Hunter S. Thompson has always been one of my favourite writers. I picked up a couple of his books from the library up town one bored summer when I was sixteen – Hells Angels and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas – and I was hooked by the same evening. His anarchic style: half hard-nosed reportage and half striking fantasy, spoke to me like nothing else had done before from all the authors I'd read. The first book's vividly nonfiction biker gangs fired up my teenage interest, but it was the second one which sealed the deal. Twisted idealism in drugged fantastic haze meets the pit of hopelessness and sick pleasure, with the narrator as your guide, already hopelessly out of control; the entire thing a symphony of all too human frailty. Brilliant.
So it comes as no surprise that I find great symbolic pleasure in the recent events at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas no less, especially seeing as Fake Steve created a new persona to cover it in truly Hunter form. Enter Johnny Poison.
It's another of Fake Steve's characters I have more affinity with. This post pretty much sums up how I'd feel if I found myself at that troubled show. Why? Why indeed. The technological ills of the world all summed up in microcosm. Now if only the real Hunter had covered one of these while he was still with us.
Truth be told, CES did pretty much as it always does. A big hoopla is made in downtown Las Vegas about new technologies we'll never see, and new products we'll never buy. Being in Vegas, the whole event is already set up as the perfect environment for the media themselves: who can cover as little as they like with as flaccid an interest as they can muster, while nature calls and the seething city's delights lead them astray. All such events should really be held in similar locations: the party conventions the classic case in point. The best media management there is is simply to keep them on their toes, out of the hall and off camera especially, so that every deadline becomes a five minute fluster and your message is conveyed verbatim and with the least sarcasm available. If I owned property in Vegas that's certainly how I'd be selling the idea to prospective customers!
Another good writer, albeit far from a Hunter just like all the rest of us, summed up the show from his angle over at the highly recommended RoughlyDrafted. In fact I see he's just posted some more predictions for Macworld – my own inescapable next topic – so I'll be on over once I've finished. I should point out though that casting Bill Gates as the good doctor of journalism is way off the mark, besides for making a good Photoshop title piece. The character Gates reminds me of has to be the psychologist who preaches the ills of marijuana before an audience of police officers on their working vacation, and Hunter's alter ego himself, under the influence of far more potent things! I'm not quite sure who Hunter's attorney would be though …
So, what do I make of CES and its wider place in the world, besides for all the drug addled imagery already mentioned? I'll be derivative and concur with the general consensus which is that it's a mess and has become hopelessly overshadowed by Macworld. Compare the two for a moment. One is a highly professional and controlled expo in the Moscone Center in San Francisco where one company is the star, and all else has to come after Steve Jobs' keynote … itself the meticulous focus. The other is more of the traditional trade show where everyone talks in raised voice, trying to be heard over the other guy, and which for whatever reason still features Bill Gates every year as its shadow keynote star. Jobs intros new kit like the PowerBook I'm writing this on from five years ago, or the iPhone as was last year's surprise. Gates tries to push a pet concept or two, which alas are always headed nowhere. Daniel Eran Dilger wrote a comparison which makes it all too clear. But I want to look at another side of proceedings.
Apple like to have their own show without all the competition yelling over each other in the way. Fair enough. But it's what they do with that space which is the interesting part. Simply put: Apple only tell you about something when it's finished. You don't hear Steve Jobs predicting the future, and holding up vague new ideas as a promise for what might happen should things come through. Apple just love to innovate in private and sock you with the finished product as a fait accompli, preferably "shipping today". It's this side of how they think which leads to many of their other issues too, such as secrecy over seemingly inane things like the general timing of every minor update, and it can sometimes drive all of us nuts. But come every January, there's no doubting that what Apple do: it really works.
The Microsoft way meanwhile is to share the spotlight with every other outfit with a pass, albeit keeping the keynote for themselves. Fair enough … when you have the appropriate power. Bill Gates opens up with tales of tech futures, and how tablets and multi-touch (but not that multi-touch!) will change everyone's lives, without bringing much of it along with him. The show then proceeds to the usual din of booth-based demos (with or without "babes"), and for whatever reason Apple keep being mentioned at every turn despite their total absence. Try finding the same at Macworld, outside of Microsoft's Mac BU exhibit. I'm sure it must annoy Gates and his people just as much as it seems natural to those of us with opposite views!
It's no overstatement to say that the tech industry as a whole relies on Microsoft. The vast majority of computers run Microsoft's OS and software, while the company tries to fulfill the same role with phones and decreasingly sensible other platforms. This is not a good thing. Many of the companies involved seem to have woken up to the fact as well, as Microsoft appear at least to be going through a rough patch with a heightened environment of criticism from many partners. It's just plain foolish for so much to rely on so little: namely one single company's ability and discretion. Microsoft's big bugaboo is Linux of course which over time promises to meet every need … depending on who you listen to. Though at the moment I'd argue that it's Apple who are the bigger problem, as evidenced by their elephant in the room status at every place consumer electronics companies meet.
There's a meme going round that says "Apple is the new Microsoft". I'll believe that when I see it. The open alternative though is definitely still some way behind. Or else would we still be talking about a world full of blighted boxen, stillborn technologies and (so many a blogger's favourite) DRM?
So yes, there's been some good fear and some sweet loathing going down in Las Vegas. It makes me wonder why so many other greats of the tech industry, big and small, haven't done what Apple has since it bought NeXT eleven years ago: namely develop their own damn platform and reap the rewards which only those who make the whole widget can do. Rallying around Microsoft certainly does not equate to a smart strategy, nor does friendly but shamelessly empty words about Linux. Apple is not the roaring success it is right now because of voodoo and Steve Jobs' mercurial guise. It's back in good times because unlike so many others, it is not actively shooting itself in the foot.
I may just be mistaken, though, in thinking that is not a hard thing to do!
