As the chartered Circle Line tour boat made its way across the Hudson last Friday, Michael Dubno barked orders into his cellphone, in an attempt to control a white blimp overhead.


“Can you get right overhead,” he asked, “before we get to the Statue of Liberty?”



There was no real point to the blimp. It didn’t do anything other than float above several hundred middle-aged men and women — mostly men, actually — and a few well-pampered children. They had assembled for an event known as Gadgetoff, a daylong attempt to prove that the Jetsons world we thought we would grow up into may really still come to pass.


So the blimp, like so many things on display that day — robots, cameras, vehicles, games, toys, chemical cocktails, weapons and wacky contraptions of all sorts — was not so much about showing off the latest technology, per se. The overriding goal of the whole thing was to see how many times attendees would say “neat” for whatever reason.


Gadgetoff was started in 2002 by Michael Dubno’s brother Dan, then a producer with CBS News, and Greg Harper, a technology consultant, as a gathering of friends who tried to impress each other with the coolest gadgets. Over time, it has grown, become a bit more commercial, and added a pinch of how advanced technology can save the world.


This year’s event began at the Chelsea headquarters of IAC/InterActiveCorp to gawk at its block-long video wall. (A quick building tour allowed me to note Barry Diller’s new executive floor as well, complete with a terrace with a long conference table and prime views of both the Hudson and the Empire State Building.)


Jeff Han talking in front of the video wall at IAC/InterActiveCorp


After that came the boat ride to Liberty State Park for some outdoor demos and lunch, followed by a blinding array of presentations at the Liberty Science Center.


It was at times infuriating: No one seemed to be able to get the audio-video presentations to work. And speakers were allocated so little time that talks were more of a tease. Aubrey de Grey, a Cambridge gerontologist, made a convincing case that I should stop accepting the inevitability of aging and try to focus on longevity. But he had to stop just before he revealed the secret of everlasting life