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Conspicuous Consumerism
CES Takes Over Vegas
The Consumer Electronics Show (CES) debuted in 1967 – shortly, it turns out, after Gordon Moore made the prognostication that has come to be known as “Moore’s Law.” This week, in Las Vegas, CES is celebrating its 40th anniversary. So how is the old show doing? In those 40 years, the number of exhibitors has risen from 110 to over 2,700, and the show space has grown by over 11X. The number of attendees has mushroomed to well over 100,000 (estimates are around 140,000 for this year’s show). It proudly proclaims that it is the world’s largest consumer technology show.
Is this growth impressive? Hardly. If the show had performed as well as the companies that attend it – just keeping pace with Moore’s law -- our estimates are that CES should have been somewhere over a billion attendees this year, and the exhibit space should have been well in excess of 5,000 square miles. Would a 70 mile by 70 mile exhibit space filled with approximately four times the population of the United States be too much to expect?
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