in 1967, was the Super Bowl of new technology. It was a city-sized crystal ball, revealing what we'll have in our living rooms and pockets a year or two or three years from now.

This is the first time in six years I haven't dragged my body, still recovering from the onslaught of Christmas and New Year's, onto a plane bound for Las Vegas, in order to subject it to a five-day frenzy of new gadgets, PR people, exotic strains of influenza, rivers of liquor, mountains of terrible free food, neat piles of overpriced decent food, endless lines of irritated bloggers, a constant fog of cigarette smoke and air freshener and blogger self-loathing, big...