Oddly, this has nothing to do with technology, but rather a book I finished reading while in Disneyworld, you know, that Las Vegas for children. Somewhere in his reflection on the 20th Century,
On The Edge of a New Century, historian Eric Hobsbawm casually states that the benefits of extreme wealth are no longer apparent. This isn't to say that it doesn't pay to be wealthy, but rather that a hundred years ago the wealthy and everyone else inhabited the same public sphere. Everyone knew what the wealthy could access and nowadays, many of those luxuries can be enjoyed by members of the middle-class (albeit to varying degrees of frequency). Hobsbawm contends that today's super-rich have absconded from this public sphere, holidaying in secret.
Even as I wandered around CES, I thought about Hobsbawm and the genesis of Las Vegas as the playground of the West Coast's wealthy elite. Where do the wealthy go now? The only place I could think of that might rival Las Vegas for sheer over-the-top-ness is Dubai.
BTW, real CES-related reflections will be posted over at
Exploding Beakers since I officially went on Education Business.
