The Cruftness of Things
A somewhat non-timely discussion on what the real value of going to a technology conference is.
Is CES worth going to? Yes. Why? Well, precisely because it is a terrible conference to go to.
I hadn’t fully appreciated this point until recently. I’m somewhat busy, so I apologize for the lateness of a ‘CES post’—dangerously close in its tardiness to being irrelevant. But if I’d written this post a couple of weeks ago, or even two days ago, I would have written a rather unflattering post on CES—but I’m writing it today.
You see, my favorite author is Neal Stephenson and I frequently re-read his books. So recently (right before this blog post, in fact) I have started re-reading The Diamond Age. This is a book I hadn’t always fully appreciated, but I remember I read it when it first came out and remembered a great thrust of it revolving around a book which essentially functioned as a tablet — predating the iPad and its potential by so many years that I always equated it with such.
This isn’t to say it predated tablet computers, but the idea that a tablet could be something different in purpose than a keyboardless, mobile computer was something new. More broadly Stephenson’s book describes a society that had perfected nano-computers and 3D printing to the degree that it upended societal norms (and how knowledge link can link people to form their own society)—and in Stephenson-sense ends up spiraling far more widely. Anyway, it’s a good book, but this isn’t a review of the book.
More directly, the purpose of the tablet-book in that book is to educate—and to disseminate education in a self-directed manner, rather than a formulaic ‘you learn things this way, the same way all people learn’ manner. The other thing is the invisibility and connectedness of technology. It’s no longer in front of us. It’s all around us—and it’s taken for granted.
This is CES. This is where things are marching. The connectedness of things, the interoperability of things, the wear-it-ness of things, the ability of everything to house data, to communicate data, to enhance life. 4K/8K TVs show every more vivid images of life on ever-thinner screens. 3D printers, software and hardware, useful things, useless crap. The point is, everything yearns to be digital and be connected to some semblance of the internet, or to facilitate that connection.
Yes, there is a lot of derivative crap. There is a lot of first-mover crap too. Both have a place. Everyone is still figuring out what will break wide. And the better part of the ubiquity of that crap, and the cheapening of components means that more of the world will have a door into this stuff. The more we expose people to the capacity to connect everything, the better off we’ll all be. No one has figured out yet how to use this stuff to facilitate a better world, and we’ll need lots and lots of minds to look at it to draw that random connection.
So, it’s a terrible conference? Yes. The thing is SPRAWLING. It’s a tent-city that’s infiltrated all of Vegas. I went for the entire conference, and each day, I would discover entire wings of hotels that were entirely different conferences: healthcare, electronics, startups, automotive, whatever. I frequently found myself going back to my room and reading engadget or gizmodo, as I would do every other year (every year that I dreamed of going) to read about the things at the show I had no idea existed — and I was AT THE SHOW.
So each next day, I’d venture out to try and find that thing, and couldn’t. This is somewhat depressing. And, from an empathetic standpoint, there were no doubt tons of very earnest people with very groundbreaking ideas shoved into a corner of the floor of a wing of a room that will never connect with the right person that will justify all that expense and cost. It’s speed-dating in the worst sense. It’s bad physical SEO. Hold onto this for a moment.
CES is also filled with people. FILLED. If you aren’t a buyer, a member of the press (engadget), or an extrovert, be prepared to not be paid attention to. I’m none of the above. You are ignored, you are just a left-side-of-the-bell-curve-in-height person waiting patiently in line to try some random gadget that does the exact same thing that 100 other gadgets by 100 other companies are hoping to do. It sucks, in short.
And so… I ended up back on the internet. Reading new and interesting things about the stupid stuff I’d tried.
But here’s the beauty: CES is pulling up the hood of your car to look at the engine. You see how it works, how these weird extensions and pumps and hoses connect to one another to make your car go. And I say this all as a post-knowing-how-to-fix-your-car guy (I have no idea, but I could probably figure it out from the internet). The point is, it doesn’t matter. The ability of your car to move is the magic. People came up with each of those car components, and then evolved over time into ever-better car components into the wonderful technology that shuttles us around today. These 100 companies for each of their 100 gadgets (compounded exponentially) are those people today, trying to figure out a way for technology to connect us and expose us to knowledge.
CES is beautiful because it is better accessed online. It really showcases the ability of technology to make a physical experience better (or, in some cases irrelevant). Myriad people gifted in sifting through the cruft will go to CES to write about it online. Buyers will go to divine the best things to put in their stores. Legions on the internet will read the articles and then go to the stores to validate the opinions. Even more will create a trend, and a select few, separated by geography and the economics of going will piece together these gems into how this stuff should work, and how it will change the world. This selection and filtering is an example of the internet, specialized into physical reality.
Most of these things will be wrong. Some will be right. Few will learn from the mistakes. A couple will change the world.
It sucks to go to CES. But you should go, because it might change how you view the world, and you can see the world’s hive mind trying to improve it in real time.
