Do we still need CES
0Do we still need CES.
As the lights went down on the CES showroom I found myself snickering at the irony. In an event meant to showcase the latest and greatest, no amount of innovation could overcome the failure of a technology first harnessed in the 1800s: electricity. The once-crowded showroom was reduced to a near-dystopian landscape with empty booths, no lights, and an almost eerie sense of calm.
For about an hour, the Consumer Electronics Show might as well have featured rotary telephones and steam engines.
And then it hit me: what if the lights didn’t come back on? Would it matter? Does the tech world still need CES?
Since the 1970s, Las Vegas has played host to an event meant to showcase the most bleeding edge technology, tech that first appeared in January in front of thousands who paid a small fortune to see what came next. Events first unveiled at CES often hit store shelves later in the year or sometimes the year following.