CES 2026 Just Showed Us the Future. It's More Practical Than You Think.

CES has always been part crystal ball, part carnival. But something shifted this year.

I caught up with Brian Comiskey—Senior Director of Innovation and Trends at CTA and a futurist by trade—days after 148,000 people walked the Las Vegas floor. What he described wasn't the usual parade of flashy prototypes destined for tech graveyards. This was different. This was technology getting serious about actually being useful.

Three mega trends defined the show: intelligent transformation, longevity, and engineering tomorrow. Fancy terms, but they translate to something concrete: AI that works, health tech that extends lives, and innovations that move us, power us, and feed us. Not technology for its own sake. Technology with a job to do.

The AI conversation has matured. A year ago, generative AI was the headline—impressive demos, uncertain applications. Now the use cases are landing. Industrial AI is optimizing factory operations through digital twins. Agentic AI is handling enterprise workflows autonomously. And physical AI—robotics—is getting genuinely capable. Brian pointed to robotic vacuums that now have arms, wash floors, and mop. Not revolutionary in isolation, but symbolic of something larger: AI escaping the screen and entering the physical world.

Humanoid robots took a visible leap. Companies like Sharpa and Real Hand showcased machines folding laundry, picking up papers, playing ping pong. The movement is becoming fluid, dexterous, human-like. LG even introduced a consumer-facing humanoid. We're past the novelty phase. The question now is integration—how these machines will collaborate, cowork, and coexist with humans.

Then there's energy—the quiet enabler hiding behind the AI headlines.

Korea Hydro Nuclear Power demonstrated small modular reactors. Next-generation nuclear that could cleanly power cities with minimal waste. A company called Flint Paper Battery showcased recyclable batteries using zinc instead of lithium and cobalt. These aren't sexy announcements. They're foundational.

Brian framed it well: AI demands energy. Quantum computing demands energy. The future demands energy. Without solving that equation, everything else stalls. The good news? AI itself is being deployed for grid modernization, load balancing, and optimizing renewable cycles. The technologies aren't competing—they're converging.

Quantum made the leap from theory to presence. CES launched a new area called Foundry this year, featuring innovations from D-Wave and Quantum Computing Inc. Brian still sees quantum as a 2030s defining technology, but we're in the back half of the 2020s now. The runway is shorter than we thought.

His predictions for 2026: quantum goes more mainstream, humanoid robotics moves beyond enterprise into consumer markets, and space technologies start playing a bigger role in connectivity and research. The threads are weaving together.

Technology conversations often drift toward dystopia—job displacement, surveillance, environmental cost. Brian sees it differently. The convergence of AI, quantum, and clean energy could push things toward something better. The pieces exist. The question is whether we assemble them wisely.

CES is a snapshot. One moment in the relentless march. But this year's snapshot suggests technology is entering a phase where substance wins over spectacle.

That's a future worth watching.

This episode is part of the Redefining Society and Technology podcast's CES 2026 coverage. Subscribe to stay informed as technology and humanity continue to intersect.

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Marco Ciappelli: https://www.marcociappelli.com/

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In this Brand Highlight, Ivan Milenkovic, Vice President, Cyber Risk Technology at Qualys, joins host Sean Martin to discuss how security leaders can break free from the whack-a-mole cycle of vulnerability management.

With more than 48,000 vulnerabilities disclosed in 2025 alone and the average enterprise juggling 76 different security consoles, Milenkovic argues that the old methods of counting patches and chasing alerts are no longer sustainable. Instead, Qualys helps organizations prioritize threats based on business context through what the company calls TruRisk.

Milenkovic describes a fundamental shift he sees taking place in boardroom conversations: moving from risk appetite to risk tolerance. Boards and executives now want to know what specific losses mean to the business rather than simply asking whether the organization is secure.

For CISOs, this means evolving from the department of "No" to the department of "Know," where security leaders understand where problems exist, how to fix them, and what architecture supports business objectives. The key is demonstrating return on investment through resilience metrics rather than vulnerability counts.

Qualys addresses this challenge through its Enterprise TruRisk Management platform, which facilitates what Milenkovic calls the Risk Operations Center. Unlike a traditional SOC that focuses on incidents that have already occurred, the ROC takes a proactive stance, helping organizations prevent threats and optimize security spending before damage occurs.

This is a Brand Highlight. A Brand Highlight is a ~5 minute introductory conversation designed to put a spotlight on the guest and their company. Learn more: https://www.studioc60.com/creation#highlight

GUEST

Ivan Milenkovic, Vice President, Cyber Risk Technology, Qualys

On LinkedIn | https://www.linkedin.com/in/ivanmilenkovic/

RESOURCES

Learn more about Qualys | https://www.qualys.com

Are you interested in telling your story?
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KEYWORDS

Ivan Milenkovic, Qualys, Sean Martin, brand story, brand marketing, marketing podcast, brand highlight, Enterprise TruRisk Management, Risk Operations Center, ROC, vulnerability management, CISO, cyber risk, risk tolerance, security leadership, proactive security

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Dave Tourjé: You Have to Destroy What You Create to Become Free

When Dave Tourjé was two years old, he had a box of wooden blocks. Every day he'd dump them on the floor, stack them into towers of color, admire what he built—then destroy it and start over.

That ritual never stopped.

Tourjé is a painter, a punk rock musician, a skateboarder, and a founding member of the California Locos—a collective of LA artists who represent the city's raw, multicultural energy. When he sat down with me for Audio Signals Podcast, we talked about survival, rebellion, and what it really takes to stay free as an artist.

"You have to learn to destroy what you're creating to really become free," Tourjé told me. "Otherwise you're gonna be trapped by your own creation."

He calls himself a lucky survivor of the eighties. Born in 1960, raised in Los Angeles, he hit the punk rock scene at 19, got his first skateboard at 7, and was riding swimming pools by the time urethane wheels made it possible. He studied art on scholarship but quit when they asked him to do papier-mâché in college. "That was third grade for me," he said. "I just said, fuck this. I'm outta here."

He's the only practicing artist from that program.

When galleries started selling his concrete and steel furniture around the world, Tourjé thought they'd embrace his paintings too. Instead, they told him to stick with what was selling. When collectors wanted commissioned work in different colors, he walked away. "I was not built to do it," he said. "So I bowed out."

Instead of finding a patron, he built one. A construction company that runs without him—a machine that pays him without requiring him to owe anything to anyone. "It's going to be my patron," he explained. "It's a similar model, but without all the social implications."

That freedom let him focus on the California Locos, a collective he assembled around 2011 with friends who were all leaders in their own corners of LA culture—surf, skate, street art, tattoo, photography. "We are basically Los Angeles," he said. "A very honest reflection."

Their book, Renaissance and Rebellion, tells the story from the sixties to now. It's published by Drago in Rome and distributed internationally. They're currently showing at the California Surf Museum in Oceanside, with museum shows lined up for 2027 and Spain on the horizon.

But the moment that stuck with me came at the end of our conversation. We talked about how musicians destroy as they create—every live performance disappears the moment it's played. "It's like painting a painting that as soon as you put it down and you go to get the next paint, the paint is gone."

And when someone looks at his paintings and sees something he never intended? He doesn't correct them. "The story is the painting," he said. "As soon as the artist says what it's about, everybody has to abide by the rules."

He refuses to impose meaning. Once he's done, he becomes an observer. The work is no longer his—it's an object from the past. He's already onto the next thing.

That's what freedom looks like after a lifetime of rebellion.

Stay tuned. Subscribe. And remember—we are all made of stories.

-- Marco
_______________________________________________________________________________________

Audio Signals Podcast 🌐 https://www.audiosignalspodcast.com

Dave Tourjé 🌐 https://davetourje.com/

Marco Ciappelli 🌐 https://www.marcociappelli.com

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As AI makes it easier for attackers to launch account takeover campaigns at scale, organizations face mounting pressure to protect their customers and their brand. Israel Mazin, Co-Founder and CEO of Memcyco, joins the conversation to discuss how real-time detection and protection capabilities are changing the game.

Memcyco is built on four products within a unified platform, each designed to detect and block both traditional and AI-driven attacks in real time. Unlike reactive threat intelligence solutions, Memcyco identifies victims as they interact with fake sites, provides detailed attacker data, and even deploys credential deception to neutralize stolen information before it can be used.

With an agentless deployment that takes just minutes to implement, Memcyco delivers more than 10x ROI for customers across financial services, retail, airlines, logistics, and hospitality. The company has achieved nearly 300% year-over-year growth, serving organizations across North America, Latin America, Europe, and beyond.

This is a Brand Highlight. A Brand Highlight is a ~5 minute introductory conversation designed to put a spotlight on the guest and their company. Learn more: https://www.studioc60.com/creation#highlight

GUEST

Israel Mazin, Co-Founder and CEO of Memcyco
On LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/israel-mazin-62215b/

RESOURCES

Memcyco: https://www.memcyco.com/

Are you interested in telling your story?
▶︎ Full Length Brand Story: https://www.studioc60.com/content-creation#full
▶︎ Brand Spotlight Story: https://www.studioc60.com/content-creation#spotlight
▶︎ Brand Highlight Story: https://www.studioc60.com/content-creation#highlight

KEYWORDS

Israel Mazin, Memcyco, Sean Martin, brand story, brand marketing, marketing podcast, brand highlight, account takeover, ATO fraud, digital impersonation, phishing protection, real-time fraud detection, credential deception, website spoofing, AI-driven attacks, fraud prevention platform, agentless security

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