Several people have already asked me today what I expect to get out of CES? Meager as it may be, here’s the only thing I can offer: I’d just like to see something that excites me.
Even after just a few hours on the ground in Las Vegas, it’s clear that this year’s show is even less exciting than usual. It’s not a bloodbath or anything; people are generally happy, except when you ask them about layoffs at their company and they meekly offer “I just hope it’s not me.”
Rob tells me that the CEA, the body that puts on the show itself (and whose President, Gary Shapiro, I goaded into crowning me “Official King of CES”), has estimated 130,000 people will show up for this year’s show. There’s no way in hell. Normally getting a cab after a function, like tonight’s “CES Unveiled”, is a twenty minute wait. Not tonight. We got right in. I know that’s more Las Vegas-class research than Los Alamos, but it’s good enough to convince me.
And it’s fine. We told ourselves that we’d head out to CES this year to meet a lot of the representatives of the companies with which we deal with as part of our day-to-day. And to spend time with each other, which as part of a company that is spread across the globe is rare.
But I think the consumer electronics industry as a spectator sport may be on its way out. And thank god. Perhaps asking what consumer electronics will do to improve our lives, expand our human experience, is about as asinine asking how our Nissan Sentra is going to revitalize our appreciation of man’s inherent spirit of exploration. The experience of using technology has so saturated our everyday awareness that the shine has gone off our pocket miracles.
I still love gadgets and widgets and incremental upgrades. And I’ve threatened to become a caricature of myself with all my skepticism of the industry that fuels my career. But I’m coming to realize that I don’t actually get off on being contrary like I used to, not when it’s just for the sake of it. Out there somewhere is a gadget — a real innovation — that will make my life quantifiably better. But I’m starting to feel like those transformative items will come less and less frequently, rarely enough that the interval between products that provoke that giddy inhalation of excitement becomes a few times a decade, not a reliable, annual experience.
Suddenly, I realize that there will be a time in my life when I’ll be reading bb:Gadgets without Joel Johnson, and it makes me very, very sad.
Have faith! maybe the current crisis will serve as fuel for actual progress and not it’s apperance.
I’ll never have that thrill I got when I procured my first serious gadget, a calculator watch. I think it was less about the technology and more about what a personal space the wrist is, carrying something with you all the time. I think that promise is what makes wearable technology so compelling… the idea that there would be some gadget so compelling that you wouldn’t want to be away from it any of your waking life. This promise of wanting to take it everywhere is also I think what drives the iphone, and what drives my father to carry a swiss army knife everywhere he goes.
It’s called getting old dude. Kopf hoch!
Really transformative innovations never did come that frequently; for the last 20 years or so technological innovation has been in the spotlight in the mass media here in the US, the EU, and Japan, and marketing has used that channel and the claim of transformation (the equivalent of “new and improved” in the cleaning products market) to get their spin to the public.
The standard marketing template for these sorts of products is “From now on, we’ll be XXXing our YYY on ZZZ.” Fill in to match your product and claim great changes in the way we live. But ask yourself how important to any of us “ordering our coffee on WiFi” really is.