The Gadget Lovers' Answer to Burning Man - CES 2013 Preview

Your holiday gift list may be filled with gadgets, but right after you've opened all your presents the friendly people who made them will tell you that your newest tech toys are very shortly going to be too big, too slow or just too limited in their capabilities.

Each year in early January, consumer electronics manufacturers, automotive companies, and entertainment industry deal makers converge on Las Vegas by the hundreds of thousands for the annual gadget-lovers' answer to Burning Man, the Consumer Electronics Show. 

Click here to find out what the Consumer Electronics Association previewed to press and analysts before the next edition of this (in)famous industry trade show.

CES 2011 Video Moments

I hope you enjoy these two video montages of the sites and sounds of CES. It's a visual and auditory mashup, but so is walking around the show floor.

And, just in case you think it's all glam and glitter at CES, please see my post on Technorati, Ten Things I Hate About CES.

Can America Become The Comeback Kid?

If you ask the CEO of the Consumer Electronics Association what America needs to do to become as great as it used to be, he'll tell you the answer lies in two words - support innovation.

Gary Shapiro, head of the organization that annually mounts the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, believes America's position as a global superpower has been diminished by the federal government's immigration, education, broadband and tax policies which have dimmed our entrepreneurial spirit.

Shapiro feels so passionate that the country needed a strategic turnaround plan, he says he almost named his new book simply "The Plan." In an interview on the verge of opening the 2011 trade show to tout his short treatise "The Comeback, How Innovation Will Restore The American Dream," Shapiro said, "I created a SWOT analysis for the country, and evaluated our strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats."

The CEO of the CEA was steadfast in his interest in speaking about long range vision, and was committed to the perspective that his job is to focus on federal policy. Downplaying the impact of the state government's role in fostering innovation, maintaining employment levels or managing immigration at our borders, Shapiro suggested that the economic situation California has gotten itself into is a local business issue that gets sorted out through competition among states for jobs and business. "Other states win when California makes bad decisions," Shapiro remarked. Despite insistence that innovation starts with federal policy, in his book, Shapiro compares the financial woes of California to the economic implosion of Greece.

Read more: http://technorati.com/technology/article/ces-can-america-be-the-comeback/#ixzz1AaSFwU00

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