“Ninja Innovation” and Shiny Electronic Toys Invade Capitol Hill, Beguile Congressmen

<a href="http://www.ce.org/Events-and-Awards/Event-Overview/2012-Events/CES-on-the-Hill">ce.org</a>

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


On Tuesday night, members of Congress and their staff shuffled down to the Rayburn House Office Building cafeteria to gawk at big screens, mess around with shiny new gadgets, and scarf down finger food while sipping free booze. For two hours, the room where House interns and legislative aides usually eat their lunch was transformed into the Consumer Electronics Show on the Hill, a special DC version of the Consumer Electronics Association‘s annual Vegas trade show.

“You got toys! I love toys,” Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-NY), a senior member of the House Financial Services Committee and a CEA honoree shown here playing a track-and-field Kinect game at a previous event, exclaimed upon entering.

CES on the Hill has been an annual event for Congress since 2010, when it was first held in DC’s Eastern Market. In 2012, the show was moved to the Rayburn building. The event supplements CEA’s standard lobbying, and allows the trade organization to treat some of the nation’s most powerful elected officials to the industry’s latest advances in “ninja innovation,” a term coined by CEA president Gary Shapiro to describe tech innovation that is too powerful to remain unassociated with ninjas. “I hope you leave today’s event with a clear understanding what ninja innovation is all about,” Shapiro writes in a welcome note. I didn’t, but Shapiro literally wrote the book on “ninja innovation,” which blends his study of martial arts with his examination of what he views as the world’s most successful companies.

For some, this year’s packed-house Rayburn event was another excuse to hang out after another long day of legislative inertia. Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), the chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, made an appearance to down some Stella Artois and regale attendees with bland anecdotes about a donor who threw a large sum of cash into his 1998 Senate campaign (a Republican primary race he lost to California State Treasurer Matt Fong despite having outspent Fong 4-1).

Behind Issa were a bevy of new-generation gizmos and appliances, including Panasonic bone conduction headphones that played The Eagles’ “Hotel California” through the bones of lawmakers’ skulls. Showcases ranged from Pandora Internet Radio to Troop ID, the latter being a digital identification company founded by a pair of Army Rangers. White House aides and Department of Defense staffers dropped in to mingle and stare at a gigantic LG screen equipped with 3D technology. The DirecTV table played a Great Gatsby trailer and a clip of David Letterman interviewing Lindsay Lohan as a corporate rep discussed the satellite service provider’s efforts to fight the Department of Energy’s “over-regulation” of their cable boxes with “unnecessary” energy consumption requirements.

AT&T Texting While Driving

AT&T Fact Sheet from 2013 CES on the Hill

The AT&T-manned table was dedicated to reminding legislators about the dangers of texting while driving. The exhibit featured a street-driving simulator (aesthetically similar to what you’d find in a Chuck E. Cheese’s) synced to a fake iPhone. “Dad” sends the driver mundane text messages, and the player’s goal is to hold a conversation without crashing the vehicle and killing everyone. As I sat down to give it a try, AT&T representatives took care to move my free beer far away from the machine, so as to not unintentionally send a completely different bad message regarding driving. Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-Ore) and Rep. Ted Deutch (D-FL) took the challenge, both of whom crashed into other cartoon cars as they texted their fake fathers. However, both Democratic congressmen had fun and were “very jovial throughout,” according to an AT&T rep.

As the two-hour Hill event wound down, the women at the Pandora showcase reminded me that they were throwing an after-party at the Rock & Roll Hotel, with a special performance by folk singer Josh Rouse. (The invitation reassures House members and staff that the invitation was cleared by the House Committee on Ethics.) DC-based festivities carried over into the following night, when CEA threw its ninth annual Digital Patriots Dinner at the Mayflower Renaissance luxury hotel. Sen. Jerry Moran (R-KS), Rep. Jared Polis (D-CO), and Rep. Greg Walden (R-OR) were honored as staunch allies of ninja innovators in the tech industry.

All signs point to CEA returning to Capitol Hill come 2014. “We don’t have anything confirmed for next year, yet, but with the growing success of the event, we hope to bring it back,” CEA’s Allison Fried says in an email. And according to the CEA president, there’s still plenty more ninja-related work to be done in Washington. “We need the U.S. government to have a ‘ninja’ moment of its own and focus on policies that will ensure America remains the best place in the world for innovators,” Shapiro writes. Ninja innovators, that is.

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate