[no subject]

For the Digerati, the Only Place to Be
By SAUL HANSELL

LAS VEGAS, Jan. 4 - Rex Wong has picked the music and hired
the runway models. Starting Thursday, they will strut his
latest design: pink portable video players with matching pink
faux-crocodile cases.

Like many designers planning to show spring lines here, Mr.
Wong, the president of a new electronics company called X2, is
hoping to impress some of the most discerning
techno-fashionistas: the 130,000 people expected at the annual
Consumer Electronics Show, which holds a preview on Wednesday
for the news media and formally opens the next day. The show,
Mr. Wong said, "is the one place where everybody is there -
the media and the buyers from all over the world."

As the runways of Paris and Milan are to the garment trade, so
will the hallways of the Las Vegas Convention Center be this
week to the world of digital gadgetry. All things audio and
video have become so woven into the fabric of everyday
American life and commerce that the show, once a sleepy
merchant fair for TV and stereo dealers, is now, in terms of
exhibit space, the nation's largest annual trade show. It has
held that position since 2001, according to Tradeshow Week, a
trade publication.

For most of the 1990's, the biggest show was a computer
exposition, Comdex. But now that computing hardware and
software are considered simply the raw ingredients of consumer
electronics, the show represents the vanguard of technology in
taking sound and images - from a baby's first steps to the
climax of a Hollywood blockbuster - and shrinking them to the
size of a sugar cube. Or expanding them to fill a wall. Or
transmitting them in an instant out to the patio, or around
the world. All without wires, please.

The show and the $124-billion-a-year industry it represents
have become primary in technology circles, so much so that
computer industry luminaries now feel compelled to attend.
Bill Gates, the chairman of Microsoft, will be a keynote
speaker. So will Craig R. Barrett, chief executive of Intel,
and Carleton S. Fiorina, chairwoman and chief executive at
Hewlett-Packard.

And such is the lobbying power of the Washington-based
sponsor, the Consumer Electronics Association, that 150
members of Congress and government regulatory officials,
including the Federal Communications Commission chairman,
Michael K. Powell, are expected to attend the event. It will
be fact-finding, Las Vegas-style.

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