A speaker at one of the panels I attended, quipped that CES should probably now stand for "Connecting Everything Seamlessly" not "Consumer Electronics Show." And there is no question that the story from the floor was about just that. The vision of a connected world (and a connected "me") that we have been talking about endlessly is now a reality. The hardware, operating systems and software are there to make it possible.
And we can all live happily after...
As long as -- and this was the blinding "aha" for many of those I talked to -- as long as we have fast, secure, mobile broadband. None of the breathtaking potential of all of those gadgets and gizmos, and none of the magic of all those happening apps, works without it.
And as impressive as all the OLED, the 4K, the Crystal LED, the Ultra HD, what mesmerised me most was listening to Tom Hanks talking about storytelling. About the way he likes to ask something of the audience. About the element of surprise, the ending you never saw coming but which makes all the sense in the world, because it is rooted in a human truth. About the fact that every time you start to tell a story you are taking a big risk -- for yourself, for the investors. Because you don't know if it is going to work. You can't. About how much more important great storytelling was becoming precisely because of all the ways, places, and times in which people can choose to be part of it. Or not.
Economics is defined as the science of allocating scarce resources. We are not living in a technology economy, or an information economy, or a knowledge economy. Those are all abundant and becoming more so every day, as everything gets connected seamlessly. What's scarce is attention. We are living in the attention economy.
And the only way to survive, or better still to win in, it is with better storytelling. With more creativity.
That's the real story at CES.
(And, if you have got this far...thanks for your attention.)