Dave Winer has a hint of surprise in his post on CES. It’s no secret that events like CES are boring. That’s because they’re “leave ideas at the door” events. I mean, it’s in Las Vegas, isn’t that enough of a clue to the purpose of the event? The best thing is to just let other people do the donkey work of pulling the interesting stuff from these events and then thinking about it. I thought about going to BETT (the education in technology show) this week, but decided not to. It would be a big, lumbering, commercialised disappointment. The manufacturers are trying to sell new stuff to customers - be they corporate, educational, individual - which are supposedly ‘new ideas’. They do things which are either obvious or unnecessary inefficiently, while the good ideas simmer under the surface (often utilising old time ideas) and let people innovate. None of that stuff happens in the big tech shows at Earl’s Court or Las Vegas or the Portable Media Expo (to pluck some examples). And that’s why I avoid them like I avoid herpes.
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