How Human Should The Future be?
A quick look into the CES 2026 spectacles, and why the most dazzling futures often fail the simplest human tests
(Video created with the help of MidJourney)
Happy New Year! What’s your 2026 resolution?
I’ve decided to swap out lofty goals for a series of mini-experiments this year. You know the type: hit the gym 5x a week, meditate daily, never check email after 7 PM. I’m an expert at setting them but an even greater expert at avoiding them. Apparently, I refuse to face my own flaws year after year.
So, mini-experiments it is. Want to take a morning walk? Try it for a week and see what sticks (mine’s still going… yay!). Want to connect with friends? Block one lunch or coffee per week in January. I know myself too well: I’m not built for marathons of discipline unless the finish line involves sitting quietly in front of a screen. But one walk counts. One lunch counts. The experiment isn’t about perfection—it’s about seeing how long I can go, and learning why I stop.
It’s humbling to admit, but necessary: I’m human. Flawed, fragile, and happily irrational.
And it’s this very human condition that feels increasingly at odds with the world we’re building. We live in an age where technology promises to optimize us—more efficient, more accurate, more informed. Yet when pitted against the machine’s ideal, we can’t help but look like a horde of walking failures.
We’re operating at a pace beyond what we need, at a cost to what we and the planet can sustain. And as technology prepares to accelerate again, I find myself questioning its net benefit—not its profit, but its true gift to our fragile, irrational, wonderfully human lives.
Which “Future of X” Visions Are Actually Human‑Scale?
Let’s visit the annual desert pilgrimage where the future is projected onto every surface that will hold a pixel. For many, every January at CES, what happens in Vegas does not stay in Vegas; it shows up in future roadmaps, OKRs, and board decks.
As a trained industrial designer, I’ve not only walked the CES floor many times, but also participated in some of the hypes back in the days - remember the tiny flip phones in 2007 and the whole hall dedicated to the Internet of Things such as sensor-embedded wrist bands and smart scales in 2013?
Over the years, the show has always looked like a giant mirror held up to the tech industry’s subconscious. It reveals what the industry is most excited about, and where it quietly expects humans to bend beyond their limits. Sometimes those bets turn into category-defining products. Often, the gap between technical ambition and human reality goes unexamined—and the market answers with indifference, or even a rather public flop. Check out the long list from cnet to get a taste.
CES 2026: AI as Infrastructure, Humans as Edge Cases
CES 2026 was the year AI stopped feeling like a bolt‑on feature and started feeling like infrastructure. Agentic AI agents, AI PCs, and sensor-driven environments formed the default backdrop of the show.
The big narrative was that the next interface is you—your gestures, your voice, your routines, and your data exhaust. It is a compelling story, but dangerously incomplete. In most of these visions, humans are modeled as rational optimizers with infinite attention and infinite energy for configuration. That is not how people live. We have been operating above sustainable levels of cognitive load for years; yet this new wave of tech is poised to accelerate the tempo again.
The work now is to design futures paced to the human nervous system—not just to the capabilities of the latest model.
Theme 1: Ambient AI Everywhere… But for Whom?
The first big story was ambient computing—the idea that AI will be woven seamlessly into our environments, perceiving and “optimizing” in the background. On the surface, it’s the dream industrial designers have chased for decades: invisible technology like the mui Board which uses a natural wood interface to hide the “pixels” until they are needed. I met them on the CES floor in 2006 way before consumer-facing AI is part of anything, and am glad to see they are still pushing for it, with such a unique look-and-feel, almost like a quiet rebellion in a sea of chrome and glass.
Underneath the sleek surfaces of this category of products, though, lie brittle assumptions. Most ambient AI pitches quietly rely on the idea that homeowners prefer maximum automation. But have we asked the question that people might value moments of analog calm more than another layer of algorithmic optimization?
Theme 2: When AI Turns Bodies into Dashboards
The second loud drumbeat was AI wrapped around the body: rings, wearables, and devices like the Mirror Ultra 4 that promise to turn physiology into a continuous feedback loop.
This is where the gap between intention and impact shows. Most AI health pitches assume people want their bodies constantly monitored and will interpret the data as motivating rather than overwhelming. As someone trained to care about human factors, my red flag goes with the emotional ergonomics: what it feels like to live under permanent measurement where every deviation from “optimal” becomes a micro-failure logged by a machine. It turns being human into a performance review.
Theme 3: AI for Feelings, Status, and Spectacle
If our bodies are becoming dashboards, it was inevitable that we’d try to do the same for our emotions.
AI “soulmates” in a box: Chinese company Lepro unveiled Ami, a desktop OLED device containing an AI “soulmate” that tracks your eyes to simulate presence. tech.yahoo
Hologram assistants: Razer’s Project Ava positioned characters like Kira and Zane as ever-present buddies, using cameras to watch you and your screen while offering “hype.” techcrunch | youtube
Status gadgets: From the An’An panda robot for the elderly mindwithheart to the $9,000 OLED smart handbag mashable, the show floor was full of “uncanny objects.”
As a designer, I admire the craft. As a strategist, I ask: what human need is being met? These lean on the fragile premise that loneliness is a technology problem solvable through synthetic relationships.
Lessons from the Graveyard of Inevitability
To understand today’s spectacle, let’s look back on the “inevitable futures” from the past. I’m sure everyone has their own favorites, here are afew.
The Segway: It failed because it assumed physical infrastructure and social norms would reorganize around a device. Production scale didn’t meet projections.
3D TV: Adoption faltered because the friction (awkward glasses, inability to multitask) outweighed the benefit.
The “Hockey Puck” Mouse: Apple’s round mouse prioritized visual purity over the human hand. It was elegant, symmetrical, and ergonomically painful.
A Human‑Scale Reality-Check Framework
So how can we think about these technological capabilities, in order to better translate them to great product-market, or rather product-human fit? I would propose these 3 questions:
Attention: Does this add more decisions than it removes?
Ergonomics: Does it require postures or tolerances that clash with the body?
Social Fabric: Does it harmonize with norms or create synthetic stand-ins?
The next decade belongs to leaders who optimize for what humans are good at—curiosity, creativity, empathy, and meaning-making—and who design systems that protect those capacities.
What CES 2026 vision struck you as most human—or most hopelessly detached? I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments.