This is Not a CES post, Not a CES Post

Originally posted on on Ravepubs, January 19th, 2012

 

This is not a post about CES, No, not at all.  But as you brought it up - just a few thoughts

CES is huge, I mean really huge.  You may think that Infocomm or CEDIA is large but neither one of these have left our dear friend Richard Fregosa curled up in tiny trembling ball on the plush carpet of the LG booth. Actually this did not happen, nor do I suspect Mr Fregrosa exhibits any
public displays of trembling- ever.  It is I who would suffer the ‘who put my knees on backwards today’ walk from canvasing the infinity that is CES.  And yes, I would wind up a puddle on the LG carpet, a booth babe nervously poking at me to see if I was still breathing. Just reading RF’s twitter posts and blog missives for CEPro have me holed up in the corner of my office with the first heat rash symptoms of a  trade show specific agoraphobia.  

When a show can be compared to the infinite universe you know for sure that it is just too damn big.  Watching the Twit.tv folks record iPad Today live walking around the ‘iLounge’ section of the show and twice realize that they had left the section only after someone pointed it out to them -just made me happy it was them not me.

You might argue that the show obviously needs to be as large as it is, just look at all the booths they filled and all the attendees. Phil Swann of TV Predictions.com summed up my feelings when he tweeted:

“@SwanniOnHD: Hard to believe the stuff u see on the #CES2012 floor; much should have been left on the cutting room floor”

Then there is the Gizmodo post by Mat Honan . Gizmodo lives and breaths this stuff so it is worth noting when he says:

“Then it's time for a meeting, so I scuttle out through a maze of ocular and aural assaults, past booth after booth of headset-wearing pitchmen doing their best Billy Mays. Deep in the middle of the din, I meet yet another PR person whom I'll never see again in my life, and settle in for a demo of another product I already know I'm not going to write about.”

With too much space to fill we find ourselves swallowed up in detritus and ephemera.

We, as a culture, are fervently fond our ability to spread out, to take up space. Our homes are a testament to this early pioneer spirit of owning our own spread.  It is also a testament to an entire economy which fuels innumerable bloated shows  full of stuff to fill our abodes with.

In my last post “Knit One, Purl Two”  I touched on the opportunities and advantages of going small - how compression can generate new and exciting ideas. Limitations are liberating, forcing new solutions and even revisiting older ones that we should not have abandoned, Like moderate homes with porches.

I own a fairly modest home, a 1901 colonial which, with the finished attic, is about 1900 square feet.  This is, in reality much too much space.  In reality I only use about half the space for actual living, the rest just accommodates stuff - mostly items I do not need and could be put to better use.  The house was purchased as it fit my other priorities of being near mass transit and within walking distance of a local deli/grocery store/ bara porch, this and the small patch of green in the back.  Given my druthers I would have preferred a smaller house on the same lot with less house  more grass and more porch.  So yes size does matter, just not how we have been taught.  

Recently my wife and I performed the annual post X-mas purge of toys, clothes and other miscellaneous items from the house. Each time we do this, (and we do it at least twice a year which is two times too few for me), I am appalled at the sheer volume of items we have accumulated which we have no real need for.  I think part of the issue is that we actually have the space to keep all this flotsam and jetsam. My parents, most likely subconsciously, purchase too many things for the kids because we can fit it. While anecdotal, when we lived in an apartment the items the grandparents brought in were far less and smaller.

I KNOW it will draw guffaws and hackles but  there is much to said for houses that concentrate on function rather than flash.  I am particularly fascinated with the work of Lugi Colani’s Rotor House concept design or perhaps something along the lines of Normal Projects Origami apartment.  The attraction here is beautiful design with emphasis on natural light and economy of space by creating multifunction without appearing industrial.  While the homes are in the vein of Frank Lloyd Wright's prairie homes these homes far more than ranch homes redux, the point is more environmental rather than ornamental.  

There is a larger social effect beyond taking up less space. In a time before ubiquitous air conditioning folks would spend a great deal of time on their porches and stoops - knowing their neighbors and keeping an eye the general welfare of the area. Even today, communities where people use their porches on a regular basis tend to have  lower crime rates.  These communities also generate less trash and are greener in general in particular, if not completely, because there is less space to accumulate random stuff. The trend may be bad for the folks from ‘American Pickers’ and CES exhibitors but not our industry.

In the cloud based future there is less need to have and store a physical medium, for example our playback and storage devices are small and mostly portable.  The trend is for more personal listening (headphones and headphone amps were everywhere at the show, every online magazine commented on just how pervasive the units were).  Even when a more traditional listening experience is desired the new compact speaker systems are comparable with their larger space hogging brethren -(taking into account economy of scales).   

This would, of course, mean a shift in just what and how home media and automation items are created and sold.  Homeowners will be more interested in controls and media delivery that lives and moves from personal device to the home and back again.  Interoperability, quick replacement transition and customization will be the hallmarks of a new mass market controls.

We may feel a bit pressured by this coming small world but the trends of global urbanization and explosion of multifunction products that incorporate a video monitor, storage, Internet connectivity and control in one box show an inevitable path.. This years CES dichotomy of too much floor space and compact offerings are the rune stones. But then again we were not talking about CES, were we?