I’ll admit that I’m a cranky bastard at these shows. You guys have essentially entrusted us with the difficult and thankless job of allowing you to subjugate your neophilia through frequent and effusive discussions of new technology and we, in turn, have become jaded, angry, and bitter. Why? Because doing this stuff is hard work. It requires constant attention, the ability to write intelligently with as few typos as possible (obviously, we fail on that front often), and an eye for the new. We’re really trying and we want to make you guys happy. But sometimes we get angry and snarky and annoyed.
Then I read this post by Senor Beschizza at BBG and I kind of realized that hell, this job isn’t so bad, we’re doing some real good in the world, and maybe I shouldn’t be so pissy:
It’d be easy to write the same “recession-hit CES” story that you’ll find elsewhere. It’d be easy to take gleeful pleasure in charting the show’s decline. The fact that this would be so much fun, to writer and reader alike, is not a good thing.
We shouldn’t enjoy it when the things we love aren’t popular. And what the consumer electronics industry sells isn’t very popular right now.
Gadget blogging’s always been laden with snark; its the internet’s motherlode of the stuff. It won’t stop, either: it’s our fluent language, a fair response to the subordination of innovation to business. But when tens of thousands of jobs will likely be lost in the coming months, what’s the point in kicking the trade when it’s down?
It’s time to have a little hope, and to find things to be positive about.
Go and read the whole thing. It’s really good. At its core, this industry is about improving lives. We get sidetracked along the way, but can probably name a few technologies that essentially saved your life, literally or figuratively, on multiple occasions. What did we do before cellphones? Before medical monitoring equipment? Before electronic safety gear in cars? Yay technology.