There's only one way to arrive in Las Vegas, and that's by plane. Flying in - at least by daylight is the required mode of transport because it places in context this expensively kitsch temple of artifice. Las Vegas, surreal home to downsized Eiffel Tower and Empire State Building replicas, enormous black glass pyramids, Roman temples, French rococo overstatement, gambler's avarice and showgirls' breasts. Everything least pleasant about human nature luxuriates in Vegas, hidden behind the fabulous and costly interiors and exteriors of extravagant hotels built on money gambled and lost.
But flying high above the desert, the visitor has an achingly beautiful view of some of the most stunning and desolate scenery in the US.
Below are the ancient lands of the Navajo and Hopi tribes and the cliff-side dwellings of the legendary Anasazi, who were there first. Then comes the real heartstopper: the southern rim of the Grand Canyon.
Arriving in Vegas, you lose all sense of context and reality and enter the heavily hyped land of the unnatural. And that's doubly true of Comdex, which heaves with 250,000 technology aficionados, 2,000 exhibitors, and a motley army of journalists waiting to hear about the Next Big Thing.
Vegas has been the home of Comdex, which stands for Computer Dealers Exchange, for more than two decades. At first, the contrast between 1970s-era bewhiskered geeks and big-time Vegas gambling, glitz, showgirls and legalised prostitution must have been pleasing. The cliched image of guys eternally without girlfriends went so humorously well with the city where flesh was easily purchased and vice a civic virtue.
Nowadays, perhaps no city anywhere on earth more suitably, lovingly, pairs with the technology industry. Las Vegas, meet IT: new money, squandered money, money and reputations gambled and lost, vast riches questionably or skillfully or riskily won, bloated clouds of hype, a surface veneer of glamour, a desire to spend and spend and spend some more, the desperate longing of the not-yet or never-will-be successful, the self- satisfaction of Those Who Have Made It. Stretch limos (and this year, weirdly, stretch Humvees, those odd flat little vehicles used in the Gulf War), scantily clad women, enormous parties, live entertainment, and a fixed, sometimes grim, determination to have fun, fun, fun!
And Comdex, too, is great fun if you have a sense of context, a well-developed sense of irony, a good dash of skepticism, and a willing suspension of disbelief at crucial moments. You will be shown demos of things that do not work. You will be subjected to a non-stop barrage of marketers. You will fall in love, over and over, with the possibility of certain products, certain visions - the wireless revolution! The connected home! Ubiquitous computing! The entire Las Vegas Convention Center is inside a reality distortion field of epic proportions.
J ust go back and read the coverage of previous Comdexes, the excited babble back then about products and trends and sexy tech futures that never materialised.
But very little eventually gels in the world of gadgets or computing that didn't make its first stage appearance at Comdex in some way. This is why it's so utterly addictive - Comdex is the opportunity to see the future, to hear the talk, to meet the names, to watch the demos, to try the products that will shape tomorrow. If only the way were clearer and the hype not so overwhelming. If only one didn't have to battle a quarter of a million people all looking for a shuttle bus back to their hotel at precisely 5pm when the exhibit hall closes. But that's the IT industry and that's Las Vegas and it's just as well always to have that 34,000 foot perspective in your mind's eye because it's the only way to keep your feet firmly on the ground.
