Eureka Park at CES sets aside space for start-ups and university systems, with exhibitors often grouped either by country of origin – for example, aisles of French, Korean or Italian developers – or by focus area such as smart home or digital health. This year, the University of South Florida showcased an early prototype of a polarized-light skin imaging device that allows skin-care users (both consumers and clinicians) to track the effectiveness of treatments over time.
The developer explained that she brought more than a decade of experience in medical dermatological photography to the project, but that she was now venturing into a market aimed, in her words, at people simply worried about wrinkles and crow’s feet. She allowed that the device’s ability to detect subtle differences in skin tone and condition could make it useful for abuse screening. But for now, she is deliberately steering it toward cosmetic use cases – the softer side of tech, as it were.
An aisle or two away, Israeli start-up Patternox was demonstrating a handheld, AI-powered scanner that uses back-scattering (light that bounces back from skin tissue) to assess what is happening beneath the skin, enabling earlier detection of cancer. Rather than focusing on blemish patterns or surface edges, the device analyzes surface and volume irregularities (SViR), allowing for noninvasive clinical evaluation of skin conditions. The device recently received a patent and is currently undergoing clinical trials in the United States.
CES is full of pairings like these: technologies in the service of lifestyle convenience alongside their analogues aimed at life-changing – or life-saving – applications. Or, since we were plumbing Shakespeare yesterday, what Aristotle might have recognized as the difference between techne and praxis. Techne is the craft of making – the skillful production of something new. Praxis defines actions that are oriented toward meaning and ethics. Or, stated differently, technology used meaningfully.
Consider Remento, an app that allows users to record personal stories, which are then edited with the help of AI and published in a hardcover book. Its target market is senior citizens (it was on display in the AARP AgeTech Collaborative space), and the default cadence – one story per week over the course of a year – yields, conceptually, a 52-chapter personal history. That is techne – the act of making.
But when I asked the developer (and he smiled as I asked, because he knew where I was going; he had already been there) whether he was marketing the product to nursing homes and other senior-care facilities, he answered without hesitation: yes, absolutely. And then described its role in reminiscence therapy. And how it is employed with Alzheimer’s or dementia patients. And the benefits reminiscene therapy can offer seniors facing terminal diagnoses. That's praxis, the same tool, now aimed at meaningful action.
Which raises the more interesting question: what comes next?
What if designs from Nirva, which creates jewelry that records and summarizes conversations and claims to identify “patterns in mood,” were combined with medical-grade sensors like those already embedded in smart rings and watches? What if fall-detection or alert devices, often rejected for aesthetic reasons, were ensconced in more elegant settings? Nuance Audio integrates speakers into eyeglass frames to create “invisible hearing aids.” What if smart glasses could transcribe speech and project real-time closed captions onto a heads-up display (HUD) for the hearing impaired?
That last one is a trick question. They already do. Even Realities G2, winner of a 2026 CES Innovation Award, offers real-time transcription in its HUD. Meta and Lenovo shared similar capabilities, demonstrating that for every TikTok recorded with smart glasses, there is also a newly-accessible conversation (and this does not even begin to enter the conversation about industrial or security use cases).
At CES, the distance between techne and praxis is often just an aisle or two apart. And the distance between dreams and reality…even closer.